Below A Buck - Items On Ebay For Under $1
People seem to always want to know what sites we own or try. We actually launch new sites probably about 1 per week on average. Today we are launching a new site called Below A Buck. Dave kept a log of our conversations and how the site was built over on his site.
The concept of Below A Buck is pretty simple. You can see items on eBay easily that are under $1. We also wanted to make the site as simple and easy to use as possible. After all this is a site that WE want to use. This is pretty much how things get developed at ShoeMoney Media Group. Someone will come up with an idea for a service that they wish existed. I will get really excited and come up with several ways how it will work. Dave will come up with 10 reasons why it wont work. Somewhere in the middle one of us will convince the other and we go from there.
Will the site be a huge success? I would say it already is a success. Its a great looking fully functionally website which provides a service both myself and Dave wanted on the internet. We both are eBay junkies and also love to snipe items for cheap prices. Also the site did not take up much of our time to build and launch. We contracted unique blog designs for the layout and Dave busted out the code.
A.D.D. note: I am really liking working with the guys at unique blog designs. Like us they work very fast and work all hours to get the job done. I see us working together on a lot of future projects.
Obviously the monetization strategy is using the eBay affiliate program. Will be interesting to see how it goes 
So if your looking for ipod items or hdtv stuff or even xbox stuff check out below a buck.
- 94 Comments. What say you?
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Just had a look Shoe,
Looks really great. Does it only list BIN items or auction and BIN ? I don’t really see the point of it listing auctions items as very few auctions listed at 0.99 cents will go for 0.99 cents ?
Ignore me i didnt look at it properly. I have just looked and see it posts items that are just ending that are a dollar or less. Clever site.
actually that is the point. It lists things that only have 1 hour left by default. Also there are many items that go unsold for 99 cents either because people miss them or the shipping is to much. As I said before this is something we actually use
Shoe, I was actually disappointed when I saw this. I might be wrong but theirs plenty of sites out there like this..but dont hold me on that. I think I saw some thing similar a few months back but w/e. Any who lets see how you market the website, and please do share the tips..
EDIT: quit spamming your blog in your posts in your comments. IT makes you look like a total jackass and I catch it every time.
first/last warning
Nice concept, I can see that this will come in handy for many people out there. However all the items on the front page have already ended and are not updating on refresh. Same thing applies to several other categories where the listings at the top all have ended.
Nice idea. Not amazing but innovative. Great name though. Also I’m liking the work of Unique Blog designs also, I’ll get in touch with them soon.
I really like the idea. But, I went right to jewelry and all the auctions I looked at had already ended.
Seems like a good idea to me even if (to me) most of the items I saw when browsing looked like junk. But, one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.
What about adding an “internet” or “web” category? Seems lots of folks selling web related items these days on eBay.
Nice site - the design is very clean and simple. Could do with some extra features though, like the ability to sort the auctions by price maybe, favourite some categories etc. You could also put the number of auctions in the category headings as I clicked around a few of them and they had nothing in them.
and yet you couldnt name one
which is why we made ours.
I am very curious how far this site will go. I will be watching.
I may sound stupid in a minute but….
Did you already mention this one time or show us this? Was this listed somewhere, I swear there was a website or you mentioned that you were going to be doing this website.
Smells like rip off!
I always like cheap stuff! thanks for sharing,
ya there was a issue with the cache but its fixed now
ya.. depending on interest we will be adding more features.
I was thinking the exact same thing….either you mentioned something about this, or I could have sworn seeing the same concept before….
Cool site, the value is in its simplicity. Nice job. One question..do you have to manually create a subdomain for each keyword, or is that automated?
i love the idea, and i’m honestly envy about how smooth and fast you 2 work together. I wish i could realize my ideas in this way, and hopefully one day i’ll be able to do it…
Nice that all the items are within an hour of closing - I didn’t realize that when I first took a look at the site. It might be nice if you could list the time left until the auction ends with the item - it would make the site a bit more valuable, in my estimation. If promoted right (which I’m sure it will be), it will make some money. Probably won’t be near the top of your portfolio, but it should be a nice little earner.
Really nice idea. I was actually thinking about doing a site very similar a few weeks ago, just never got around to it. That and I’m too broke to register a domain lmao
Sorry for adding a link to my sig, didnt know it wasnt allowed. Any who I did actually find the website its called lastminute-auction.com, again I hope you share your marketing tips…Thanks
Shoe - not to question you guys, but why isn’t the site optimized for SEO at all? Every page has the same title “Items On Ebay Below A Buck” - it would be plenty easy to drop the category name in there and at least add some unique title value to the page. Also, no description or keyword tags? Have you guys just not gotten around to optimizing this site yet, or are you just counting on off-page op and referral traffic?
belowabuck seems easier to remember. though shoe could take some pointers from the site, having the time left for the auction and the s&h is nice to see w/o having to click through. i assume the click through helps with the money aspect though…
Good site! But I found a product which is exactly $1.00. :p
A few other quick thoughts - that site could be a CPM ad monster if it gets popular, with bargain snipers constantly loading new pages to try to catch a last minute deal. Any plans to implement CPM only ads? Your average pageviews per user should be insanely high. Also, it would probably be a nice feature to include shipping costs somewhere on the display, as people frequently list cheap items with outrageous handling fees - this would allow people to weed out those listings easily.
having a complimentary dart board that works looks great. i have ideas I would love to bounce around to someone i could trush, that would then work with me on them…
the site looks cool but I most likely wont be using it.
Noticed that you’re still using the old rover.ebay…yadda, yadda, yadda. Have you heard about this cool site called auctionads that will give you higher tiered revenue?
=P
That is unless you are not on the higher tier already.
SEO what? The items all end within a few minutes.
Awesome idea infact, too bad i cant use it.
eBays’s api is awesome tool for creating webistes. I have been running a site for a couple of years now based upon eBay’s api. The site lists higher priced RV auctions but the concept is the same. I suppose you could pick a whole bunch of niche price points to create sites with, Million Dollar Auctions anyone? So the realy question is what is better when it comes to eBay, product niches or price point niches?
The design is horrendous shoe, contact me via email and ill give you something quality at no cost….
Cool site, someone made a site similiar to this but it was different somehow, Ill have to go look it up.
You need to show how much shipping is on your site.
.99 and $50 to ship is lame.
Yeah, but there’s no item pages, so it doesn’t matter if the items end every few minutes since you’re not SEOing for individual tiems. It’s category pages, and the categories don’t end every few minutes - they are permanent (and highly searchable).
I can’t believe this was the response I get back for asking the question. This couldn’t have been written by the real dillsmack, could it? Don’t you want to rank when someone searches for “cheap clothing” or “cheap jewelery” or anything like that? Dillsmack - I’m disappointed that the SEO possibilities of the site aren’t apparent to you.
Yup, I remember this too
lol
Yeah i was wondering the same question, it would be great if this question could be answered.
Regards
You guys were probably thinking of lastminute-auction.com (as mentioned in the second set of comments).
Looks swish. Do a UK one before I do
my mainly problem is that i think i’m a good creative and a good marketer but i lack of php programming and of course most of my ideas require it
Not to take away from your site at all, but I’ve had auctionegg.com bookmarked for a while now and they have the one dollar listing as well as misspelled listings.
Great idea. And the site looks really nice. I’ll just remember never to list anything on ebay starting at a dollar or less incase it doesn’t sell and winds up on there.
cool concept man… only thing is if you could show shipping costs…
Good concept… how do you get traffic to this?
right, i am better on the programming end, but have absolutely no graphic skills.
By posting it here? =p
It’s really interesting to see how you and Dillsmack come up with such original ideas. You seem to favor the data feed type sites–or maybe that’s an incorrect observation. Sometimes I come across a something “Pimp” site in the organic SERPs and I think to myself, this looks like a Shoe and Dillsmack site. Great!
No, they don’t have to manually create all subdomains. They’re probably just using a mod_rewrite rule to turn anything that’s not http://www.belowabuck.com to http://www.belowabuck.com/search.php?term=original_subdomain - you can easily create infinite subdomains that way. It will mess up your analytics tracking though, since Google views subdomains as separate sites, it will show way more visits than you really get in analytics.
Sorry - didn’t realize WP automatically parses posts for www addresses to insert links. That was all supposed to be plain text.
This is a really cool idea
Instead of bitching about the site or the design, the real education here is seeing what shoe and dillsmack do and learning how to implement decisions like that. Most everybody will spend more time sitting and whining instead of working if given a chance, and that is why being an online entrepreneur doesn’t come easy to some.
Great creative idea.
funny how many people can critics, and I have to ask, what have they done. great ideas, keep them coming.
one thing I noticed about the internet, it limitless—tell me I’m wrong.
It looks nice ShoeMoney. I think you can really make this take off if you get some of the e-bay store owners to take notice. I’ve noticed that over 50% of buyers on our new OneBuckWiki came from Ebay!
Brilliant. This is how many of my sites get developed. Now I just need 12,000 RSS subscribers to pimp my new sites to.
Hey that looks pretty cool…what is funny is I went to Antiques, Art and Baby and they gave ne one item..then I get to Books and of course they have a bunch of items. :/
And Clothing has a ton of good stuff. (What…me buy used clothing?) 
You guys crank out new stuff so quickly it’s mind-boggling…
Very simple concept and great site. I enjoyed reading Dave’s log of the design pitch. Thanks for sharing a little of what goes on behind the scenes at SMG.
Not bad. It is definitely a good way to find cheap items on eBay without having to scroll through pages of auctions.
That is a great idea. I love the concept!
doesn’t work very well with two word search terms like “xbox 360.belowabuck.com” does nothing on safari anyway as it is invalid.
Already done before. It’s not original. In fact, I bet they knew that sites like this already existed. Not to say this won’t succeed. They definitely don’t have to be 1st to the market to make it. But don’t kiss his ass like he invented the wheel here.
All under a $1 is somewhat misleading because the shipping cost is going to be much more than $1. Most sites like this will make their profit from shipping fees not the actual product fee.
Orro
EDIT: please dont spam your site in comments dipshit
“below a buck” is somewhat misleading because the shipping cost will be way above a buck. Most people don’t factor this into their decision making process.
Orro
http://www.dragonlasers.com
Why not? well… i guess it’s not for everyone…
Not an ebay fan, but I’d buy something if it was below a buck. You guys seem to know the ins and outs of the ebay api really well
I saw an item on ebay recently started around 20, no reserve.
Last time I looked, it was at around 1300 - a very underpriced diving watch - its rolex peer retails for around 5000. I just happened across it (I’m in the market for a diving watch with all the trimmings which is how i found it).
MAYBE a snipesite addition to underabuck would be nice - items that clearly retail for an assload more than they’re priced on ebay.
Just a thought.
It’s nice to snipe, but you gotta be quick.
You have to make an iGoogle gadget for this one, it would be very useful
“below a buck” is a really good idea… Happens to be something I thought about before but never got serious about implementing. I’m sure you will have lots of success. Thanks for turning me on to the Unique Blog Design guys by the way….. I have a blog that is in desperate need of a make-over and those guys have been great to deal with so far and seem to be super talented from a creative stand point. Thanks, and good luck!
I believe I saw this on the linkbuildingblog first
After reading this post, I am a bit disappointed, but since you are brave enough to blog about it, I made a counter post on my blog to lay out the real reason behind belowabuck.com. Here it is
http://tonytsai.com/shoemoneys-belowabuckcom-website/
Ebay. A whole new world.
This is like the $1.00 bins at Target. I always stop there first to see what cool things I can get for a dollar. I got a mini screwdriver set and some dog shampoo so far.
I can see this new site becoming addictive for some.
Super Sticky man! Nice design - well executed - way to go!
Whats wrong with the “old rover”?
All of my eBay sites do just fine with “the old rover”.
I think that this site uses the same or similar code—
salvagecarsales dot com, am I right?
by the way, I have no affiliation to this site, just ineresting because I do buy and sell salvage cars and fix them from time to time.
using the formulas the Shoe and this savage car site used, I am sure one could make all kinds of niche ebay link type web sites.
Front page, “Recent Searches”, all leading to a subdomain (i.e. wii.belowabuck.com, headphones.bellowabuck.com etc.). The thing is, there’s “.com” recent search which links to “http://.com.bellowabuck.com” (starting with .com) which will never open in any browser.
Anyway very nice idea! That’s how cool sites a born.. creating something you wish existed and realising noone has done yet.
Other than showing your site to your readers, do you have plans to attract outside viewers? If so, what are your ideas?
actually you can do that in auctionads. enter the filter to retrieve ebay items less than $1 and also give a date range.
PPCriches did a video blog about your site. Have you seen it? Also, how long did it take for you to create this site, and how long and how much money do you think it would cost someone with very little experience to create this type of site?
hmm, to me first sounded like a scam then it sounded like a way to get a good deal and a bargain. Now I know its neither. I know its way to earn loads of cash.
It is not a scam but with a hidden agenda.
check out this confession post
Yeah it is! I was thinking about a similar site myself
Damn….1 per week
There’s another one started up here: http://www.onebuckbelow.com
I can see the usefulness of these sites for stuff like those little wedding favor gifts etc.
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