

Ask HN: What do I do? - stuckk

Hello HN.<p>I launched a website yesterday called Classfy. It's basically a marketplace that is open, free and easy to use.<p>After launching. I sent out a few emails to the people who had signed up before launch. Many of them came and looked around and left. That was expected since this is a marketplace and there were only a few items for sale. Some of them posted items for sale.<p>Now I don't know what to do. Do I keep coding, adding features, improving the UI. ( I want to make it look like pinterest).
Do I try and get more people to signup and post, stuff for sale.
This is the first time I have built something on this scale and scope.<p>any tips? suggestions?
======
paulsutter
The most important decision a startup makes is to choose your customer
definition.

It looks to me like you have chosen "anyone who sells anything on ebay" as
your customer. The problem is, even if you could personally meet with each one
of them, they'd probably still choose to list items on ebay because there are
more buyers on ebay and they are likely to get a higher price.

There are lots of ways you can go. None of these are particularly good ideas,
but hopefully they can help you think of a great idea based on your strenghts:

\- You could choose a specific category that Ebay does poorly. Ebay has
vacation lodging, but AirBNB is kicking their ass in that area. Ebay has arts
and crafts, but Etsy is doing crazy well.

\- If your advantage is an easier UI, maybe you can build an easier-to-use
front end to list or find items on Ebay. Even for this, you might choose some
specific target customer. Maybe old people who are nontechnical. Maybe young
people who think Ebay is uncool.

\- Here's a question, how can sites like policeauctions.com and
propertyroom.com exist? wouldn't it be smarter to list all those items on ebay
where you can get a higher price? Steal their customers and do something
easier, list the items on ebay.

Whatever you do, dont try to compete head-on with Ebay. Ebay will always be a
better Ebay than you. Choose one thing they are doing poorly, and do it great.
Imagine if Etsy or Airbnb tried to expand to do everything ebay did. That
would obviously suck. So be more like them.

Happy to brainstorm.

~~~
stuckk
I think you are 100% correct on going against eBay.

We don't want to do that even though it may look like it.

Through some research and suggestion of others. We found out that there are
lots of transactions taking place on the internet on no particular platform.
They are done on forums, Facebook, twitter(as Status update)..ect. The reason
why they don't sell on eBay is because eBay takes too much time and has too
much hassle and it's expensive. I used to be an online seller. But never on
eBay. I used to flip websites and offer my services on various SEO forums.
There are hundreds if not thousands of communities that sell their stuff in
their own forum section. They do this because it's free, simple and quick. I
agree that pulling people away from eBay only based on the simplicity and
being free is going to be hard.

That's why we are open to pivoting to the particular category that might use
our site the most. For example if the bitcoin community starts using Classfy
more than others, we will become a bitcoin marketplace. If people start
selling car parts on classfy then we will pivot to that category.

However I love the idea of becoming a front-end tool for eBay and mixing the
results with listings on Classfy.

~~~
michael_fine
Have you considered making the community thing your only niche? For example
you would have a way to embed a sales process entirely inside the forum.
That's something I would use and find really cool

~~~
stuckk
Yeah some very big forums already have this. But it's not very well executed.
Example: <http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=2429403>

On Classfy right now you can add your forum username and the url to your
profile. There is no way to authenticate the user but if many members from a
forum join and list with classfy. We will arrange something with the owner of
the forum to authenticate the users.

I have added a reddit authentication system too.

~~~
dvdhsu
> On Classfy right now you can add your forum username and the url to your
> profile. There is no way to authenticate the user but if many members from a
> forum join and list with classfy. We will arrange something with the owner
> of the forum to authenticate the users.

Pretend that I'm arn, running MacRumors. Why should I switch to your service?

My own "Marketplace" forum is working well. People who sell a lot on there
have a reputation for not ripping others off. For those that are new, it's
either _caveat emptor_ or going through PayPal when something bad happens.

There's also Heatware already. It allows you to leave feedback for forum
transactions. Your account is linked to all your forum accounts, so if you're
new to one forum, but established in another, you have references. Here's my
feedback page, for example:

[http://www.heatware.com/eval.php?show=to&id=69703&nu...](http://www.heatware.com/eval.php?show=to&id=69703&num_days=0)

They have around 70K registered users right now. If you want to displace them,
it's going to be difficult (especially because people have momentum on
Heatware already: they don't want to lose all their feedback to move to
another system).

~~~
stuckk
The users on Macrumors can list on Classfy and then post their link on their
forum posting. Think of it like a image hosting. Many forums have their own
attachment feature however people prefer to use image hosts. Also another
reason why to post on Classfy is that their listing is visible to everyone on
Classfy and Macrumors.. Mac rumors will get lots of traffic from this as the
users will see that many of these Macbook related posts are from people from
Macrumors forum.

Heatware is pretty good for feedback, if they facilitated transaction it would
have been even better. We are not really trying facilitate feedback of every
forum transaction only those that occur on Classfy. However we respect
people's previous feedbacks and so You can add your heatware profile to your
Classfy profile.

The problem is that launching any marketplace you are faced with the chicken
and egg problem. To try and get passed this problem we have released this as
more of an MVP. Maybe forum users wont embrace our site but another niche
might. So we will pivot towards them. There are MANY niches that need their
own marketplace but currently don't. Take a look at
<http://www.coalmineclassifieds.com/> there is also another one for Oil and
Gas and agricultural. Innovation is not evenly spread out in many areas of
tech the reason is developers innovate because they want to solve their own
problems. How many Techies are familiar with enough with the coal industry in
order to disrupt it with a marketplace only dedicated to coal. Which probably
will be very lucrative

------
calbear81
Hey Stuckk, did you decide on what you wanted to do with your site?

The hardest part is to build enough momentum to have a viable marketplace
otherwise you're stuck with a chicken and egg problem where no one posts
because no one's buying and no one's buying because no one's posting.

I have a novel idea that I'm happy to share (and work on if you're interested)
and that's a classifieds marketplace with REAL identities. I've sold and
bought many things on Craigslist and Ebay over the years and I've come to
value and appreciate people who don't give me the runaround or try to scam me.
I think a lot of the good folks who I do meet when I buy or sell feel the same
way about anonymous online classifieds. I personally always feel uncomfortable
inviting complete strangers to my house to demo an item I'm selling w/o
knowing a bit about who they are and if they're a known scam artist.

Some sites like Replyboard are trying to solve this with reputation and
ratings for classifieds sellers but to a large degree they are hidden behind
screen names and such. I would love to buy and sell locally to REAL people who
are willing to back the stuff they sell with their name/identity. How would I
do this? I would require two concurrent identity logins > Facebook & LinkedIn.
I know this will limit the number of people who would participate but you
would be surprised at how many "professionals" fit into this group.

Let me know what you think and best of luck with Classfy!

------
kaolinite
Why not ask questions about things related to your website on forums, etc, so
it seems like you're not advertising when in reality you are?

That was a joke ;-)

First of all, nice site. Not sure what market you're aiming for but I for one
would love to see the death of ebay. How did you get those products on there?
Are they yours? Friends?

Consider putting your site on here: <http://www.betabait.com/>

Maybe you could get in touch with a few local charity shops (or any shop
really) and ask them if you could photograph their products and put them on
your site? That's how Zappos got started :-)

~~~
stuckk
Some of them are mine and my friends but most of them are just people who had
signed up before.

What we are aiming for is a place to sell your stuff. Hassle free and simple.
Most people hate eBay because it's overly complex, restricted and expensive.

I think that's a good idea. Going to stores and selling their products. If I
actually sell some items, then I can tell the manager and maybe they can start
doing it themselves

~~~
kaolinite
If I ever sell anything on eBay, I always do it through the mobile app because
I've found the mobile app - even with the slower text entry - is so much
faster to use. The regular web interface is utterly terrible.

Just a thought, btw (not sure if you're already doing this, haven't tried to
sell anything with you) - have you considered using a webcam plugin so people
can add pictures for items via webcam?

Both eBay and PayPal have such horrible, slow websites which are begging to be
innovated against. I hope you do well :-)

~~~
stuckk
Thank You. That's a fantastic idea. I always found that it was kind of a
hassle to take pictures then upload to my pc.

Thank You. :)

~~~
kaolinite
No probs. This library is pretty good if you're using jQuery:
<http://www.xarg.org/project/jquery-webcam-plugin/>

~~~
stuckk
I actually found the exact same thing :)

------
calculus
Marketplaces are hard to launch.

Try to be the leader in your district (post tracts, talk to people,
geotargeted ads), then be the leader in the others nearest districts, then you
city, then...

~~~
stuckk
Thank you. Never thought about that.

------
debacle
Suggestion: I hate the scrollbar-within-a-scrollbar thing. Either lock the
window height so I don't get two scrollbars, or don't limit the height of the
scrolling div.

~~~
stuckk
Gotcha. Will fix that ASAP

