Finally catch my breath and sit down with Dave Macy over at CCL
As in my last post CCL is making waves across the internet. As of this past weekend CCL has over forty- thousand members, and it looks to be growing daily. With numbers like that I have to ask, “Where did CCL come from?” I found out about CCL in the beta stage purely by chance. I had no idea who MidTen Media was and what Comic Collector Live could do. So I gave Dave Macy, head of public relations for CCL, a ring and asked him a couple of questions about what they are doing with CCL and what the future may hold:
Sidekick: Hello Dave thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to chat with me.
Dave: Not a problem
Sidekick: You are busy right?
Dave: We sure got that way and fast. We just went live a couple of weeks ago and since then we have been pulling some interesting hours.
Sidekick: I bet! Since we are talking about CCL going live, what exactly does that mean? Was it dead before?
Dave: Ha, no...originally CCL was purely built for the comic collector. Joe Butler the creator of CCL is a comic book fan and wanted an easier way to collect and catalog his comics. What came out of his original plan was not just collecting and cataloging, but buying and selling as well. CCL going live really means that the program is officially set up to sell and buy comics through the system.
Sidekick: Well I have to ask, how does that differ from me purchasing comics off of Ebay?
Dave: It’s like this sidekick; people go out to Ebay to sell their comics to a wide range of people. Sometimes people are selling comics that they found, or were given, which means the seller is taking a risk as well as the buyer. What CCL offers is a community of comic book collectors. You are specifically selling and buying from people that know comics. Also with our program if you are missing an issue and tag it as “Wish list” you will be alerted when someone in the CCL community is selling that specific comic. If you were to look for specific comics on Ebay it is a hit and miss. You may have to wait months until the one issue you are seeking to add to your collection even appears on the site. Let me just say this, with our numbers we are now able to see that CCL’s listing and sell numbers are doing better than EBay’s percent listing (for comics) verses their sales.
Sidekick: What! WOW, you guys are brand new.
Dave: Exactly, we are catering to a specific group by offering a community in which they can interact with other members. We save the CCL member time and money when it comes to actually selling their product. The seller doesn’t have to scan photos since we have stock cover photos for almost every issue. You can interact one on one with the seller to find out any condition information you need. The seller also sets up a store and not an account. You can basically run your own business if you choose to do so.
Sidekick: So I guess you guys really are busy?
Dave: HA! Yes, we are getting busier every day. We have on average 150 t0 200 people joining daily, we credit that not to just how great our product is but to people seeing our ad’s nationally in Wizard, DC, and Marvel.
Sidekick: Well if CCL is a product, how are you guys able to offer the download for free?
Dave: Well that was the plan for the start. CCL is part of the MidTen Company. MidTen develops advertising and marketing for companies on the internet.
Sidekick: So banners?
Dave: And other things but yes banners, bells, and buzzers.
Sidekick: Well with CCL growing more and more every day, well there soon be a cost to the user?
Dave: We don’t foresee that right now. We are a little busy with CCL right now.
Sidekick: What about in future?
Dave: Maybe down the line there will be a special edition of CCL for retailers that may cost. But that is just something we are tossing around in our meetings; nothing definite.
Sidekick: Speaking of retailers have you heard any news from them about CCL.
Dave: Yes, actually we have heard nothing but positive remarks about CCL in the comic shops. Many retailers are using CCL for cataloguing and selling almost immediately when we went live.
Sidekick: So CCL is working with the local comic shops and not trying to replace them?
Dave: Not at all, in fact some time later we hope to aid the comic retailer.
Sidekick: How so?
Dave: We were talking about this in the meeting this morning. We hope in the future to add a way for the user to sign in to their local comic book stores and have online pull boxes. This can aid the dealer in his ordering as well as allow the user to add and up date their titles when they would like. This doesn’t have to be local either. You can have a pull box at another store somewhere else in the world and do the same thing.
Sidekick: Cool, any other plans?
Dave: Well we are talking about also adding a comic news widget to our program. We are still in the “putting this down on paper” stage but we have plans for CCL.
Sidekick: Last question, in your planning will CCL add a real time/current value tab to the program. When I am cataloging my comics it is interesting to know that it originally cost 10 cents, but what is it worth today?
Dave: We talked about that, but there really is no true way to keep current values. Comic book values increase and decrease in a variety of ways on a daily bases. There is not a solid way to actually determine, on a live base, a comic’s value. Even the CGC stuff changes by how many 9 to 10 ratings are out there for that particular comic.
Sidekick: Maybe you should get with the guys over at Overstreet Price Guide and set up a little exchange.
Dave:Yeah, that’s an idea. If somewhere down the line we see that it is plausible to host a live market update that is current and accurate I am sure you will see it on CCL. Until then we will continue to listen to the CCL community and their suggestions. Hopefully, we will be able to bring more and more comic collectors over to CCL and watch out community grow.
Sounds like Dave and the guys over at CCL are really trying to make a product that we the comic lovers will actually use and love. What really struck me about CCL is that they really like what they do, and sound sincere in making a better product. I can not get over that this thing is FREE. Trust me I have purchased many crappy programs from con’s and the internet in the past. After using this program I believe I would sign up for a subscription if they offered it. As of right now it is free, so I suggest for all of you out there that still do not have this program downloaded on your CPU to go out there and get it now!
-sk-