Monkey on Wordpress

Missed this mention right here. Now to think of something more worthwhile to write about. Blogger’s Block ain’t cool.

Had no idea it would be this soon, but it’s here.

Minor site updates:

• Cleaned up the sidebar, I have way too many tags, makes the site look ugly.
• New banner - it’s either cool or very lame, not sure which.
• Updated the About Me page. Nothing fancy, but it’s something.
• I very smartly didn’t include any link to digg the semi-review of edgeio marketplaces. You can do that here.

I received a great comment and just had to reply to it in a post. Here’s the comment in question, quoted below in full.

I understand that Edgeio has a cool solution with this Marketplaces application, but what problem are they solving? I’ve never heard anyone complain that Craigslist doesn’t do X very well, or it does too much of Y which nobody likes, Craigslist is an elegant, free solution to many of the things that it seems Edgeio is out to solve. Maybe since I haven’t used it yet I’m not able to see the big picture, but I’d like to hear about the specific problems with Craigslist that Edgeio now feels they need to address and “fix”.

Mike, that’s a great point, but I don’t agree with what you’re saying. First and foremost, let’s look at search engines - Yahoo! launched in March, 1998 while Google came out in September 1998. I suppose when Yahoo! was first unleashed, people may have been more than satisfied with this site that offers them the ability to find what they want, but something happened: competition. Let’s get to the bottom line, just because something is out first doesn’t make it the best. Yes, it functions, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved upon. Just as you’ve stated, you haven’t used the marketplace tool, therefore you can’t see the need for such a product. There are quite a few reasons for edgeio to exist. Here’s my reasoning at least.

First Impression

It may seem superficial, but looks are everything when it comes to the Internet. This wasn’t always the case. Before you could have an ugly site that functioned and it was okay. It wouldn’t matter what your site looked like, but if it did what we needed it would be successful. Things are different now because there are a many sites that do the same thing - what is going to make your site stand out? Aesthetics. Today’s web users are fickle and decide if they’re staying with a site in no time at all. Obviously there are other factors such as brand loyalty to look at - if you’ve been used to craigslist all the time you may not want to deviate what you’re accustomed to. What needs to be taken into consideration is the new breed, the users with no loyalty yet, who now have to decide. So you, the reader, decide, as a new Internet user, what seems more appealing?

Features and Reach

Just as you’re notbig on edgeio, i’m not that big of a user of craigslist, meaning I don’t use it at all. Why I think edgeio has the edge here so to speak, is because of features such as tagging, the geographical refining “slide” tool on the site and RSS feeds. The main reason that edgeio can more than make it in this market is that it is not only a place to put your listings, but an aggregator as well. Search results bring up ebay and amazon listings in addition to the ability to add a listing directly into the site. Another innovative feature is making a post on your own blog and tagging it accordingly so it will end up on the site. All of this is part of the reach, which goes into what we’re really focusing on...

Marketplaces

What is the big draw of marketplaces? From what I’ve gathered, marketplaces will be more than one tool, this listing feature is simply one of these tools. Recently there’s been an upsurge in the “board” and “listing” markets. It’s safe to say that this may have started with the 37 signals job board, but the real rabid popularity started with the advent of Michael Arrington’s crunchboard. The success of this made people realize how easy it could be to make revenue or offer a service with this formula. Fast forward today and you have various job board services, such as Krop, Job Thread and Job-a-matic. This just shows that there is a want and need for boards to look for jobs. With these tools, people generate revenue through job search in the same way they would with Google’s Adsense.

Now with edgeio, you can do this and a whole lot more. Create your own listing service for your demographic. You run a blog about the housing market? Create a board for people to post houses for sale or rent. You do reviews of electronics? Make a board for people to post any electronics they have for sale or want to buy. Run a site all about prestigious blogs? Then why not make a board for people to post jobs for bloggers? It’s all about the niche right now. People may still be intimidated by these large sites, be it craigslist or edgeio or anything in between. But with people able to make these micro sites, we have the ability for people to get more users of these services without them knowing since everything posted on a marketplace powered board will be listed by edgeio.com

I personally could care less about using a large site, I like the idea of doing my own site. I also like the idea that anything posted on my site will also be listed on edgio.com and those that will use the larger site can also find my stuff. It’s all about reach. If there’s anything else, I’d like to invite anyone else to give their thoughts on this.

This was unexpected but very much welcomed - I made it on to techmeme for my “review” for edgeio’s marketplace beta. Sure, it wasn’t fair to call it a review, but this is an interesting product and I’d love to at least attempt to give some constructive criticism of the product.

Here’s a quick look at some of the coverage:

Keith Teae’s blog

Edgeio Blog

Snipperoo Blog 

And of course, TechMeme, which I’m very excited about. More on the product as I get time to play with it and understand it better. Also, the first listing on my board was placed, and feel free to post something there. A lot of time was invested to learn the basics and I intend to invest some more. To the new Feed Subscribers, welcome!

Edgeio was launched last year and was hyped as being the craigslist killer. While it’s uncertain if this new company can uproot the foothold that craigslist has managed to maintain right now in the online classifieds arena, over time we may see a significant shift in where people place their classified ads on-line thanks to edgeio’s marketplace tool.

This free service allows anyone to create a listing board for whatever they want, is fully hosted by edgeio and offered with a risk-free offer. Make your board free for people to use and pay nothing, have it incur a fee and pay only 20% of what you make, while edgeio provides the infrastructure, the web-space and bandwidth.

I was invited to join the edgeio marketplaces and decided to make my own board, all the cool kids are doing it, and I just want to be cool like GigaOM and Techcrunch.

Getting Started

First thing I did was use the “secret URL” and was greeted with a box that I had to enter the user-name and password provided in the email telling me I could use the service. Fair enough. This is the page I was brought to.

So, let’s get to filling this thing out.

Here’s a close-up of all the areas on the first page:

This is where you would put in the Name and Description of your board. This will vary based on what your board is about. Reading the FAQ, this is what people will see when looking for an actual board to post information on, but not on the board itself.

Here is where you enter the URL that you want your board to be identified with. This cannot be changed and this is only because the board is hosted by edgeio.

Below that we can see where you put the URL of your website. The reason for this is at the top it will say who the board is for. This cannot be left out but if you have no website, simply put in the URL from above, ending in .edgeio.net

The last thing in the above image is where you choose exactly what type of board you want to do. Choosing different options changes the fields that people use to enter information when posting an item, so choosing cars and vehicles will give you fields such as make and mileage of the vehicle, while housing would obviously omit fields such as mileage - not sure what the case would be with motor-homes though! :p

This is where you will choose the language for your board. I only speak English, guess what I chose? Below you can add more categories for people to choose to post in when putting something on your board, helping organize things better. So, if you are choosing to do a board for jobs, you can refine it by putting Administrative,Teaching, etc.

This is where you will choose if you want to allow other people to submit to your job board. My understanding is that this will work the same way you are creating this board with edgeio. People will make their own board, but it will be submitted to your own board. If you’re doing a paid board, this would be a good way to make money through affiliation. Below that you can see where you can post to other job boards, such as crunchboard, etc. Since this is a free board I am doing, I am opting to make it closed. Agree to the terms of service and continue to the second page.

Here is the second page in its entirety.

And now a look at the different areas:

The first thing are these two upload options. The first is a logo that will be used on the actual board. The second option, is, by my understanding of the FAQ, what people will see when looking for a board to post/at affiliate sites.

This is where you can opt to customize your board with CSS. With this, you can make your board look like anything you want, really, or to blend in and look as though it is part of your site. I’m not a coder, so I’ll leave this as is.

This is where you can preview the changes you may have made on the site, very handy. Now, onto the third page.

Here is that third page in its entirety.

And now for a closer look:

The third page is all about editing and placing a widget on your site.

Here as you can see, you have the option to choose how many listings you want with the widget. You can edit how big it will be, so you can fit it snugly into the sidebar of your blog if you wish, adjusting the width and height to your desire.

You also have the ability to change the colours of the links, text and border, all helping the widget to blend into whatever page you aim to place it in. As I’ve said before, I don’t do any sort of coding, and I like blue, so I’m leaving it as it is.

Here you can edit the colour of the background, or even place an image as the background. Your imagination is the limit here.

But how will your masterpiece look? Have no fear, you can preview the widget you’re making to the right of where you edit the information. You can also save changes, and revert to older changes if you’ve made errors.

Below you can see the code to place said widget into your blog with simple copy and paste.

When you’re done, go on to the next page.

Wait, that’s it? We’re done? Well, sort of. Here’s what you’re met with, the final product in terms of the backend.

So, want to see what it is you’re shown? Sure you do! Here we go.

The first thing you will see are all the active listings on your board, you know, stuff actually on there.

Pending listings are listings which have yet to be approved or denied. When doing a free listing, you can make it so that anything is posted on the site, or you have to manually accept it into the system. I like this. Below that are rejected and expired listings. Listings can stay on for a maximum of 30 days but you can edit if you want the maximum for your site to be a week etc. Users can simply post their items again if they want after the 30 days.

Right next to all the info for the current month you will see information for the previous month, good for comparative purposes.

Below you’ll see some financial information. I’m doing a free board so this will always be zero for me, but if you were charging, you would see all the information you would want to know, how much you’re making per post and how much edgeio makes per post. Edgeio works on an 80%-20% split, not too shabby - the 80% goes to you.

Next to this we’ll find information such as the board’s URL and the URL for posting new items.

Similar to the financial information above, this gives you more information for the month.

And again we have information for the previous month. Below all of this is where we would see all the other boards you have.

The Final Product

So we’ve successfully made the board and now we want to get it moving, what do we do now? Good question. You can see the final product right here. Sadly, by default it’s not much to look at. Take a look. I’m hoping for templates to be available for those who can’t code anything.

Besides that, what about actually getting content onto the site? Well, this is where I’m thinking I have a bit to learn. There’s a link to the top right hand corner of the site telling you to post an item.

When pressed, we’re met with this:

Here’s the problem, nobody who has tried the board knows what is supposed to do here. So I’m calling on you, the readers to help test this out. I’ve made this board where you can post jobs, houses, cars, personals, and an option to post anything you are looking for. So go on, use it. Help test this thing out. If you can’t post, try creating an edgeio account and then posting to the board, leave a little note in the comments if you have anything to say in terms of use-ability.

In case you can’t find it, use THIS LINK to post an image, and here is the LINK TO THE BOARD.

Suggestions

I did this whole thing to basically understand edgeio marketplaces as well as to give insight to anyone who may be interested in the product. So far, it is shaping up to be an excellent tool to provide a free/cheap tool for people to offer listing services to their readers. With that said, it is not without its issues which I am sure can be fixed. It’ll be interesting to learn how to properly utilize this product, and if you know of anywhere using this product effectively, feel free to point it out to me in the comments. Below are a few suggestions/problems I saw and encountered, and I realize some stuff may just be my own ignorance.

• It’s not abundantly clear that an edgeio account is needed to create a listing board
• It’s not clear how to post items on the listing board
• Not clear where to go after you’ve created your listing board
• No templates for dull looking final product - problem for those who can’t code
• I wasn’t able to change my password
• No way to have “moderators” for the board - I’d like to give someone access to edit the CSS for me with their own account, or give people access to accept or deny listings for me.

I’ll updating this with any comments I can get from readers, and I’ll be updating once I can find fixes to any things mentioned.