Buy.com hopes Garage Sale lures eBayers - Yahoo! News

Yahoo reports that Buy.com will power a new Facebook application that will allow users to offer products for sale on the popular social networking site, with Buy.com handling the credit card transactions for a flat 5% commission fee. Sellers receive funds either via a check from Buy.com or through PayPal. (I wonder if that will last, or if Google Payments will be considered as an option for sellers to receive funds.)

This is an idea with big potential, especially given increasing eBay and PayPal fees that can eat up profits quickly, particularly for smaller sellers.

Unlike eBay, Garage Sale does not offer auction-type bidding for products, although suggests that haggling can be done via e-mail. Right now, fixed price sales are supported.

The Buy.com Garage Sale option is among the latest results of the trend toward widget-type applications that interact with popular social networking sites to offer a variety of functionality via the networking interface. Expanding the range of sites where sellers could use the service to sell products could be a huge boost to its success. In particular, this application appears as though it would be attractive to users of MySpace, a social network with user numbers rivaling those of eBay in the US.

Looking forward to trying the Garage Sale. The flat fee model without transaction fees should be attractive to sellers, especially those with active relationships on social networking sites.

Labels: Buy.com, eBay, facebook, Garage Sale, PayPal, Phoenix.Social.Media.Club social.networks, social.media