Sharing site eSnips adds e-commerce
Marshall Kirkpatrick
20 comments »
Israel based eSnips is an intriguingly simple online social network for sharing images, video, files and almost anything else. We wrote about it here when it recently relaunched and now the site has added PayPal functionality to allow users to buy and sell directly on the site. The company already saw people trying to buy and sell through their pages and said that adding e-commerce only made sense. Right now eSnips doesn’t charge any fees for the transactions - they just hope that the feature will make the site more compelling for users to stick with. I’ll be curious to see how that works out.
The company reports that paintings and photographs are the most popular items sold on the site, followed by jewelry, “other items,” and crafts. Music, video and games are also sold on the site. Users get 1 GB of free storage with their accounts. Revenue is generated by selling extra storage and through Adsense. Any item can also be displayed off site with an HTML widget. Items are uploaded with a Windows-only tool.
ESnips is an unassuming site that seems to just plain work for people. The company is currently hosting an “open studio week” highlighting selected artists who share their work on the site. I guess it’s all just further proof that the Web 2.0 world of user generated content, data portability and social networking doesn’t have to be flashy to get peoples’ attention.
This seems like the kind of thing that would have flopped a decade ago, but that could really work now that the idea of sharing content online has become much more mainstream. Has it become mainstream enough to support business models like the one at eSnips? We shall see.
I think this is the obvious next step - but a very smart one at that.
They’re essentially creating their own marketplace, similar to an eBay. Micro-payments or an in-house credit card transaction system should be considered as the next step. This will open the site up to potential vendors and merchants (i.e. a new group of users) and subsequently provide increased revenues.
Revenue from AdSense and storage fees will not generate long term prosperity.
How exactly could esnips charge for this if they eventually want to? If you are using your paypal account, there’s no way for them to get in the middle of the transaction.
They could, for example, only provice “buy this” buttons for people with premium accounts.
They would have to move away from a Paypal model and implement their own credit card processing system, whereby they could take a small cut from every transaction, say 3%.
Sounds like an inteteresting idea, which will have to be re-examined in few months time. You may find a coverage of all Israeli Web2.0 ventures and trends at http://www.thecoils.com (in hebrew)
We are going to be doing the same thing at GoGoMo - the infrastructure is already in place. Users will be able to upload their content into a store and we will process the transactions via credit card, points, paypal or even carrier billing. This is where the market is headed. We will take a cut of the transaction.
One more thought. sounds like esnips is really for physical goods. What about Digital Goods- that again is what we are focused on at GoGoMo. Device Mapping and Content Portability is going to be key. What if you sell a ringtone- we make sure that it ports over to the users mobile phone. What if you sell a MP3 that you created or a photo. Someone needs to make sure that it works on the intended device. That’s also what we do at GoGoMo. Content Portability is critical for any of these online storage firms.
Am I the only one already getting eSnips spam from sellers?
Jeez Nick, that doesn’t sound any good at all. Care to paste one in here?
online propecia.