The Online Traders Web Alliance Launches Auction and Classified Marketplace

April 30, 2005 -- The Online Traders Web Alliance (OTWA) quietly soft launched the Community Marketplace last month after its initial beta test proved the site was up to the challenge of high performance and reliability. Today, OTWA officially announced the hard launch of the community marketplace with 3 million banner ads strategically targeted throughout the Internet, Google AdWords for search and Adwords for content as the primary online advertising. Additionally, OTWA is preparing to target offline advertising through the antiques and collectibles trade publications, collectors’ magazines, and direct marketing.

During the first month of operation (the soft launch), OTWA’s Community Marketplace has an overall sell-thru rate of approximately thirty four percent of all items listed. This is in part due to the premise that by charging a small fee, and including free image hosting, free gallery, free click to enlarge, free slideshow, and much more, sellers tend to list items of interest to buyers, rather than items they were unable to sell on eBay. The backbone of the marketplace is OTWA’s existing community member-base of 30,000 plus auction users contributes greatly to this early success.

Because of the community tie-in, the OTWA Community Marketplace is able to offer buyer rewards and promotions, as well as frequent seller incentives that create a fun marketplace experience, keeping it exciting for both buyers and sellers. OTWA’s owner, Jim Wells Miller, began with the community first premise. We are a community first and foremost; the marketplace is an additional feature of OTWA, and building on that premise enabled us to create a successful, fun and exciting marketplace alternative.

Designed as a fast, efficient, dump the bells and whistles, easy-to-learn, easy-to-use marketplace; the OCM is definitely stepping out of the box. The most evident of this out of the box thinking is that on the OCM, sellers are actually encouraged to link to their website or storefront from within their listings. Jim summed it up this way, “We are here to help the seller succeed, both on the OCM, and independently.”

One of the key elements that make the OCM stand out from other marketplaces is the long-standing success of OTWA itself, being the oldest, largest independent auction related community on the internet; the marketplace was the next logical step.

www.otwa.com