Beginning and Plan A
Buyer Auction Manager (Full) was officially launched on February 24, 2012 so today marks one year anniversary. When I first started working on the original version of the software, I didn't know what I was getting myself into. It has been a long and bumpy journey but the software is better for it. It's now gaining momentum and growing faster than ever before. As part of this journey, I have learned a great deal and I'm learning new things every day.
As some of you may know, I created original version of Buyer Auction Manager for myself after noticing that some Buy It Now items were selling on eBay for low prices. My search did not produce any satisfactory software that would do what I wanted, so I created my own. Original version had only one module (Win It Now) that would search for newly posted Buy It Now items on eBay. After successfully using it myself for a while, I released it to the public as a freeware hoping that people would like it, save money and donate some of the savings. Was I wrong about that! Looking back, I think there were at least two reasons for this. I had no clue about advertising the software to get more users and if you can get something for free, you usually do not pay for it. I'm like that myself so creating freeware and expecting donations was a flawed strategy.
Time for Plan B
Since plan A was not working and my wife was starting to get upset because I was spending a lot of my free time on the computer without any results, it was time to double down and conceive plan B. I decided to leave the original version as it was and create a new version of the software where I would add additional functionality and improve Win It Now module. I started working on that new version in November 2011. I spent several months writing those improvements and finally in February 2012, I released what is now called Buyer Auction Manager (Full).
After the software was released, it was time to work on advertising. I started using Google AdWords, learned a lot about Search Engine Optimization, Internet Marketing, Social Networks and started a blog. I wrote several blog posts over 2-month period but after not seeing big results, I moved on to other things and abandoned the blog for a while. Towards the end of 2012, eBay started making significant changes to their website and functionality that relied on scraping started breaking so I had my hands full trying to fix everything.
At one point, I thought that eBay declared war on sniper programs because their auctions did not have End Time. They would only have countdown to the end of the auction. You cannot snipe accurately if you don't have precise time when the auction ends. Fortunately this was changed very quickly and a few weeks after that, End Time was back in eBay listings.
Recent growth and future
Since the end of 2012, I've been getting more people to try the software and some of those people offer suggestions and ask for new functionality. This is something that I like to see because it makes the software better for all users. I've been making a lot of changes recently and there are some more changes coming within the next month or so, a lot of it suggestions from people who use the software.
I'd like to thank everybody who offered their suggestions and supported Buyer Auction Manager over the last year. Without you, the software would not exist.
Robert