In an effort to cut down the silly gift card business out of the equation I have created a [...]]]> Tonight I decided to do an experiment.  I recently joined Listia.com and noticed an interesting trend.  People are listing iTunes, Visa, etc, etc gift cards.  What this amount to is that they are actually buying (knowingly or not) Listia Credits.

In an effort to cut down the silly gift card business out of the equation I have created a listing that openly offer to BUY Listia Credits based on a flexible “Listia Credits to $” table.  You can see the details at http://www.listia.com/auction/113282.

There is chance that Listia will cancel my auction… but really I don’t think I am breaching any site rules here.  I am offering to BUY Credits and guess what… it mean sending money to the “bidder” in return via Paypal. It is perfectly legal.

The only reason I could see them terminate the listing is because they might want to prevent people to openly buy credits for less than they sell them. Listia is currently selling 1 credit for 0.1$.  I am offering around 0.016$ per credit.  A lot less but in line with what credits are trading today on Listia.

If successful, my next challenge will be to devise a way to sell Listia Credits I bought.  This will likely prove harder but I have a few ideas.  Could this be the beginning of a Listia Credit Exchange Market?  Maybe.

UPDATE

Look like Listia want the monopoly of selling Credits.  They killed both my listings for buying Listia credits on the basis that they where confusing.  Right! The only thing confusing is why Listia won’t let it’s users buy credits by offering money to other users in exchange.  They are OK with people selling silly Gift Cards.  This is essentially the same but with a piece of plastic instead of an electronic money transfer.

I am currently running an experiment where I am offering a gift card with variable [...]]]> I stumbled on this new anti-ebay service called Listia. It allows you to unload all the stuff you don’t need in exchange for “Listia Credits”. You then use those credits to acquire goods other Listia members are listing. Simple? Yep!

I am currently running an experiment where I am offering a gift card with variable value based on the amount of credits I will get… sor of like assigning a $ value to a credit. Right now I estimate that a credit run for about 0.016$. This is based on today’s ended auctions for gift cards… so I am pricing my offering according to that.

I will keep an eye on future listings to see if credits value goes up or down… like tracking the value of the dollar. My reference will be the US$.

You can check the progress of my experiment at http://www.listia.com/auction/113282

I have also created a page where one can track Listia Credits Exchange Rate at http://netputing.com/listiacrx