Video is also available at http://www.vimeo.com/1594866
Let me what inner workings of the system ud like to know. App is on PHP, MySQL. Most of the JS/CSS is coded by ourselves.
Documentation, there is some and there is PRD as well that explains how things are supposed to work.
About it being easily translatable, I don't know because we never thought of outside US market while developing it. So seriously I don't know. I assume there will be work.
There are certainly points I see you could improve on, but generally I like the things I see in the video (but the video really is a bit too long, and not best quality; a Getting Started link would have worked much better I think...). I think I can make it translatable, although it will take some time and it won't be worth to quit a job and get it running (more of a side task).
Completely aside of that, I'm based in the Netherlands so just taking it over and running on probably won't do it, it will more be like a great codebase to start with. Talking about that, you could think of making it OpenSource for small community needs; I think many people would be keen to jump on that and improve things a lot.
I have added my LinkedIn and Facebook profiles to my HN profile, so you will be able to contact me personally if you like.
Thanks, Talking to Partners and see how we can sell it.
We never sold sites in past and coded most of this ourselves, so were not sure if it is worth anything.
But yes, Seems like we should at least give it a try.
Need to find out how we can transfer domain names as well.
Thanks for asking. We're still going. We are at a critical point where we need to go from seasonally-popular to popular year round. Have the plan, now just need to execute.
Certainly.. I do plan to write all my experience on what we were trying to do, what went wrong and what I myself will correct when I build next startup.
About pulling the plug, We are thinking around couple of months process. Like putting announcement as you suggested, and informing users and then pulling the plug.
About the design, yes all points taken. Actually we are programmers and tried to do as better job at design as we could. May be we need to get professional designer and I surely hope to generate enough business to be able to afford that.
You are right, we need to reword lot of content to express the exact message. I did 4-5 rounds of user-testing from usertesting.com and redesigned, but sure there is lot of room for improvement.
I think we need to do better job at explaining that we are not auction site and we are not trying to attract users who like auctions. Rather we are trying to attract people who like the price-negotiation and also Alibaba model. We tried to explain that in the demo video, but seems like we need to do better job.
Thanks for the feedback. This is what I love about hacker news. Very good and honest feedback.
I know the hard work behind such a project; I strongly recommend that you take all criticism easy, focus more on getting the best out of them.
You may not build the next eBay but your idea can evolve around a better niche if you remain focus, don’t weight the first impressions against your hard work, and don’t let your feelings get in your way. Make it your mission to build something that people can actually use.
Thank you so much. Exactly what I was thinking. The great thing about hacker news is the feedback and wisdom that we can get from other like minded and smart folks.
We are pretty flexible in changing ideas to make sure we build something that people will like and use.
We are charging 3% of the closing value for each product that is sold.
We also offer optional premium services (like eBay) that enhances look of the listing. There is some charge for showing product in "featured products".
In future we also plan get some ads but nothing decided on that yet.
If you use ads, either the ads are unrelated and the advertisers will be uninterested, or your sellers are unhappy because your advertising competes with them.
Thanks a lot for great feedback. Soon I will change the page using all your suggestions as they perfectly make sense.
As far as design goes, there are only 3 of us working on this app on part-time basis and work includes design and coding.
Great suggestions. We just came out of coding phase last week and now we are going to give our best shot to get sellers and buyers. Suggestions like these really help a lot. Thanks again.
