MachineExchange - New and Used Machines Market

MachineExchange.com - New and Used Machines Marketplace

MachineExchange.com is a marketplace for buying and selling new and used machinery and equipment. Buyers here can browse through the listings, select machinery or equipment of interest to them and contact the seller. Sellers can list their machinery and equipment for sale on the site to find a buyer.

Currently set-up for free listings for promotional purposes, the site is ready to charge for listings as you may decide. Sellers can be expected to pay, say, $25.00 per listing remaining on the site for 90 days.

What exactly the site does?

MachineExchange.com is a marketplace bringing buyers and sellers together. Persons interested in listing their machinery or equipment for sale are required to register at the site first. He/She can then publish a detailed description of his/her machinery or equipment along with 5 pictures. Their contact e-mail, or if they decide not to disclose it, a hyperlink to contact them, is published with the listing, along with their address and phone number. The location where the machinery or equipment is located along with the asking price is also shown with the listing. The listing typically is for a period of 90 days (set by Admin) unless the seller decides to remove it earlier or for some reason the Admin decides to delete it. The number of times a listing was viewed is shown and gets updated automatically.

MachineExchange.com - Domain Name

An exchange is a marketplace like, say, a stock exchange. The name conveys its meaning and purpose clearly and forcefully. This is what sums up this domain. A simple and superbly brandable domain, will be worth several thousand dollars for the name alone.

How much money can the site make?

To make the site popular, listings are free for the time being. Later it is intended to charge for each listing. Let's say you decide to charge $25 per listing for 90 days. A 100 listings per month (which is no figure at all considering the size of the market) will bring in $2,500; a 1000 listings (which too is miniscule) will bring in $25,000; so on and so forth. Depending on the exigencies of the market, you can increase or decrease the fee as needed. You can have featured listings and charge a higher price.

To make money you must market your service. Initially you will need to make efforts to popularize the site. Once it starts getting popular, viral marketing will set in. The site, from there onwards, will market itself on its own. And you can make this money with no overheads. All you pay is for hosting and renewal of the domain name.

What are the site's special features?

Built using PHP scripting with a powerful MySQL database, the site is totally manageable from a browser based Admin. You can manage users, listings, configuration of the site - all from your web browser.

Payment system can be via PayPal.com, Authorize.net, ClickBank.com, 2CheckOut.com or any other payment processor. You set the minimum amount a user should pay and once you receive the payment, the number of credits paid for are added to his/her account. If you decide to charge $25 for a listing, the minimum a user must pay is $25. He/She may pay a higher amount for listing multiple items and may decide to pay, say, $125 to get 5 credits added to their account.

The period for which a listing can remain on the site can be set from the Admin. You may set a uniform period for all listings or let users choose the period for which they would like to list. You can also charge for listing based on how long they are to remain on the site.

Site categories can be created, added, modified as needed via the Admin. The site uses a uniform header and footer through out. Site design can be changed by just changing these two files. A cascading style sheet is used enabling further customization of the site by just changing the style sheet.

You can set the number of pictures and the size of the pictures - x, y as well as bytes - you would like to permit in the listings. You can set whether you will first approve the listings before they are published or publish automatically. You can edit listings before approval and later if it becomes necessary. You can delete listings if you so wish.

Listing statistics too are recorded and are available for Admin to monitor. A link to backup the database via the browser is also present.

Users have their own control panel from where they can manage their listings. Users can add new listings, modify existing ones and delete the ones they have sold. Sold listings can remain on the site, if you so set it up, and can be marked as "Sold".