Dawdle Blog

Dawdle.com 2008 Year In Review Navel-Gazing Blog Post

Inspired by our Chicago neighbors, I thought it would be fun to do a Year In Review post to go over all the things we've done and the progress we've made at Dawdle.com this year.  We've done a ton of things this past year, and made a lot of changes.  The changes seem to be for the better - sales, users, etc. are all up dramatically.  But, no, we're not going to give you raw numbers.  Sorry.  :)

The Big Change

• We essentially did a 180 on how the site works.  Prior to May, Dawdle essentially was Priceline for video games and gear.  You could name your price, but you couldn't see what prices sellers were willing to sell at.  We did it this way to solve the sniping problem on eBay.  If you can't see what other people's bids are at, you can't outbid them by just a penny at the end.  And, if you know that other people can't see your bids, you could bid whatever you really felt the item was worth to you.  We called this our Intelligent Matching Engine, as we matched buyers and sellers the same way that eHarmony matched men and women.  The idea was that people could come to Dawdle once, name their real price, and then wait for the listing to expire to see if they won or not, saving them the hassle of having to come back over and over again to up their bid by a quarter.

Did you do something to your hair?

Some new things:

• Our search is more powerful than any other site because we use screening by tags.  If you just want to see fighting games for the PS2 made by Capcom, you can!
• The homepage makes it so much easier to see what's going on - and we'll be adding some new bells and whistles, so keep a lookout.
• We're proud to announce that we have put together our nationwide network of independent sellers.  So, now more than ever, we can try to hunt down what you want.  If you're a independent retailer yourself, learn more here.

We'll be a lot more active here on the blog now that we finally got this out, so grab our feed to keep totally up to date as we roll out all sorts of new goodies!

Thanks, Mick O!

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. 

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!