If you like stock market games and products, you’ll probably get a kick out of Smarkets. This website allows you to create an account with $10,000 which can be used for trading products whose prices change based on Amazon.com sales rank. I created a trading account and I’ve begun adding some products.
As far as market games go, Smarkets sounds more captivating than Blogshares. It will be interesting to see, when membership reaches a critical mass, if the market is any good at predicting sales for these products.
Published or updated December 22, 2005. If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the RSS feed or receive daily emails. Follow @flexo on Twitter and visit our Facebook page for more updates.
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Luke Landes founded Consumerism Commentary in 2003 and has been building online communities since 1990. Luke, also known as Flexo, has contributed to PC World Magazine, US News, Forbes, and other publications. 
{ 3 comments }
This is, unfortunately, an utterly gameable system. You can short any item with impunity knowing that it is eventually going to take a dive in popularity.
Right now, I am short 1,000 shares of Cronicles of Narnia Box Set. It had its debut at 1, it has nowhere to go but down.
That isn’t to say that a better algorithm can’t be developed, but now, it is as gameable as tetris.
Perhaps they should modify their algorithm to include time (time at #1) or retireat30 will dominate forever! :)
Thanks for the checking out my site. IYou guys are right, that eventually the salesranks for products will go up. And that shorting products with a salesrank of 1 is an automatic money maker. However, the salesrank will fluctuate (go up and down) on its way down and allow traders to profit (try to at least) on these fluctuations.
Anyway, I am open to suggestions on the pricing algorythm.