Just How Big is PlayerAuctions Anyway?

[PlayerAuctions]

Hey guys. I did a small test back in November regarding community engagement, and had received some really great responses from my first "Metrics" post here: http://www.sythe.org/market-discussion/1778219-interesting-metrics-runescape-markets.html

You guys are pretty special, because I only posted that here. :love:

I'm thinking about making posts like that on a regular basis (once/month) as time allows.

The next one I am preparing is some general metrics and performance overview for PA as a whole for 2014. But for this article, I wanted to add a special element, i.e. what you guys think :idea:

Without further ado... how "big" do you think PlayerAuctions is. I know this is general, so here are some definitions you guys can work with:

- Order volume
- Staff size
- Traffic, visitors
- Did PA grow, remain stable, or decline in 2014

etc. etc.

In my next post, I won't be providing EXACT figures, but more percentages. That being said however, some of you may be able to intelligently come up with correct/close figures yourselves.

That, and I am also interested in how people perceive us. We've changed A-LOT since I made this announcement http://www.sythe.org/market-discussion/1655044-playerauctions-under-new-management.html and 2015 is going to be more change, hopefully with communities like Sythe on board as we seek to enact top line changes to make this industry more "white" than "black" and bring legitimacy to safe trading.

Very, much looking forward to your responses ;-)

Cheers,
jake

 

[American]

Order Volume: Average Orders Completed Average Days: 1500-2000
Staff Size: 120 Workers
Traffic: 30,000 Visitors Daily
Over 2014 PA had a fairly large growth.

 

[adamh]

I personally don't like PA, but I don't hear to often people getting scammed, so I guess you have that going for you.

Althought these statistics are somewhat interesting.

 

[Arcus Isidar]

- Order volume: 1600 orders daily
- Staff size: 40
- Traffic: 20000 visitors per day
- Grew in 2014

 

- Order volume: 800 Orders daily throughout all markets
- Staff size: 20
- Traffic, visitors: 10K Daily
- Did PA grow, remain stable, or decline in 2014: Grow

 

[HamzaAbbasi]

Interesting to read through this, amazed by some of these figures! Nice to see the end result after being a long standing PA customer

 

[Audi]

i wonder how much money is profited with all those fee's with all those big daily orders

 

[Naxious]

- Order volume: 1000 orders everyday on all markets
- Staff size: 9
- Traffic, visitors: 15k
- PA grew a lot in 2k14

 

[Alch]

- Order volume - 2000
- Staff size - 50
- Traffic, visitors - 20000
- Did PA grow, remain stable, or decline in 2014 - grow

 

[uJesternWind]

-Order volume per day - 1000
Staff size - 30
Traffic per day - 50000
2014 was PA's biggest year.

 

[Pain]

Interesting, I work for/represent lalapo and rsgoldstop.com and we began using PA again.

The only reason we have however is we've found its more effective then ID on bigger transactions for us.

Honestly though, Your site does not cater to the smaller/middle class industry, your site caters to the major gold sites/powers and the high tier-buyers aswell.


Nothing Wrong with that, but with ur fee + $1 or w/e it is, You have to admit the majority of the lower/middle class wont use your site.


You may perhaps consider doing a promotion or something where new users to PA get 1 fee free transaction etc.


I can bet if you do a survey on how much people who use PA make a year, I'm betting you their upper middle class/major gold powers/People who live pay check to pay check and dont care.


Feel free to disagree I'd like to hear ur points.

 

[PlayerAuctions]

Interesting, I work for/represent lalapo and rsgoldstop.com and we began using PA again.

The only reason we have however is we've found its more effective then ID on bigger transactions for us.

Honestly though, Your site does not cater to the smaller/middle class industry, your site caters to the major gold sites/powers and the high tier-buyers aswell.


Nothing Wrong with that, but with ur fee + $1 or w/e it is, You have to admit the majority of the lower/middle class wont use your site.


You may perhaps consider doing a promotion or something where new users to PA get 1 fee free transaction etc.


I can bet if you do a survey on how much people who use PA make a year, I'm betting you their upper middle class/major gold powers/People who live pay check to pay check and dont care.


Feel free to disagree I'd like to hear ur points.

This is one thing I have started to hear more frequently with the increase in popularity for LoL markets and it is on our agenda to improve with product development this year.

I plan on starting a small "ambassador group" with users who are actively engaged in gaming secondary markets and who have ideas on how we can improve/add features etc.

One of the things that we experimented with last year, was changing the default listing. Currently, it is based on Feedback (which is another thing we plan on revamping, but that's another topic), however we had changed it according to price. Therefore, the sellers who had the best prices ended up on top.

This lead to 3 issues:
1) Large sellers began to complain, that with all the positive feedback that had acquired, it essentially amounted to nothing in the end (which I could argue against). This impeded their margins, because they found it difficult to compete with organic sellers (i.e. average Joe who had a ton of gold to offload from a lucky AH sale)

2) Sellers began to compete FEROCIOUSLY on price to stay at the top. A price war ensued were sellers were trying to reach the top spots by matters of a few cents. This drove the overall market value +DOWN+ (buyers. ,*loved* this), but in the end it presented some clear and present danger to the market overall as the price competitiveness ultimately lead to a diminishing value on a per unit basis for currency. Ouch:'(

Some of you may remember the price wars in RS + other markets from earlier 2014 in 2Q.

3) This lead to an ''unstable' user experience for the buyers. Instead of the solid, well established sellers getting the top representation, buyers began to see first and foremost 'low-medium' or 'organic' sellers which could match the level of service as the sellers with higher feedback (i.e. when buyers were accustomed to getting their gold in 20 mins, they suddenly purchased from the user in the top spot, which wasn't online, or delivered after 8 hours). In some markets, this lead to buyer attrition, who ultimately did not end up re-ordering. There was a loss to ecosystem which impacted not just PA, but also sellers around.

All of these issues are NOT insurmountable, they just need to be thought through well.

That being said, I would like to lend better support for the organic, low-midsized sellers as well and would love to hear thoughts on this.

 

[video]

Always a fan of the Playerauctions started threads Jake!

- Order volume: 30,000 daily transactions, $1 billion in annual sales
- Staff size: 150
- Traffic, visitors: I'm gonna go with 100k daily visitors but I wouldn't be surprised if it were more
- Did PA grow, remain stable, or decline in 2014: Grow fo sho

 

[whaatitdo]

- Order volume: 1200 daily transactions
- Staff size: 30
- Traffic, visitors: 30k per day
- Did PA grow, remain stable, or decline in 2014: Grew.

 

[DRSX]

- Order volume: 800 would be more realistic
- Staff size: 45
- Traffic, visitors: 52k per day
- Did PA grow, remain stable, or decline in 2014: Growth.

 

[PlayerAuctions]

i wonder how much money is profited with all those fee's with all those big daily orders

Take one or two estimations from people in this thread, and see if you can work out the math.

Would be interested to see what people come up with. I'd be very surprised if anyone comes close.

Always a fan of the Playerauctions started threads Jake!

- Order volume: 30,000 daily transactions, $1 billion in annual sales
- Staff size: 150
- Traffic, visitors: I'm gonna go with 100k daily visitors but I wouldn't be surprised if it were more
- Did PA grow, remain stable, or decline in 2014: Grow fo sho

zomg, I wish. If this were the case, I'd have put some additional *bling* in my profile pic (and I wouldn't have student loans) This would definitely be the goal.

On a separate topic, I'll be releasing figures early Feb on research we've done to estimate Market sizes.

 

[PlayerAuctions]

- Order volume: 800 [daily] would be more realistic

A little hint: PA did less than this in January of 2014.

 

- Order volume - 2000
- Staff size - 50
- Traffic, visitors - 20000
- Did PA grow, remain stable, or decline in 2014 - grow

I'm going with this too

 

[RSGoldstop]

This is one thing I have started to hear more frequently with the increase in popularity for LoL markets and it is on our agenda to improve with product development this year.

I plan on starting a small "ambassador group" with users who are actively engaged in gaming secondary markets and who have ideas on how we can improve/add features etc.

One of the things that we experimented with last year, was changing the default listing. Currently, it is based on Feedback (which is another thing we plan on revamping, but that's another topic), however we had changed it according to price. Therefore, the sellers who had the best prices ended up on top.

This lead to 3 issues:
1) Large sellers began to complain, that with all the positive feedback that had acquired, it essentially amounted to nothing in the end (which I could argue against). This impeded their margins, because they found it difficult to compete with organic sellers (i.e. average Joe who had a ton of gold to offload from a lucky AH sale)

2) Sellers began to compete FEROCIOUSLY on price to stay at the top. A price war ensued were sellers were trying to reach the top spots by matters of a few cents. This drove the overall market value +DOWN+ (buyers. ,*loved* this), but in the end it presented some clear and present danger to the market overall as the price competitiveness ultimately lead to a diminishing value on a per unit basis for currency. Ouch:'(

Some of you may remember the price wars in RS + other markets from earlier 2014 in 2Q.

3) This lead to an ''unstable' user experience for the buyers. Instead of the solid, well established sellers getting the top representation, buyers began to see first and foremost 'low-medium' or 'organic' sellers which could match the level of service as the sellers with higher feedback (i.e. when buyers were accustomed to getting their gold in 20 mins, they suddenly purchased from the user in the top spot, which wasn't online, or delivered after 8 hours). In some markets, this lead to buyer attrition, who ultimately did not end up re-ordering. There was a loss to ecosystem which impacted not just PA, but also sellers around.

All of these issues are NOT insurmountable, they just need to be thought through well.

That being said, I would like to lend better support for the organic, low-midsized sellers as well and would love to hear thoughts on this.

Feedback based placement makes sense, but when high rep users in RS market started to enter LoL, their feedback transferred over to the LoL market as well. This results in an unfair playing field for smaller people just starting. 10,000+ feedback in Runescape trades should not transfer over to the LoL section. If you take a quick look at the LoL market, it's flooded by 1 person that has 20k+ feedback. He takes the first 2 pages, resulting in little exposure for other sellers' listings. It's basically a monopoly for the already established sellers...

Basically it would produce healthy competition to base placement in markets based on the feedback related to that market ALONE. Don't allow 10k fb members to clog up the listings of every market with their overpriced and low quality services..

Notice one seller clogging up the majority of the first page:

Even worse on the account sections, it's just pages and pages of botted accounts that will be banned eventually (you cannot honestly tell me this results in a good buyer experience...)

 

[Picture Perfect]

- Order volume : 1400 a day
- Staff size : 28
- Traffic, visitors : 18,000
- Did PA grow, remain stable, or decline in 2014 : Grow a bit, and then remained stable near the end of 2014.