The business plan for web based services like auctionzip is to initially offer the service free until a user base is built up large enough to justify charging a fee for the service. They have a good idea how many free users will convert to paid and how many will leave. Nothing new here with this approach. bandwidth is not free and if you get too large you can no longer use a residential DSL line to host your website. Plus, the entire idea of offering any service to the public is to make money. Mapquest did it with add revenue. When was the last time you used mapquest? You can not find the map for all of the adds. Rich On Fri, 19 Jan 2007 15:07:21 -0500, phonofolks at aol.com wrote: > IT's interesting how suddenly auctions, such as ebay, change policies without any notice to the bidding or selling community. On another note regarding auctions in the past I frequently used auctionzip.com to search for auctions within so many miles from wher I live. This was a free service where you could plug in a zip code, such as where you live, use a keyword such as "phonograph" to identify specific items that might interest you in auctions. YOu could also include the number of miles, for example 100 miles, that you are willing to travel from a specific zipcode to participate in that auction. So for free I would put all this information in the appropriate fields and in seconds it would identify for me all the auctions that are selling phonographs within 100 miles of where I live. Then about 6 months ago auctionzip changed its policy. You no longer can seach for free by keyword and seach for auctions greater than 50 miles unless you become a premier member for $3.95 per > month. All you get for free are auctions within a 30 or 50 mile radius of the zipcode that you plug in the zipcode field, and the ability to sort by category such as antiques, collectibles, automobiles, real estate, etc. The policy was so convenient and fun that it made the search more advantageous for the collector or potential buyer. Of course auction zip caught on and had to put a stop on this free service. Not all auctions are advertised through auctionzip, however it goes to show you that online auction services will do anything that will benefit them even if it means taking away the luxuries we become accustomed to. I guess they believe we would become so addicted that we will end up paying for the extra convenience. Paypal is one example. I am not an auctionzip premier member; however it would be interesting to know how many did become premier members when the policy changed. >________________________________________________________________________ >Check out the new AOL. Most comprehensive set of free safety and security tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from across the web, free AOL Mail and more. >_______________________________________________ >Phono-L mailing list >http://phono-l.oldcrank.org