Chicken or the Egg?

[cc976a]

Well we all know it's the egg that came first.......

......but a more puzzling question is if you are building a business, connecting various buyers with various sellers - who do you target first for attraction to the site on launch?

My first instinct is with the sellers. Market to the sellers so when the buyers arrive, they have stuff to buy.....but will sellers be interested in joining without buyers on tap.

Anyone else faced, and been through this dilema - anything to share, or lessons learned from the experience?

 

[Aegean]

So you open a shop on the high street. Do you put things in the shop for people to buy, which costs you money, or do you wait for buyers to come in looking for goods.

No goods = no business, so it's option A.

 

[bensd]

Maybe you could have an initial incentive for sellers to sign up

 

[cc976a]

So you open a shop on the high street. Do you put things in the shop for people to buy, which costs you money, or do you wait for buyers to come in looking for goods.

No goods = no business, so it's option A.

You're right, no products no one wants to look - but I was curious as to whether with the Internet age the trend was to develop a site hooking visitors in (freebie / offer / etc...) to build a marketing list which would create a hook for the sellers....

 

[cc976a]

Maybe you could have an initial incentive for sellers to sign up

This was an option I was looking at - free 'listing' for first xxx sellers etc.... or more prominent listing etc...