June 3, 2008:
Hi.... If you're in this discussion area, you probably have already tried or looked at iOffer.com. I signed up a short time ago to try it out, and have a look around, because I'm tired of eBay b.s. iOffer.com has a lot of potential as a selling site. They have many unique features, and a great concept in that you're allowed to communicate with other members in the iOffer "community" through clubs (message board), comments on a member's profile, "events," and on the item for sale page where you negotiate with the seller or buyer. There is no auction available, however. Sellers place a fixed price on their items, accept offers, or swap with another member. You can add your feedback score from eBay to your iOffer feedback by using their "Mr. Grabber" tool.

At this time, they offer free listings, a free store, and only charge you a fee for the final value of the transaction (including shipping which kind of stinks, but this keeps them from getting ripped off on puffed up shipping fees). The site's been around since about 2002. It's based in San Francisco, California. California has it registered as a corporation-- iOffer, Inc., with the CEO's name being Ryan Boyce (29). If you Google that name, and iOffer, you come up with a few articles, and his personal website.

If you remember a site called eWanted, one of the guys who had that site was Steven Nerayoff (61?). That is one of the founders of iOffer.

iOffer Customer Service is painfully slow to non-responsive at the moment. When they do respond, they can be very terse almost to the point of rudeness. They're secretive on the site about how they operate and who runs the place-- There are no phone numbers listed on the site to contact the company, and every time someone mentions the CEO on the site, the name is blanked out by iOffer. That made me cautious about entering my personal information when I first visited the site. But so far, everything is fine, and I've talked with members who have been there a long time without problems.

The site is pretty glitchy at times, with photos not loading when you list, or your icon disappearing. It's tough to navigate or understand when you first start out-- due to poor instructions. They need a better help page with clear information on the site's features. If you get stuck, go to the community clubs and ask other members for help. They are upgrading their equipment to handle the huge increase of traffic coming off of fleeing eBay sellers. So this should speed some things on the site up soon.

There is not much information about the buyer base-- but sales seem to be much slower there than eBay. That's to be expected at most other sites too, because eBay has a huge flow of regular traffic by comparison. You need to promote your store, and the site hard in your other websites such as Myspace, Facebook, etc. and use tools such as Google Base to add your items to the Google Shopping search page. This does draw in more traffic on your items. iOffer.com has a lot of work to do if they expect to touch eBay. But, the site has a lot of potential if it can grow up from toy to professional tool. You have nothing to lose by listing a few items on there to try it. Just be patient, because it is a bit frustrating at times.

edit: I wanted to mention briefly that they do need to do a better job eliminating the sellers of alleged illicit materials on their site before big sellers will attach their reputations to the website-- namely prescription drugs, drug paraphernalia, some pornographic items described in other posts in this forum, and obviously counterfeit goods. These idiots are a problem on any site, and get out of control if they don't aggressively go after them. If you will look around, though, you will find many good people on the site-- just like you and me-- selling our stuff.

I saw this posted on another forum as a physical address for them:

1233 Howard St. Suite 714 San Francisco , CA

and the mailing address:

ioffer, inc, P.O. Box 78191, San Francisco, CA 94107

online contact info:

http://www.ioffer.com/info/contact_us

Last known phone numbers from various sources:
Primary Phone: (415) 957-9604
Primary Fax: (415) 431-3355

If you know anything else about this company, or have an opinion, this is the place to post it!!!

Nice, informative review. Thank you for taking the time!

my pleasure to pass along some info if it helps anyone out at all. Have a look at these great charts you can find online to show U.S. traffic on websites -- from quantcast.com I'm not sure how accurate they are, but it gives you a glimpse at how the other sites compare. This is what I mean about the huge difference in traffic you get at these sites when compared to eBay. You can see that, for whatever reason, iOffer does pretty well on traffic recently-- not only in number of listings as presented on the PSU site. It's funny to see the spike in the charts in relation to eBay events.





I apologize if I have any of these figures wrong... just going through fast to give you an idea (source= quantcast.com):

rank, website, estimated U.S. monthly unique visits
8. Ebay 48+ million
10. Amazon 44+ million
19. Craigslist 29+ million
1145. ebay.co.uk 1.7+ million
1222. amazon.co.uk 1.6+ million
2249. iOffer.com 1+ million
3635. ecrater.com 680,260
17629. blujay.com 122,863
36024. onlineauction.com 55,068

Of course, as you know, Amazon and Craigslist are very different. Craigslist is local, so it's hard to say just how much local traffic you get for your items. But I have always done very well with Craigslist in my densely-populated area, receiving sometimes hundreds of hits on a listing. It depends on where you live. iOffer's position on the charts is an eye-opener, taken with the information given in the Auction Site Count which puts it in second place for number of listings. The information is very general, and does not tell you whether this is the target market for the items you sell. But, it sure does tell you iOffer is gaining some steam. If you'll go through some of the charts on that site, you also see that onlineauction.com-- while not getting the same kind of numbers, does have interesting % increases. That may be one to watch closely too.

Peter88 thanks for the charts. I went to quantcast and plugged in the sites I want to watch for my target market. The graphic comparison is easy for me to understand.

I'm glad the info was useful for you! If anyone has any experience with iOffer, or has anything to add, I'd like to read what you have to say-- good or bad.

They just added free pictures today too-- where they used to charge 5 cents extra for each additional photo. That's now free. They've also added the ability to add a subcategory when you edit your item. That was in response to improvement suggestions from members. There is an area where you can submit your ideas for improving the site.

I had the chance to participate in an "event" at the iOffer site. This is an area of the site where you chat live with a roomful of people invited by the event organizer or people who drop in from the iOffer community page. During these events, members can list items that appear in a photo slider above the chat area. When you list items here, they also drop into your store inventory. This is one of the unique features of iOffer that encourages interaction between members. If you haven't looked at it, it's worth stopping in just to look at some of the neat ideas they've put into this website. Don't just look at the front page and give up like I did the first time I looked at it. Hey-- for free? What's to lose by putting a few items in here? I put a sample item in to try it, and have a couple dozen views on my listing.

I will give you a collection of common complaints I have seen about iOffer, just for a balanced view of this rapidly growing site.

Some find the "clubs" organization of the forums confusing and would like a more direct route to help (maybe a Help Club?).

Sellers of illicit items (drugs, knockoffs, bootlegs, kiddie porn) seem to find iOffer easy to use. A "report this item" link in each listing would be an improvement.

I have seen a few complaints against the COPS system used to police the site.

Some say the site is slow to load - I suspect this may have something to do with the size of pictures uploaded by the users, but that is just a guess.

Final Value Fees are charged on the entire transaction (including shipping) and are figured on a bracket system instead of a percentage. This can cause some to be surprised by fees greater than they had assumed.

That's about all the negatives I can remember seeing. Every site has its drawbacks.

I was recently suspended on iOffer. The reason given was that I had not received any customer feedback on my 4 orders I shipped. They stressed that I had no done anything wrong, but they would not restore my account until I had received a positive feedback, OR I sent them a delivery confirmation that I had sent the item and it was delivered.

The "guilty until proven innocent" was extremely offensive. I asked them to close my account and a few days later they did.

I agree that the clubs are a little confusing to use when you first start using iOffer. There is a club run by iOffer now also-- the iOffer Information & Business Success Club. One thing I do find good about the club idea though, is that you can start or join a club where people are interested in specific things.... and you can list your items in the club for people to see. For example, they have Betty Boop collectors clubs with 85, 39, and 33 members. For someone selling Betty Boop items, they can market directly to this group. I think that's a clever idea.

Help is usually available pretty quickly from other members in the clubs. There are clubs set up by members specifically to help with things like iOffer, Google, etc. Good luck getting help from iOffer staff right now though. You'll have a long wait.

The slow-loading problem, according to iOffer, is caused by the big increase in traffic on the site, and they claim to be working on upgrading the equipment to speed things along. I haven't noticed any really significant slowness beyond a few seconds of frustration here and there. I hope they get this fixed soon, because the increase in traffic seems to be continuing.

They need to be more clear about that final fee being applied to the entire amount which includes the shipping. That can be a surprise to people coming from the eBay culture.. like myself. It still works out to be pretty cheap.

This is from the iOffer site. You can find it through the help page:

"iOffer Fees
Effective Feb 1st 2008
Transaction Amount (with shipping) Final Value Fee (FVF)
Up to $4.99 $0.50
$5.00-$9.99 $0.75
$10.00-$24.99 $1.25
$25.00-$99.99 5% of the total transaction amount
$100.00-$1499.99 $5 + 2.5% of the transaction amount over $100
$1500.00 and over $40.00 + 1.5% of the transaction amount over $1500
Wholesale Lists, Catalogs, Product Information
We have added a category for Business & Commercial use. This category has been designed for suppliers. A minimum final value fee (FVF) of $7.50 per transaction will apply to all items sold in this category.
An additional $7.50 added per transaction
Aircrafts, Boats, Cars & Trucks FREE
Real Estate FREE
Swaps (or trades) New_28x11 $1.00 (flat fee for both swappers)

Seller Fees: We invoice on the 1st of every month only if your balance for seller fees is $2.00 or more. Your card will be charged on the 8th unless you have gone into your account and manually made the payment prior to that date. Fees are due regardless of payments from buyers having been received. Of course for errors, or Non Paying Buyers we do fully refund your seller fees. See File Non Paying Buyer"

That does seem strange, lightning. I've noticed that quite a few people don't bother leaving feedback. It's not like it's your fault. I don't know why they would suspend you if they haven't gotten any complaints. I did notice also they do things very abruptly. It seems like they don't have a great customer service department, if any. I wish I knew more about the operation.

Sorry you had a hard time with them. They really need better people skills when handling things like that. I read in the help area that you can have those restrictions lifted if you provide a tracking number to show that your items have been delivered. I guess this is a feature to prevent a new member from signing up, selling a large number of items, getting paid, and not delivering the goods. Better communications on their part would have been nice instead of making you feel like you did something wrong.

It looks like you're set up really nice over at eCrater! They're growing fast also. I like the simplicity, and clean professional look and feel over there.

Here's a recent article about iOffer on AuctionBytes, including some comments from the CEO:

http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y208/m04/abu0213/s03

iOffer.com, the 'Make Me an Offer' Ecommerce Site
By Greg Holden
April 20, 2008

Wouldn't it be nice if buyers and sellers could exchange goods online the way they do in the real world? When you see something you want in a physical store or marketplace, you don't keep an eye on it for a week and then bid furiously on it just a few minutes before a predetermined ending time occurs, do you? If sales worked that way in the brick-and-mortar world, businesspeople would find it hard to survive. Instead, you either pay right away or make an offer and then bargain with the seller until you agree on a price.

That's the kind of thought process Ryan Boyce and some friends went through in 2002 when they created the online marketplace iOffer (http://www.ioffer.com). This site, which is becoming increasingly popular, allows buyers to make offers and to negotiate with sellers without a hard-and-fast deadline.

"There was a group of us in the beginning; some were friends, and some had worked on a Web site called eWanted.com," explains Boyce. "We were in the right place at the right time. One of us was using eBay to buy a hard drive, and he set his alarm clock to get up at 2:30 am when the auction was ending. He looked tired when we all met the next day. We did some brainstorming and said, "There's got to be a better way to buy something. There are plenty of other hard drives for sale online, so there's no reason for him to be up at 2:30 a.m. to save a couple bucks. Why couldn't he just buy it the way you would in real life?""

iOffer was launched on May 1, 2002. Boyce, who started out as a network engineer, is now CEO of the San Francisco-based company. He originally helped set up the infrastructure and network for the site, and still does some programming when needed.

The site provides a dramatic contrast to eBay's auction sales formats. First, you don't have to pay anything to create a listing on iOffer. You can set a starting price if you wish. But if you don't know what something is worth, you can simply invite prospective buyers to make offers. In this case, you leave it up to the buyer to suggest a reasonable price. You can either accept that price or make a counteroffer. Offers go back and forth until a price is agreed upon.

"Although eBay was in the back of our minds, we wanted to create a better alternative," says Boyce, who is 28 years old. "We never looked at eBay so that we could copy them. I think eBay is more about the experience than the auctions. We've tried to develop live interactions. More than half of our buyers get notification with only five to ten minutes of lag time," he says.

iOffer offers many innovative services for both buyers and sellers. For example, sellers can open stores, and the site has a discussion area along with "clubs" that members can join. iOffer has a local service that lets individuals find buyers and sellers in their immediate area. And software tool called Mr. Grabber takes your unsold listings from eBay or other sites and imports them to iOffer so you can resell them.

"We can find out right away if people like or hate a new feature. It's the instant gratification of being able to look at a page and change it right away that makes it all worthwhile," he says.

Of course, it takes courage to stick to change when there are complaints. Boyce remembers what happened in 2006 when the site's architecture was rewritten from scratch. "Half a year later, nobody was using it. It was hard to explain to our customer base. They kept saying, "Why did you change that?" We'd outgrown our old systems and had to do it," he says.

Like any online business, iOffer has faced a series of other challenges. One is adverse selection: buyers attracted by the free listings but whose merchandise simply wasn't desirable. "We had one seller who listed around 20,000 items," recalls Boyce. "Only half had a picture. Some photos were blurry, and some listings only had three-word descriptions. He never sold a single item." The problem is not only attracting sellers with good inventory, but simply having an adequate mix of buyers and sellers, he adds.

Boyce believes that the computer has replaced the TV as the major form of entertainment, and the key is embracing the whole mobile connectivity. "We see a lot more consumers online everywhere. Most phones have the capacity to get online and take a picture, so we have a notification feature that lets sellers be connected all the time," he says, adding that the feature is still in beta testing. iOffer sends notifications to buyers and sellers, and plans to enable sellers to list items for sale from their mobile phones.

And more people are connecting to iOffer. He estimates that last year, there were two to four thousand sellers online at any given time. In the last month or two, seven to thirteen thousand sellers have been waiting to accept offers.

One factor is the economy, according to Boyce. "I don't want to call it a recession, but when the economy is down people tend to buy more used merchandise and to sell more of their own stuff. They don't have extra money to make purchases," he says.

Boyce also finds that sellers are increasingly disenchanted with eBay. "Sellers don't like the way eBay treats them, and if they can find an alternative, they will. We have the buyers. This last week was our busiest week on record, and I don't see it slowing down. We are seen as Number Two in the auction space. We may be a distant Number Two, but that's an important place," he says.

Clarification: The article has been edited to clarify the following sentence: "In the last month or two, seven to thirteen thousand sellers have been waiting to accept offers."
About the author:

Greg Holden, who lives in Chicago, is the author of several books about eBay, including "How to Do Everything with Your eBay Business," second edition, and "Secrets of the eBay Millionaires," both published by Osborne-McGraw Hill. Find out more on Greg's Web site (http://www.gregholden.com), which includes a blog related to his book "Internet Babylon: Secrets, Scandals and Shocks on the Information Superhighway," published by Apress.

Thanks for posting the article. We just signed up with iOffer and transferred our eBay items. We'll see how things develop. So far we only ran into a few glitches.

Most buyers don't pay.

I think because of it's strange format, it would be easy to not get paid by some buyers. I do know people who have been selling successfully, and have gotten paid by most of their buyers. There are some things you can do to increase your chances of closing a deal. First, in this format, people have a chance to make offers. If you wait a day or two before responding to an offer, or communication, they may change their minds about wanting what you're selling. I've learned that people do not like to wait-- including myself. When they're ready to make an offer and pay, jump on it and close the deal fast. Good sellers are fast sellers who get back to the buyer the same day an offer is made.

Another thing you can do is have their total price figured out in the listing-- including shipping. One of my frustrations at iOffer is that there is no shipping calculator to figure out automatically what they will pay. At least give them a range of what the shipping costs will be -- in your listing. If they know exactly what they will be paying, they're less likely to back out if they are shocked by the extra shipping fee. If you have your shipping charges at a fixed price, figured out in the listing, you also have the option of having an invoice sent automatically to the buyer.

You also have the option of not accepting any offers from new buyers without a rating-- and buyers with negative feedback. Go to the selling preferences under the "Sell" menu. Here, you will see:

Buyer Restrictions:
__ Block new/unrated users from using “Buy Now”
Use this option with caution as you can block many potential new buyers from buying your items.
__ Block recent negative users from using “Buy Now”
__ Block recent non-paying buyers from using “Buy Now”

It also gives you the option to block specific buyers, and to block buyers from other countries.

In my experience, there are lousy buyers (and lousy sellers) on most sites. Hopefully it's not as bad as you say it is here.. and I'll give the good buyers and sellers here a chance. With the big upturn in traffic, they can't all be bad. At least, let's hope not.

Hi, peter88
I got a big problem in my account ioffer, i don't know why my account suddenly can't log in, and all buyer send me email to check the item ship out or not, i can't log in so i can't do anything, can you help me????????

Thanks.