
Ask HN: Would you want to sell code of complete websites? - CAFEEFAC
Let me clarify: if you&#x27;ve heard of Themeforest, you&#x27;ll probably know that it is a website where you can submit website designs that any number of people can buy. The problem is essentially this: you can only buy front-end code.<p>This question is mainly directed towards developers. Would you be interested in creating complete websites (as a template, with both back-end and front-end code) solely for the purpose of selling it on a website similar to Themeforest?
Example: Full code (back-end and front-end) of a generic social media website.<p>Thank you very much for reading and taking the time to answer this question. Any feedback is appreciated, as long as it&#x27;s constructive. :)
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everdev
People do this on [https://flippa.com](https://flippa.com)

But most of the sites are junky WordPress sites. And people pay a couple
hundred dollars depending on the setup and the niche.

If you can build a flexible back end, then you could find entrepreneurs
willing to pay thousands or tens of thousands to have it customized.

So, would you rather sell 100 $200 "as is" sites, or 1 $20k custom site?

~~~
rhizome
_If you can build a flexible back end, then you could find entrepreneurs
willing to pay thousands or tens of thousands to have it customized._

On Flippa?

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vwochnik
I'd be interested in that too. As far as I can see, there are websites on
offer but they are all finished. Where is the customization part?

~~~
everdev
No, Flippa is for finished sites. Finding a client and building what they want
can generate you thousands in revenue.

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5_minutes
Before the SaaS hype, this was just called "Scripts".

[http://www.hotscripts.com](http://www.hotscripts.com)

Check out the PHP folder section. It certainly has advantages using: bought
scripts, instead of everything being a subscription. It has a onetime fee, and
often can be modified yourself to anything you want.

~~~
dvt
Oh man what a blast from the past. Completely forgot about this; I haven't
been to hotscripts.com in like a decade!

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stevekemp
For me, as a Perl-lover, three words that both take me back and fill me with a
little bit of horror:

* Matt's Script Archive

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callmeed
binpress does this already:
[http://www.binpress.com/](http://www.binpress.com/). I've purchased iOS
components from there in the past. Not sure how active/popular it is
currently. As others have said, there's also flippa, hotscripts, etc.

I like the idea and I'd look into selling some code (I have a collection of
Sinatra apps I re-use for all sorts of things from APIs to payments). The
issue really comes down to support, customization, and deployment. I don't
mind writing some documentation _once_ , but I don't want to spend 4 hours
supporting something I sold for $299.

Ignore the people that say there's no market. One way I think you make this
stand out is with a "verified" badge of sorts. For any project, ensure that it
has one or more of the following:

\- Dockerfile that works

\- Deploys to Heroku with min. effort

\- Has a test suite that passes

\- Has a working demo

\- Includes a minimum amount of documentation/setup videos

That's my 2¢

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CAFEEFAC
I love you man! What great feedback. Thank you very much.

As many have already posted on here, there seems to be several solutions to
the problem already. I will definitely take these suggestions into mind! I
might just create an MVP to test for any demand first, though.

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primaryobjects
Buyers are typically more interested in buying a niche customer base/traffic,
then they are about buying a web site code base.

In fact, many buyers don't even consider the programming language or platform
the site is hosted on as being important, so long as they can get it up and
running - and it has good PR and traffic analytics.

Hence, why fippa works (at least for selling a site for a few hundred; if
you're lucky).

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EnderMB
I understand Flippa, but there's one part of it that grates on me.

A person is selling a site for $200, and it makes them $50 a month. Many of
these sites require little to no maintenance so why are they selling the site
in the first place? Surely it's worth keeping the site going until the traffic
dies out because you'll make more money that way?

I've been tempted to buy a site on Flippa before, but even though this is an
extreme example I've often felt like some of the deals are too good to be
true.

~~~
mod
The deals are too good to be true.

Otherwise people (me included) would be snatching them up.

Most of the sites on flippa are newly-created wordpress sites. Often they
build a site once, then sell it repeatedly, each time with a new domain name.
They can sell them for $60 or something and have a minimal amount of time
invested, plus a domain name.

These sites likely will never make their new owner one cent, although perhaps
they're not a bad way to get your feet wet.

Anyway, any site selling buy-it-now for 4x MRR is lying about something.

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krapp
So instead of selling templates or whatever, I'm selling, like, a Dockerfile
or Vagrantfile, seeded DB, backend and frontend, the whole thing? Sure - if
the price is right, sign me up.

I have no problem with the concept necessarily, but I feel like it's kind of a
solution looking for a problem that's already been solved, either by
freelancing or, as mentioned elsewhere here, Wordpress/Wix/etc. The budget for
freelance work along the lines of "Youtube/Twitter/Amazon clone" tends to be
incredibly low, certainly lower than most Western developers can afford to
live on, so my main concern would be, whether or not it the market would be
worth the time.

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mtmail
I started my website project with such a template: a Ruby on Rails project
(open source on github) that already included user registration, email list
management and selling products (ebooks). Over time I've replaced almost all
parts but it was a huge timesaver in the first couple of months. I could see
that work for Rails, Django, Express.js and similar frameworks.

~~~
archildress
Care to share the project?

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mtmail
This was the template [https://github.com/RailsApps/rails-stripe-membership-
saas](https://github.com/RailsApps/rails-stripe-membership-saas) In the
'generate' section you'll see it asks a couple of questions to setup different
configuration. The project built is
[https://geocoder.opencagedata.com/](https://geocoder.opencagedata.com/) but
like I said most parts are replaced by now

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daxfohl
Seems like it'd be hard to market. Designs you can look at and immediately
differentiate. Back ends, eh, how could you tell? Unless you're going all-in
like Magento, with customer support and everything under the sun, what would
you have to differentiate your solution?

Between that on one end and todomvc.com on the other, I don't see any middle
ground that would interest anyone.

I think the better thing is like Heroku, with a platform and pluggable
services, and you write your own code into it.

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throwaway2016a
These are called "Turn Key Websites" and they were quite common in the late
90s early 2000s.

Most common were dating and real estate websites.

Edit: infact, doing a Google search not much has changes. Tons of scammy sites
you can buy for only $300 each.

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brad0
There are websites out there dedicated to flipping web sites.

Most sites are people's side projects that bring in a bit of revenue. They've
lost interest or have different priorities.

They sell it to others for anywhere from $2000 to $100k+.

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hedora
I wonder if you could make a go at private cloud installs. Contrast synology
and a roll your own NFS server. The former has perf analytics history, auto
update, auto scrubbing, well supported apps, bullet proof certified hardware
(as much as you'll find in the < $1000 range).

There is not a great solution for well-curated (read: backed up, encrypted and
updated in a standard way, and works on the first try) dockerfiles. I'm to the
point where I'd pay ~$10-100 per service for that at home, and I run about 5
services. Presumably the SMB market will pay more than me.

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AznHisoka
No. Sell me data and then you're talking. (ie geolocation data, lists of most
popular hash tags, lists of sites that use MixPanel, etc) Most code is
worthless. Its the data thats worth money.

~~~
CAFEEFAC
Hey, thanks for commenting! :)

I'll have to disagree a little with you though. As we have heard many times,
"time is money" and you can save a lot of time by buying templates of some
sort. Of course, this brings us back to whether or not the marketplace will be
filled with Wordpress templates, thus making my website identical to
Themeforest.

Thank you for your input though, I wonder if there is any data I could also
have users sell on the marketplace. I'll have to think a little about that.

~~~
AznHisoka
Yes, time is money, which is why I would prefer to outsource the boiler plate
app code to someone else. Don't even bother looking to see if there's a
"template" I can use (which inevitably I will find holes/flaws in and want to
customize and then find out it's a pain to customize, and takes more time than
if I originally developed it from scratch).

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SonOfLilit
I don't feel there's a market - for very generic things you have Wordpress
plugins or Wix, for anything less generic you simply can't create it without a
very specific use case in mind. There is no "generic social media website"
more specific than that Wordpress plugin that makes it look and feel like
Facebook.

~~~
alistproducer2
I'm inclined to agree. There's a wordpress plugin for almost any generic use
case one can think of. Social media site? Ultimate member and a bunch of
others have that covered. Need it more customized? Jump in the source and
fiddle until it does what you want.

I just did that yesterday. I needed to control access to certain pages to only
include users that have paid for credits using stripe (provided by WP simple
pay). I modified the Wordpress Access Control plug in and in about an hour I
had a solution for a very specific use case.

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dkarapetyan
Doesn't this already exist as WordPress themes?

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rlafranchi
I sold a wordpress theme site on flippa for $400 a few years ago. It included
the site, themes, and demo sites. I was surprised I even got that much. Given
the time spent, It wasn't a very good investment.

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sebringj
there is sandstorm and codecanyon already

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blowski
And CodeCanyon is owned by the same people as ThemeForest, Envato. You can buy
DolphinPHP on there, which is one of the best open-source Facebook clones.

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SirLJ
People would be interested in buying the business if it is profitable (and not
solely based on ad words gimmicks that would disappear with the next google
update)

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ronilan
_sell_ code - you betcha!

 _list for (potential) sale_ \- no thanka...

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bevan
There could be a market amongst those learning the given tech stack. I would
have definitely considered buying well-built apps to study back in the day.

~~~
CAFEEFAC
Actually, that is something I thought as well! And the marketplace wouldn't be
limited to only selling website code, it could sell app code too. Thanks for
commenting. :)

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olalonde
There's no doubt the answer to your question is yes. The more interesting
question would be whether there'd be any buyers.

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Giorgi
Same company that runs themeforest sells scripts on codecanyon. Yes, full
frontend and backend was called scripts back in the days.

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nerdponx
Isn't there already a cottage industry for Squarespace themes?

