The format is pretty much the same as eBay, actually a bit easier to use.
I'm intentionally NOT advertising GearGoblin, and intentionally drawing as little traffic to it as possible other than our inner circle on the Sneap forum, as I want to wait to make a bigger announcement until there are more listings. To get more listings, I am working with some large music vendors to upload bulk lists to the site. Unfortunately, there are some technical problems with the bulk listing engine that I purchased, which I am in the process of sorting out with the software developer as we speak.
Point of all this is - a community-driven site such as GearGoblin only grows in size based on first impressions. If the first impression of somebody new coming to the site is "nobody's using this" then the community will never grow, no matter how much advertising I do. Take your own first impression as a case in point. That's why any successful community-driven site must start with seed data - some large quantity of initial data to give the appearance of larger community. There's no quicker path to failure than advertising an empty shell of a site.
Once my colleagues and I are able to upload tons of listings, then I am going to start running the advertising campaign. Until then, GearGoblin is pretty much a Sneap Forum utility only.
