Wigix cofounder Bob Lee said there's been enormous interest in the "NASDAQ-style" marketplace from eBay PowerSellers, many of whom are looking for alternative venues on which to sell. User-contributed content is a hot area, Lee said. Users are adding new items to the product catalog, and there are over 300 "Category Experts" who earn a percentage of transactions in their categories.

In response to the growth it's been experiencing, Wigix announced on Tuesday a new certification program to help it manage its community of Category Experts, revealing it has reached over one million unique catalog items. In addition to compensating Category Experts, Wigix offers users two other monetization models. "Homesteaders" submit new items to the catalog and earn 5% of each item's revenues. Wigix also offers referral fees for bringing new Homesteaders to Wigix.

The new Certification of Category Experts (CCE) program includes training and testing of the Category Expert Workbench tool-set to help Category Experts perfect the categorization of the items, correct information on the item detail page, effectively answer item queries, manage their category communities, and provide insight to the greater Wigix community.

Social-networking is an important component of Wigix, and the company offers several Facebook applications and is working with Google's Open Social standards. It is also developing a tool for importing listings from eBay. Wigix is expected to announce a storefront offering later this year, and Lee said the company will go international later this fall.

http://www.wigix.com