ChaseTheChuckwagon.com Acquires GameGavel.com
I have the privilege of informing everyone that despite GameGavel.com's closing; it is not going away completely. Hours after announcing the closing of GameGavel.com Mike Kennedy, owner of ChaseTheChuckwagon.com, contacted me about the acquisition of GameGavel.com by ChaseTheChuckwagon.com to broaden the appeal of his site. A fellow video game auction site, but structured slightly different than GameGavel.com, ChaseTheChuckwagon.com offers a great alternative to eBay for Video Game Auctions. Here are a few words from Mike:
As Jasen has made you all aware, GameGavel.com, the website is being shut down. I am the owner of a competing gaming auction site, ChaseTheChuckwagon.com. Some of you may have heard of it, some may have not but Jasen and I wanted to alert you all as soon as possible that ChaseTheChuckwagon.com will assume the domain name GameGavel.com and will soon be redirecting it to ChaseTheChuckwagon.com. It is my intention to keep the GameGavel.com name and market it in conjunction with ChaseTheChuckwagon. I have been told by a few of my members having a name that is more universal, (unlike my Atari game named ChaseTheChuckwagon.com) may be something I need to really continue to grow my auction site and brand among a more diverse crowd.
That being said I will continue to use both names together to bring people to our video gaming community. To bring some of you up to speed on ChaseTheChuckwagon.com, we launched in March 2008 and have now grown to over 2,200 members, we've hosted over 100,000 auctions and sold over $80,000 in merchandise. Like GameGavel.com we have no listing fees but do have some minimal selling/final value fees and listing enhancement fees
Comments
Are you considering switching CTCW over to GameGavel as the title of the site? GG seems more like a site name that will continue to grow and reach new audiences more so than CTCW. Plus I always really like Jasen saying of "let the gavel fall" for some reason.
~~NGD
Congrats on the merge, this will probably be bringing you a lot more publicity!
I don't know if it will or not but you can get I will be pulling for more pub. It's kind of a buyout among mice, though LOL.
I am going to be keeping both names. CTCW is dear to my heart and also the name of my company, GG is a more universal name. I will be saying something like - Two names, one online community for buying and selling classic and modern video games. -- something like that.
We both have built up considerable web links the past year+ so removing one name for the other, would not make sense. The good thing now is that the many pages of GG links, threads, etc will now all point to the Chucwagon/GG site. A very good thing.
Give a listen to my impromptu auction talk for more info
http://www.chasingthechuckwagon.com/AuctionTalk.mp3
To be honest, your best bet is to eventually migrate everything to your Vendazzle moniker and ditch the confining game domains. Although I'm sure you've already got this as part of your business plan. So long as your search engine is as easy to use and customized for VG as it currently is, you'll be fine and nobody will suffer from lack of functionality. Just have the old links redirect to the appropriate game-oriented part of Vendazzle.
What are everyone's thoughts on this? Keep a video game dedicated niche site or combine it altogether? I am very split on this idea. Thoughts ? Vend is starting to take off due to a pretty aggressive Twitter campaign I am doing
That is my thought as well. I have merged the two listings pages and still think people will start to spill over between the two sites easily enough once they realize they can do it. It's amazing how many times I need to remind people that Vendazzle is avaialble for them to use as well.
Vend is really starting to take off. Searches have quadrupled since last week. Up to over 1200 a day now. Google Base now has a few thousand of our listings in there and it's starting to bring people to the site. What is Google Base? Goto Google.com and type this in for example: aerosmith concert belt buckle and see what comes up. Imagine all our auctions doing this. Seriously, get some nonvideo gaming things going on Vendazzle and let's see what happens
The accounts should be able to interact on both sites but there should be two separate layout (identity) themes used to display the data depending on which domain is being used in the url. If that's how it is now, then I would say it's perfect as is.
People with interest in auctions in general can go to vendazzle, and game people can go to chuckwagon but they'll all essentially be looking at the same thing regardless of what they do... the gaming community will just be a little bit of a stronger area in the larger auction site, perhaps.
http://www.chasethechuckwagon.com/item.cgi?show_item=104356
I would prefer not to have "other" stuff mixed in.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that. When you search for Nintendo on eBay I agree it's a pain since you get all sorts of unlocked iphone crap where people keyword spam...but I don't see this happening with Vendazzle. And generally those are mislisted specifically to get hits from niche markets, there's nothing stopping people from attempting to abuse Mike's sites thusly.
I'm not sure what the resistance is to this...is it a "feeling" you have about having an exclusive website to buy and sell games? Really, if that's what you want, and what you're searching for, you won't see like fishing lures and cars and crap, even though they're neighbors in the same site.
But what happens when you'd like to sell those things? Or buy them? Even dedicated game collectors will log onto eBay to buy other stuff from time to time. Why work to build a rep at two places, keep two accounts, and soforth.
I would prefer not to have "other" stuff mixed in.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that. When you search for Nintendo on eBay I agree it's a pain since you get all sorts of unlocked iphone crap where people keyword spam...but I don't see this happening with Vendazzle. And generally those are mislisted specifically to get hits from niche markets, there's nothing stopping people from attempting to abuse Mike's sites thusly.
I'm not sure what the resistance is to this...is it a "feeling" you have about having an exclusive website to buy and sell games? Really, if that's what you want, and what you're searching for, you won't see like fishing lures and cars and crap, even though they're neighbors in the same site.
But what happens when you'd like to sell those things? Or buy them? Even dedicated game collectors will log onto eBay to buy other stuff from time to time. Why work to build a rep at two places, keep two accounts, and soforth.
I see your point for sure. It is a pita when you need to sell other stuff. Heck it is a pita using both ebay and CTCW. CTCW is small enough I can cruise EVERY closing listing (right now) and I like that. So long as the options are still in place to exclude non video game auctions from a search I am all for it
~~NGD
You guys all have good points. One of the reasons for not merging Vend and Chuck together for now, is that (well, up until a few days ago) there weren't hardly any listing on Vendazzle.com. And that shows that there is no activity so may not be a big draw of people.
Having a niche site that is focused on one thing makes it much easier to market and target new members. Who do I focus my energy on with Vendazzle? So broad? Now not to say that it won't happen in the future. I have thought ahead when I launched Vendazzle.com and started my category #'s way after all the category #'s from the Chuckwagon so it could all be merged without to much of a problem. This is a change that could be made very quickly if and when I decide to do it. One good thing about merging the two is that it would cost me much less as I am paying for both sites, hosting and licensing. It would cut my expenses in half to bring them together.
I really need for Vendazzle.com to lite a spark and start gaining steam. Now this week, it really is starting to take off and I have some good new members there starting to list like crazy.
Believe me as you can tell, I am torn on this depending on who says what and what day of the week it is
Here is the question. Can all my 2,200+ members of the Chuckwagon, if I merge the two, come together and start listing stuff in lots of the other nongaming categories and grow the site as a whole? If not, then it's not quite time to do this. If I thought 2,200 people could start populating the site as a whole I would do it, but not quite there . . . yet.
The worst thing to do is take a site like the Chuckwagon that appears to be filling up and has tons of activity and then merge with Vendazzle.com and then give an impressions that the site is stagnant with unpopulated listings, etc.
The time will come, I believe that and maybe within the next year but not quite yet. I need to get my Search improved and a few other things need to fall into place before it happens.
In the meantime, start listing stuff on Vendazzle.com. Your feed back transfers back and forth, your Chuck registration gets you in there, so really no reason to not use them both for now. Give it a try
Looks like my $50 was well spent.
I 2nd that.
I think that big things are coming regardless of what format is decided on for the 2 (well, 3 now) sites. Chuckwagon is growing continually and SoCal Mike does a great job advertising with special deals and all. I actually had the pleasure of chatting with Mike last night and he's definitely a solid dude. Got a phone call for a simple problem I was having with an invoice.. how's that for customer service! eBay certainly doesn't do that. I'm moving a large chunk of my business to Chuckwagon for that reason alone. In any case, congrats to Mike on the latest acquisition! I'm excited to see what's next.
I am glad to hear there is something besides eBay. I may start to use auctions now. I can't stand eBay LOL.
This really seems to be a great alt. to the giant site. Especially for someone like me who avoids it like the plague.....