I sell stuff on eBay and FB marketplace. In the vein of platforms that you love to hate. What would it take to build software on the fediverse for the purpose of selling things?

  •  TheOtherJake   ( @TheOtherJake@beehaw.org ) English
    2•1 year ago

    I imagine the biggest challenge is some kind of central payment authority and dispute management. I won’t touch anything to do with Meta, and as a former 6 figure a year eBay seller, the total percentages and final margin for the seller are just not viable. Between tax, shipping, and fees I averaged 35% overhead with a 100% positive feedback. With a keystone product, that just doesn’t work. This should be more like 20% to make a sustainable business. I have no clue how anyone would build a more effective dispute and payment system but from my experience on eBay, around 5% of all customers are scammers.

    •  SkepticElliptic   ( @SkepticElliptic@beehaw.org ) OPEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      eBay has long abused it’s customers (sellers) and currently they are engaged in dark patterns to get sellers on the treadmill. If you don’t consistently list items, your other items won’t sell. If you don’t use promotions, it won’t sell.

      They rolled out an automatic suggested promotions rate. So eBay will automatically increase your promotion percentage. They also implemented a policy that if a user clicks on any of your promoted listings and then buys any of your items within 30 days then the promotion fee applies to that sale.

      Then there’s fb marketplace which hasn’t been showing items to buyers at all for a long time. Search is completely broken.

      Then craigslist is just dead.

      There’s a bunch of other niche marketplaces like Etsy, discogs, Mercari, Poshmark, but there’s major issues with those as well.

      What I’d really like to do is make a website for “math” trades like bgg does. Except you would simply list anything like you would on eBay and then select things you would like in return.