Dawdle Blog

Do It Now

Sometimes, waiting can suck.  Lines at Six Flags, being on hold trying to make a reservation, waiting at the DMV.  And, yes, waiting for Dawdle to find a match for your bid or listing.  So we listened.  We're happy to announce that we've added Get It Now and Sell It Now functionality to Dawdle. 

You can Get It Now by choosing your criteria for the item you want and clicking the button.  The price will change dynamically based on what your screening criteria are, so you never have to worry about what you're getting.  In addition, shipping and handling is already included in the Get It Now price, so there are no surprises.  You can just click it and get it.

For Sell It Now, we make it easier to sell your items than any other site.  If a seller has already put in a bid for an item he wants, you can make him happy and sell your item instantaneously.  No waiting, period.  Just select the criteria for the item you have to see the Sell It Now price.  When you click the button, just make sure to re-confirm the condition and Comes With for the item you're selling.  We've already stripped out the shipping and handling costs, so the Sell It Now price you see is the price you'll get.  (We do take our commission - adding that calculation is something we're looking at doing, but it kills our ability to cache the site, if you're technically inclined and care about such things.)

We should mention that we've split up Condition into Condition and Comes With.  Condition now is similar to what you'll see on other sites - New, Like New, Excellent, Good, and Fair.  Comes With denotes what the item comes with.  You'll see the familiar Complete, Game And Manual, Game And Box, and Game Only that you've always seen.  We've added a new term, Plug 'N Play, which means all the necessary items to plug in the system or accessory and get playing.  We've added a System Only and Accessory Only type, so you can now sell "naked" boxes and accessories on Dawdle.  As always, you can always find more information by clicking on the appropriate heading under Select Your Criteria.

Sometimes we wish IE had won

We're aware that a number of our lightboxes do not work in Safari 3; they used to work in Safari 2, but perhaps Apple broke something. 

We're looking into it, but for now, please bear with us and use Firefox or Flock if you're on a Mac.  (BTW, the staff at Dawdle all have MacBooks, so we're as upset as you are.)

Some Cosmetic Changes

We've made some changes to terms that we use on the site to make it a little easier to use - we've changed "Most Popular Bids" to "Most Wanted" and "Most Popular Listings" to "Items Listed More Often" under our What's Going On sections.  We've left the URLs alone, so your bookmarks still work, but we think these are a bit more self-explanatory.  We've also changed some of the terms in MyDawdle to make them a little easier, so now the Want List matches the terms on the Product Pages. 

Because we have a number of sellers with hundreds of items, we've maintained separate pages for listings that have been sold but not paid - "Stuff I've Sold" - and listings that have been paid - "Paid Listings".  Stuff I've Sold has all of the sold items that you may need to mark as shipped or enter Delivery Confirmation numbers for; Paid Listings are completed transactions for review and reporting purposes.

Image from EventHubs.com. 

Too good not to share

http://lolinator.com/lol/www.dawdle.com/

Yay Hooray

So, you may have noticed something.  The New Year hit and we didn't activate our 50 cent listing fees.  Well, we noticed something interesting - people weren't making a bunch of fake listings even though they were free.  We never planned on trying to make money on listing fees - we credit them back when your item sells - we just wanted to make sure that people weren't listing things that they didn't have. 

But throughout November and December, people were really good about this.  People weren't listing stuff they didn't have.  No buyers complained that they didn't get what they paid for.  Turns out we worried for nothing.

So, if we weren't trying to make money on listing fees, and they're a pain in the butt for everyone anyway, why have them? 

So we don't.   Enjoy!

Belated Congrats

Posted while watching the Giants/Pats game...

A belated congrats to Eric G. of New York, NY for winning our Wii contest!  His odds were not good - many others had many more listings, but in the end, random() chose Eric. 

Thanks to everyone for their listings - keep them coming; we'll be doing surprise drawings for all sorts of stuff throughout 2008.  You never know when you may get an unexpected Priority Mail delivery from 60661.  And there are many more cool developments coming; keep your eyes peeled.

And Happy New Year!

Because outdoor lines and screaming children suck

OK, we've got a Wii.  And we're giving it away - FREE - to one of our members.  All you have to do is list stuff for sale on Dawdle.  Every time you list something, BAM, you're entered to win the Wii.  List ten things, BOOM, ten entries.  There's no form, no coupon code, nothing.  It's automagic.  The giveaway entries end at 11:59pm CT on December 14.  You can learn more here or you can just start Dawdling!

And, yes, we have them for sale for those of you too anxious to wait until we draw on the 15th.  You'll note that our selling prices have tended to be lower than some of those other sites - so get your bids up now, before more people flood Dawdle with their bids.

"Right on! Now, what the hell is Dawdle?"

So, perhaps you saw this image on the Child's Play website, decided to click it, and were magically whisked away to Dawdle. Then maybe you were thinking "what is this Dawdle thing?" and decided to click on the Blog link.  Welcome.  Sit down, have a drink, and be merry.

First, Dawdle is proud to be a corporate sponsor for Child's Play.  We're a site by gamers, for gamers, and in this Holiday season, we wanted to support the gamers' charity.

As to what we do and how we're different: Dawdle is a totally new way for gamers to buy and sell video games, systems, and accessories with each other. We're not an auction site, a trading site, or a classifieds site.  On Dawdle, we use what we call our Intelligent Matching Engine to put together buyers and sellers. 

What this means is that you can tell us what you want to buy before someone has listed it for sale.  Because we match buyers and sellers, if we know what you want and what you're willing to pay, we can match you up with a seller who comes to Dawdle three days later.  Instead of bidding on an auction that ends in a week, you're bidding on every single listing for sale for that week (or month or whatever you choose). 

Basically, buyers come and tell us what they want and their best price and sellers come and tell us what they have and their minimum selling price.  Dawdle does all the rest, and if there's a match to be made,  we put the buyer and the seller together, charge the buyer's credit card (then and only then), and both sides get an e-mail saying the item's been sold. 

It's a really simple way for people to buy and sell stuff without having to jump through a bunch of hoops - or having to walk into one of those terrible, terrible stores (Who Must Not Be Named).

You can read why we started Dawdle here, and feel free to comment here or drop us a line.  We'd love to hear from you.

The first step on Dawdle

So you want a DS Lite.  It's really easy to place a bid on Dawdle to let us know exactly what you want.

First, find what you want in our database.  You can use the search bar or you can browse through our platforms.

Then, just go through our simple 1, 2, 3 process:
1. Select Your Criteria
2. Review Price History
3. Submit Your Price

We'll keep looking for what you want for as long as you told us to (what you picked under Ending). 

On Dawdle, you can tell us you want something even if there aren't any listings just yet by placing what we call an Open Bid.  Unlike any other site, you don't have to come back to Dawdle over and over again to see if someone's listed what you want.  When you place an Open Bid, we do all of those revisits for you by continuously looking for listings that match. 

Just tell us what you want up front and we'll keep looking to find you a find (sorry) and make you a match.  When we catch you a catch (sorry again), we'll charge your credit card automatically and send you an e-mail to let you know that it's on the way!

Welcome to Dawdle!

Thanks for coming to Dawdle.  We've been busy little chipmunks to get up and running, and we're proud to have built the best marketplace for people to buy and sell their video games, game systems, and accessories online.

We wanted to highlight a few things we're particularly proud of:

• Search.  We've done a lot of work to make searching for your item as easy as possible and to get results to be as good as possible.  We've put some example searches underneath every search bar, so you can get a feel for what kind of searches work best.  Of course, you can still browse around if you want a more leisurely experience, but we make it easy to get in, do your thing, and get out.
• Our Product Pages.  This is where the magic happens - you can use our easy 1, 2, 3 step process to submit a bid.  Your bid is good on every single listing between when you place your bid and when it expires.  You don't have to come back over and over again to see if someone has it for sale.  Plus, it's easy to list an item to sell from here - just click on the big green button on the upper right of every Product Page.
• Our matching process.  When you tell us what you want (or have), we don't just search for exact matches.  We search for exact matches or better.  Better meaning better condition, higher seller rating, or a higher bid (if you're a seller).  And when we make a match between a bid and a seller's listing, we complete the transaction automatically.  This way, sellers get paid faster, so buyers get their stuff faster.  Our matching process means you'll never get sniped and you'll never have any unexpected shipping charges.
• MyDawdle. The Summary page includes a feed of all of your activity in reverse chronological order, just like an RSS or Facebook feed. You can easily jump around and see all of your activity and edit or remove your bids or listings at any time.
• Security.  We work hard to protect your info.  We've gone the extra mile for VeriSign's Extended Validation SSL certificate.  If you have IE 7 or the Firefox extension installed, your address bar will turn green on every secure page to show that you're on our servers.  We also use Yahoo! DomainKeys to sign our notification e-mails, so you know that e-mails that look like they're from us actually are from us.  (We're also particularly proud of the fact that our automated HTML e-mails render pretty nicely on BlackBerries.)  We're also a TRUSTe licensee, so you know that our Privacy Policy is up to snuff.

We've tried hard to make it simple to list items for sale and to bid on listings, so take a look around and let us know what you think.  We'll be on all the major forums, such as CAG and NeoGAF (that way you know we're not censoring anything) and we'll be pretty active on the blog.

Again, welcome, and Happy Dawdling!

Cheers,
The Dawdle Team

Welcome to the Dawdle Blog!

Thanks for visiting our blog.  This is our home base to speak with members of the Dawdle community.  We're really excited about what we're building, and we hope that you're as excited to help us make it as great an experience for everyone as possible.  We'll be peeling the covers back over the next few weeks, so keep checking back to see what we've got up our sleeves.