

Show HN: A storebuilder contained in a single text area - matthias
http://listofthingsforsale.com

======
steve8918
This is fantastic. Nice and simple, and it does exactly what I want it to as a
seller. Great job!!!!!

Be careful about feature creep. The reason why Craiglist works is because it
doesn't try to do too much. I think this can definitely have a similar sort of
success given how freaking easy it is to use!

~~~
necrodome
I use craigslist when I want to sell something, because that's where the
buyers are, not because of its simplicity (or lack of futures). And ditto for
ebay.

If I were a serious seller, I would want a shopping site with bells and
whistles (a detailed admin area, user accounts, reviews, discussions, etc)
that might contribute to the selling part.

This site would be a fantastic tool if it worked with craigslist/ebay.

~~~
XLcommerce
This is an MVP. As such I think it works marvelously. Bells and whistles can
be added later and if they're added with the same ideology of simplicity first
then this could be a real winner of a product.

------
matthias
MVP for YC'12 application. We've been heads down on this for a month now so it
seemed like the right time to gather some feedback!

~~~
callmeed
It's a cool concept and you could go a lot of directions with it.

My main feedback is that I don't know which step to take next. I see 6 links
in the yellow bar ... be a little more deliberate/forceful in directing me on
what to do next.

Not that you asked, but here's some wacky/random ideas off the top of my head:

\- Do Stripe checkout in addition to PayPal (ask for Stripe API key & secret
over SSL)

\- Provision a Twilio phone number for each list after registration. Use it as
a temporary way for sellers to call the buyer, for notifications, and to
add/remove items via SMS

\- For quick mobile integration, use MailGun to post incoming email messages
to your app and turn them into listings. That way people can add items &
pictures from their smartphone. I've done this and you can literally get it
going in < 1 hour.

\- Allow me to sell a digital file. If I add a [d] to a line item in my list,
prompt me to upload a .zip file or high-res JPG. BOOM, instant store for
selling stock photography, ebooks, or WordPress themes.

~~~
ricree
_My main feedback is that I don't know which step to take next. I see 6 links
in the yellow bar ... be a little more deliberate/forceful in directing me on
what to do next._

I agree with this one. There's already a "Now Click Here" button at the start.
I'd suggest extending that concept to successive pages until the seller has
filled in whatever info you think most pages should have. Sidebar and config
come to mind as two that most people will want to fill out.

And perhaps during that first time there should be a stronger visual emphasis
on the top buttons so that customers are more likely to link them to the
options they're seeing.

On the whole, though, it looks great. Nice MVP.

~~~
matthias
Thanks, this is a great point and is borne out by the stats. Last night we saw
83% hitting the "Now Click Here" button but far far less taking it beyond
that. We're talking about a consistent "what to do next" element now.

------
lpolovets
This is _terrific_.

Some small comments:

* When I click on "checkout", a few things are not clear: how much is shipping (seems to be free?), how long will shipping take, etc.

* I put something with an "&" in the title into my shopping cart. On the PayPal landing page, it turns into &amp;. Also, the item description is "shopid: x, itemid: y", which is not very helpful, especially if it's two months from now and I'm trying to remember what I purchased.

* The list of item in the shopping cart should be links, not text.

* It's an MVP, so I'm sure this is on your "next steps" list, but it would be nice to delete specific items from the cart instead of having to clear the whole cart.

* There's a Login/Signup link at the top, but it's not clear what the benefits of Signup would be. Clicking on the link doesn't reveal the benefits either.

Again, this is awesome.

~~~
matthias
Cheers for the feedback, these are all things we need to think about and your
suggestions for the cart are spot on. In terms of shipping, we stripped it
down in the seller config to just postage is included in prices, with a
dropdown to specify where you shipping to. We'll sort out options for postage
prices by item/ by order later on.

~~~
stef25
Please do! At the moment it seems only possible to offer different shipping
rates by duplicating the product. So Fender guitar for US, Fender guitar for
EU, etc. This is a bit of a blocker, other than that I'd love to get something
up and running.

Really great effort!

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hackDaily
I find this quite brilliant. I'm a fan of simplicity and minimalism, and this
is a good example of implementing the bare-minimum and getting something
useful out of it. I'm actually a bit jealous I didn't think of it first. Good
work, and good luck to you!

~~~
gbog
> minimalism > bare-minimum

Hum, I don't think adding a Change your background function should be included
in a minimal site.

~~~
matthias
well you've caught us on that point! but a little frivolity is ok too, right?
"A little madness now and then, is relished by the wisest men" - Mr Willy
Wonka.

~~~
gbog
I did not say I did not like the fact that one could change the background (in
fact I like it because it doesn't go in the way), I just noted that the use of
"minimalist" repeated twice in parent (now GGP) was not proper.

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powertower
A plus for minimalism, but I don't see who this is for and why they would use
it?

What's your market?

It's not ebay or craigslist. You'll never get enough buyers and sellers
together; then there is the fraud/scam issue.

I don't think it's existing merchants with websites.

So who is it?

~~~
XLcommerce
How about a small merchant with a bricks and mortar store that wants the most
friction less way possible to list goods online? Business people are busy. If
it takes 30 sec to set up a store that's a big win.

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tehaaron
To me this seems to hit the same market as Etsy. People who spend their time
creating things, selling one-off items, are just going online so that they can
put it on a business card, ect would use something like this. I showed this to
a girl who I was just talking to about putting her stuff on Etsy, she likes
this FAR more, but the only thing she wanted was to use her own domain.

~~~
jgallagher11
Thanks for the feedback. We'll be having some kind of setup where people can
use their own domain for their site for sure.

~~~
ollerac
Yes, this would be key. I have a few friends I'll recommend this service too
as soon as this is implemented. Also, how much of a cut of sales do you guys
take? Or are you thinking a monthly subscription model?

~~~
jgallagher11
Cool. We're thinking a monthly subscription. We're still working out final
pricing.

------
mdc
Really nice interface. Kudos there.

Who are your target users, people using Etsy or eBay? Are you competing with
other services like those on ease of use alone? For people looking to buy
things, will you provide some search across all users or are you just giving
your sellers a link they can promote?

~~~
danvideo
This is what I'm wondering, too--- does everyone have to do self promotion or
will there be a global directory/search capability?

~~~
jgallagher11
At first, to overcome the chicken and egg problem, it will be "bring your own
traffic". As we grow, there will be global directory with search, with
emphasis on your local shops.

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TechnoFou
Wow! That is so simplistic and minimal; it just works like you would imagine!
Great idea, great work and great result.

I'd see this text field becoming more and more intelligent over time with
other functions!

~~~
matthias
thanks! so far we're working on the following for the text field:

+quantity for multiple item sales, ie +5 #tags for categorising, ie
#electronics

further ideas welcomed

~~~
polymatter
I know you know this, but just adding my voice to say please don't feature
bloat it. The value is in its very simplicity.

------
XLcommerce
Love the idea. The execution is perfect. Really caught my attention because
I'm developing my own store builder.

Works magnificently well for techies because we are all familiar with store
admin areas, publishing a site etc. Great if techies are your target market.

For an average Joe it might be a bit confusing. People may not even realise
they are building a store, and instead think... 'Why can anyone just add a
listing to this page?'

To help with this a guided tutorial may be useful.

All the best.

~~~
jgallagher11
Thanks for the feedback. Excellent points. We're going to be doing plenty of
user testing with shop keepers and market stall holders in the coming months.

------
bill-nordwall
Love this!

A few notes:

\- When I click on an item thumbnail on your sample list page, it takes me
directly to the image hosted on S3. Having the image appear in a lightbox
would ensure that users are kept on the page.

\- The title tag for every page reads "List of Things for Sale". I would
populate the title tag with the name of the user (e.g. "Matthias McGregor's
List of Things for Sale")

\- Add FB/Twitter/Email to Friend links, which would provide three one-click
marketing channels for users to share their for-sale items with their
immediate network.

\- Populate the page with Facebook Open Graph metadata. That way if users want
to post a link to their store on Facebook, they'll get a nice link description
and thumbnail automatically.

\- I like the single-page experience, but I can't help wondering if it would
be better if the app would generate discrete pages for each item users are
selling. This might make it easier for users to share each item discretely,
instead of just point people towards a single store page.

Really nice work!

~~~
jgallagher11
Thanks for all the nice comments!

\- We've debated the pros and cons of lightboxes for a while now. We don't
like them and prefer to see the image without chrome, but our users may feel
differently. We'll soon see!

\- Excellent point. I'm really looking forward to making loads of little
tweaks like this.

\- Yep, totally agree - it's coming.

\- Thanks for the tip. It will be done!

\- Item pages are on our list of things to do, although it's another tension
between minimalism and e-commerce.

------
grandalf
this is very cool! i love it. Suggested feature: Automatically find a suitable
image for the item via google and have it uploaded by default.

~~~
noblethrasher
Or a compromise,

Invite them to upload an image or _click_ to suggest one from a catalog of
images (maybe search Flickr for cc/commercial use images).

------
stdbrouw
Love it. The "just email me" option is very appealing — no hassle.

To some extent, though, you are going after the Craigslist market by focusing
on one-time sales by individuals. Not easy. I wonder at which point an online
store becomes more sensible to users than the classifieds model?

Any thoughts about where precisely in the e-commerce sphere you see yourself
fitting in?

~~~
jgallagher11
We see ourselves as a good fit for small shops or market traders who find
selling online through existing options intimidating or unwieldy.

We think there's also a gap in the market for one person companies who want
customers to visit them in person. List could help them sell to existing
customers, who are most likely to buy something else.

------
wingerlang
How about letting the user change language? If you have some interface or
something I could help with Swedish. I really can't wait for this to be more
complete (+Quantity is what I am referring to)

Also I have a bug. If I write "iPhone 3GS $70" it does not show. If I add a
description it shows.

~~~
matthias
Thanks for the offer, that would be superb! There's not contact details in
your profile, so if you fancy droping me a message at
matthias@listofthingsforsale.com we could talk more about this. Additional
languages and currencies will be great for this site - we can geo-locate users
when possible switch to the right one. Really looking forward to hearing from
you. Cheers for the bug report too, we'll get that sorted.

------
marquis
This is beautiful. I signed up for the purpose of receiving updates from you -
I have many friends who will adore this and cannot build their own sites. Do
you have plans to do more with this? How are you monetizing? _Ok, I just went
to publish and it tells me._

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pkamb
You should pre-populate the images with stock photos found on google images.
Removes one more barrier if I'm going to use stock photos anyway. (Obviously
clearly mark it as "stock photo", still make it easy to upload my own). This
is really cool by the way.

~~~
icebraining
_You should pre-populate the images with stock photos found on google images._

That's copyright infringement. Just because they're available on Google Images
doesn't mean you can use them on your own site.

~~~
wmeredith
You can ping Google images for images filtered by licenses.

~~~
icebraining
That's useful as a tool for a manual search, but you can't trust it by itself,
since sites can tag any image as CC. In fact, you can find very well known
-and definitively not CC licensed- photos on that search, like World Press
Photo winners or Leibovitz's.

------
jqueryin
You might consider using the placeholder tag for the textarea so I don't have
to remove the text to enter my own (or at least a graceful fallback version).
On click, you could simply put the same text in a notice below the textarea
for usage reference.

~~~
jgallagher11
Thanks for the nice words and the feedback. We just ran out of time on this.
We'll be spending a lot more time on making this text area easier and nicer to
use.

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philjackson
What a fantastic idea. I would/will use this.

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snorkel
Brilliant. Needs a mobile app that lets me take a pic then post it as a
listing. Then I'd spend an afternoon clicking pictures of everything in my
attic.

~~~
jgallagher11
Thanks. I'm really excited about building a native iOS app for our site and
it's one of our important milestones.

~~~
dreww
TBH i think the email method mentioned up-thread is more awesome, but wtf do i
know. you could do that more quickly, it would seem to me.

~~~
jgallagher11
Thanks. It's definitely way less effort (and I speak as an Objective C coder)
but doesn't have the ease or slickness of taking the photo then starting to
sell.

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jasondrowley
I don't know what your pricing model will be, but might I suggest a way for
users to create a one-off online store.

I have a lot of books I'd want to sell to my friends/networks, because they'll
pay me more than Amazon or EBay. While a monthly subscription wouldn't be
feasible for a user like me, I'd gladly fork over $10-20 to set up a one-time-
use online store.

I really, really like it. Excellent work.

~~~
matthias
Thanks Jason, that's an interesting idea. We've talked about payment models
that charge incrementally for actual usage, like Tarsnap does - which would be
a good fit for alot of different use cases. I think the issue though is that a
flat rate per month is much more easy for people to understand.

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notpmocd
Really well executed. Simple, clean, elegant. This was a lot of fun to set up
the first time! I know it's the mvp but I wanted quantity support on listings
& adding to cart, and I immediately missed the ability to define a per-item
shipping cost separately from the price of the item (keeps perceived pricing
lower). Great first pass, and with a little polish could be a pretty excellent
tool.

------
CurrentB
Ahhhhh this makes me sad because I've had something very close to this idea
months ago and have been slowly picking away at it. Great job though.

~~~
jpadvo
You should still do it This is a big world, and there is lots of space for
people to take different whacks at similar ideas.

------
savrajsingh
I really like this! Great work. The best part is your 'listing' on your own
store never expires or gets buried by other listings.

------
roqetman
This is really great - I love the simplicity of the ui. One suggestion: a link
that says a bit about your company/who built it.

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dougbarrett
I clicked on "Now click here!" and it gave me the shopping cart, then I click
on "List" to edit it, and it showed the text box again. Once I click "Save",
then it doesn't show the iPhone. If I click on "List again to edit it, it
still does show it.

It is very cool though, I am loving the interface of it.

~~~
jgallagher11
Thanks for the the nice comments and the bug report. The text area is
currently very buggy, something I'll be fixing very soon.

------
noblethrasher
Fantastic!

You might want to mention that users can drag and drop images as well... that
was a nice surprise.

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brador
How are you going to track stock levels?

~~~
matthias
We're working on adding (minimal) inventory control. You'll be able to put
+Quantity on a line, ie +5 if you have five to sell. The site will then track
stock level, and you can edit the quantity in the list at any time.

------
BadiPod
I found a glitch while creating my store.

I couldn't add more than one item, even when I copied and pasted your code
from the front page (sample) directly.

<http://listofthingsforsale.com/pleasereturnme>

~~~
matthias
Thanks for letting us know, looking into it now.

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agscala
This is really cool, but what's the benefit of using a textarea instead of a
list of small forms?

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mike-cardwell
Love the concept of this app. I'm assuming it will eventually let me sell
things in £'s or €'s?

~~~
jgallagher11
Indeed it will. And longer term, many other currencies too. :)

------
ishi
Cute, I like it.

One thought: although the text area is cool for us geeks, what value does it
add for the typical user over a more structured data entry approach? I think
the text area leaves too many ways for the user to make mistakes.

~~~
jgallagher11
This might be the case. We're going to do lots of user testing to see what
issues typical users have with it.

If we detect the user is making a lot of mistakes, we'll fall back to showing
them a traditional form with fields.

~~~
zupa
Maybe you could use an excel like table as well if the textarea makes a lot
trouble. (I like it though..) Nice job!

~~~
jgallagher11
Thanks. That's a nice idea. Long term, we're going to format the text area so
people can copy any paste any list format from almost any source - word,
excel, csv, tab delimited etc.

------
Murkin
Great stuff, only problem: I couldn't figure out how I GET money from
customers

~~~
matthias
If you click Config there's a small payments panel. So far you can enter a
paypal address to receive your payements and it will integrate with the cart,
or you can simply accept your orders via email. We'll integrate with further
providers later on, too.

------
kin
This is slick. My mom could figure this out in less than a minute. Amazing.

------
matthias
YC Application Video: <http://listy.posterous.com/74768699-97655> 1 minute
long / we talk about purpose and target market.

------
nhebb
Nice job, but it needs error handling for price entries. Invalid entries are
skipped with no notification. $0.99 works, but $.99 doesn't. Only handles $
prices (e.g., no euro).

~~~
jgallagher11
Thanks for the nice words. The text entry area is pretty buggy right now. But
we do store invalid entries so people can go back and edit them.

We'll have warnings showing to users when a line can't be parsed.

------
ph0rque
Really nice job. Have you considered auto-posting to craigslist?

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rexreed
Very well done! This is awesome.We have an inventory management system
(bizelo) and we'd love to work with you. Drop me a line!

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ibisum
I wish it would crawl images.google.com to automatically add pictures of the
things in my list .. that would make it terrific.

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rohitkumar
Matthias. This is pretty badass. How do you envision implementation? Props on
the build.

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akavi
How are you going to deal with fraud? (And you _will_ have fraud)

------
FedericoElles
Can I pass also an image url in the single text area for each item?

~~~
matthias
Thanks Federico, that's an interesting idea - we'll have a think about it.
We're keen to keep a good balance between adding options to the text area and
keeping it lightweight. Your input is much appreciated.

~~~
FedericoElles
Thanks. Mostly I take photos with my phone, and those are synchronized with
the cloud, so my images are already in the internet and I would not have to
download and re-upload those again.

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destraynor
Very nice work Matthias.

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antihero
Wicked. Could your regex include £ as well as $? :]

~~~
matthias
Yep, additional currencies are a high priority for us. And we live in Glasgow,
so £'s will come next.

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wingerlang
How about costumizeable row/column-sizes?

~~~
matthias
There is an interesting balance between keeping the interface very simple and
giving pro users the flexibility they require. Possibly in the future we could
find a way to make it skinnable (ie upload custom css) without losing
simplicity, but we'd be very wary of overcomplicating things.

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fens
Awesome work. Love the simplicity.

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nicwest
awesome love the concept, but breaks if you use £ instead of $ :(

~~~
jgallagher11
We switched it from £ to $ just before we posted onto Hacker News. The text
area breaks very easily right now, which we'll be fixing in the coming days.
Thanks for the catch.

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rorrr
Application Error

An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. Please
try again in a few moments.

If you are the application owner, check your logs for details.

~~~
jgallagher11
Thanks for the catch. I'll check the logs and find out why it's doing this.

------
garyhalverson
I think you have something interesting here. Elegance and simplicity are far
more important than previously thought. Clearly this is part of the legacy
left by Steve Jobs. Fantastically engineered products wrapped in beautiful
design. Elegance and simplicity...it just works.

~~~
geargrinder
So now Steve Jobs gets credit for everything well-done? :) Instead, I will
give credit to the two guys who made such an easy-to-use service. Good job on
this!

~~~
garyhalverson
No, not credit...but the fact that elegance and simplicity is clearly a trend
where complex and expansive functionality was the trend in the past (think MS)

