Today we received confirmation from eBay that we won’t receive commission payments for successful bids and orders placed through our free app GarageBuy (macOS version, iOS version) anymore.
Since these commission payments paid for GarageBuy’s maintenance and improvement since 2006, we have to decide whether or not its worthwhile to continue offering GarageBuy at all – or if we can come up with a sustainable alternative business model to keep it alive.
Unfortunately, eBay’s communication on this issue was all but crystal clear, making us believe we’d simply need to change GarageBuy to use a new eBay API to keep receiving commissions. Only after several inquiries from our side, we were able to receive confirmation that we won’t receive any compensation at all by mid-September (that’s next week).
We know that there a a lot of collectors that spend a lot of time in GarageBuy searching and bidding on eBay listing, in turn generating a revenue for eBay itself. It seems eBay decided it is better off without that business…
If you have any idea about GarageBuys future you’d like to share with us, please let us know.
Well I hate the subscription model but it seems like you have to charge for the app to make money off of it now. You guys have a great reputation with making quality software/apps. I would start charging for the app download and/or offer upgrades like ad free experience and also add ads that you can profit off as well.
Nobody works for free and its unfortunate that they decided not to compensate you for driving traffic to them. So go the ad model and make money that way. Start charging for the app download and/or offer a subscription model for an ad free experience?
I would hate to see the app die out. I don’t personally use it a lot but wouldn’t mind seeing ads on the app knowing its helping you guys create revenue.
Thanks for the feedback. Another idea we had was to keep the current functionality in GarageBuy available for free, but add a new paid snipping feature (auto-bidding from our server) to generate some revenue.
Wondering if anybody here uses eBay snipping services?
I think sniping was really popular in the early 2010’s or so and now I’ve notice that sales end up with just 1 bidder about 95% of the time. It has to be a very unique one of a kind item to get into sniping then you start entering the realm of “well how many sniper bidders are out there for us to be profitable?”
I think the best way to drum up revenue for GarageBuy is
Free Download with Ad revenue using App Ads i.e. Adsense, etc., both ads on top and bottom. If you look at the app called OfferUP, they insert Ads inside their App as well as on their website. You could copy them in that style.
.99 cent or 1.99 download with no ads inside the app. One would need to evaluate if this 99 cents or 1.99 revenue would be sufficient as a one time payment, or make it an annual subscription of .99 or 1.99 per year of no ads. Mention that the sales are to keep the app alive and people will understand.
.99 cent or 1.99 download with a sniping feature upgrade that cost a percentage of the winning sale. Say 1% of the final sale. So a $30 win with the sniping tool would be 30 cents cost per winning snipe. Or you could just charge say a $4.99 add on charge for the sniping feature for unlimited uses.
The sniping tool, perhaps that can be a new stand alone app (at say $4.99 a download) without GarageBuy involved at all. Could be the nitch app that someone needs and wants just for sniping only because some like to use either’s the main site’s app or desktop.
Other revenue streams for iWasCoding I was thinking:
A postage printing/tracking service for packages similar to Dymo’s Endicia’s USPS PC Postage Client for Mac OS X. If you can get into the postage printing business, that would be great. Currently I pay $15.95 a month for their services. I print postage with them and helps keep track of my packages.
GaragePay, a PayPal style payment services where you get a cut of the sales. Mostly for people with their own websites.
GarageStoreBuilder, emulate what EverWeb is doing but its just to create stand alone personal websites that can grab say all your listings from various places, etc. EverWeb is really great. They charge about 99.95 a year and its worth every penny.
GarageInventory, a stand alone desktop program or app that is only for keeping track of your media. Similar to Delicious Monster’s Delicious Monster 3. I know you guys can make a better one than them. They charge about $40 per download.
Please let me know what will be the future of GarageBuy?
I am using this and willing to pay a monthly fees, perhaps maybe also expand to Android there’s alot of Android users too
So far we have no plans to take GarageBuy offline, even though we are not making any money with it. But when the next eBay API changes comes, or a iOS/macOS update causes a lot of work to remain compatible, we might think twice before investing a lot of work.
So far, we haven’t come up with a convincing idea.
First of all I was not aware that Garagebuy gets a commission from Ebay directly. If I knew that, I would have used BIN through Garagebuy, now I know. Although might be too late.
I’ll be happy to pay a subscription considering how much time (money) Garagebuy has saved me.
I use the Sniping tool on all bidding actions so I would very welcome this.
My understanding is that if you can point out the benefits of sniping to new users (and old), they would be willing to upgrade to this function. Just like me and maybe other users did not use Garagebuy for purchasing on Ebay so some commission was lost, but if I knew I would have used it to support you.
GarageBuy provides unique benefits to collectors and specialist buyers that can’t be obtained any other way - and this represents tangible economic value to us who use the app. For example, it’s the only way that i can easily target searches at different global ebay websites.
My suggestion: Offer a range of subscription options (monthly and yearly) and set the amount to match the app’s cost model. To me that suggests an annual subscription in the range of $20 to $50 USD - and it would still be worth it to obtain GB’s unique features.
For a benchmark in terms of subscription amount, have a look at what people pay to access the Washington Post, or the New York Times.
I’d love to see the continued development of GarageBuy. I think it’s a great app and use it daily to perform searches of numerous eBay categories. As far a compensation goes, I’d offer it as a free tier with perhaps ads to generate revenue and limited searches, then have a premium subscription for unlimited access. I’d gladly pay $20-$40 a year for the service.
I only used the app to browse, but I soon realized if I watched something it wouldn’t show up on my eBay watchlist, so I stopped. Maybe now would be a good time to add that integration, since you get no $ from sales within the app. Casual but regular buyers like myself might pay $1-$2 for an app supported with ads if you match or beat eBay search features as GB seems to load faster.
