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Developing a marketplace for ASD artists, craftspeople, and businesses

I wish I had the skills to help with this. I would definitely participate in such a site though. It sounds like an incredible plan and a great way to raise awareness and promote the positive aspects of AS as well.
 
I've maintained my own website for several years. My area mainly lies in making it pretty, my scripting skills aren't up enough to do heavy PHP, Ajax, or other stuff. I would have an interest in using it, because I am a freelance artist on the side.

Legalities would be my first concern. You'd need a disclaimer exempting you from being financially liable if the advertisers' failed to keep their end of a transaction, along with terms of service and other monitoring things to keep an eye on potentially illegal stuff. And of course there's all the paperwork like LLC or S-Corp and other entities, who the boss is, and other business stuff.

For future funding, I'd recommend "premium" accounts or adspace. A sidebar of rotating ads of a set amount per month, and people pay to have more time in the spotlight than the average people in the search results. (Personally, I love Project Wonderful for this kind of thing.)
 
AsheSkyler said:
Legalities would be my first concern.
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This a top element people forget about when starting a site.

Also, sometimes people will get harassed on a site. I seen it happen with a site I use to host for someone but I taken instant action against that party. There many people I know to contact to report a person when they want to cause mischief.
 
Please help me to clarify a few things. And I'm sorry if you have a lot of questions to answer already, and if somebody else already asked the questions you could direct me to the post where you previously answered it. Thanks :)

1) You and your friends (or people you know personally) want to organize a online based store where people on the spectrum can sell their stuff. It this correct?

2) You are a project leader (I believe any project needs a leader, but I guess you could have sort of like a board of directors, or something like that. Is this accurate?

3) you, as a project leader, or one of them, require some free help from other people on the spectrum. Is this correct?

4) What kind of assistance do you require exactly? You could make a list of tasks you want to delegate, then other members here could see which task they would be willing to take on.

5) You say, you want to brainstorm the idea. If people are going to brainstorm the entire idea it'll be pretty easy to get lost in the woods. What subject do you want to brainstorm 1st.

6) If you are not charging any fees, how are you planning to make money?

7) I'm sorry if my last question will seem harsh to you. I've seen it happening before, people get excited about an idea but they never act on it. How committed are you?
 
More brainstorming:

The cheapest and fastest way to get it off the ground might be to use a hybrid approach: a central website built in something like Drupal, with each individual service sold through online store platforms. Each member-seller could sign up for their e-commerce platform separately. There might be complex store requirements (products vs. services, physical delivery vs. virtual delivery), so each vendor may want different features.

If you try to build an entire e-commerce platform from scratch, it's probably going to cost tens of thousands of dollars, as well as being very time-consuming with managing orders, customer service, and sellers who aren't administering their sections well. It might get so complicated that it requires multiple full-time employees.

If you use only the external e-commerce store platforms, they may not have good features for managing multiple sellers, and dealing with order fulfillment from multiple sources.

Combining the two would take the burden off of the central website for customer service and fulfilling orders, and would reduce the workload for member management. If a few members are not fulfilling their orders well, it wouldn't reflect on the central website as much as on the individual vendors. The central website could function more as a showcase and marketing platform than the actual transaction platform.

With a hybrid approach like that, the costs could be very low:
  • Drupal: free. It already has built in features for user registration, permission levels, product showcase, etc. Whatever features it doesn't have, can be added on with PHP/HTML/CSS. It might only take a week or two to build a website like this.
  • E-commerce software: independently obtained by each seller. Some of the services work on a commission only basis, so there are no upfront costs. Each member's showcase could link to their external store.
  • Hosting: USD $60/year.
  • Domain name: $15/year.
  • Labor: management of sellers -- this would be reduced by using external e-commerce software
  • Labor: customer service -- this would be reduced by using external e-commerce software
  • Labor: web development -- negligible, if it's done on volunteer basis
  • Labor: maintenance -- negligible, if it's done on volunteer basis
  • Legal: probably not more than a couple of thousand USD.
With this kind of setup, it could be launched with less than USD $100, not including any legal fees.

The crowdfunding campaign could be used to raise a little bit of cash and get publicity. I think that IndieGogo has flexible funding, so you can still get paid if you don't reach the goal.

Just brainstorming...
 
epath13 said:
6) If you are not charging any fees, how are you planning to make money?
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Maybe it will be ads like this site and people willing to make donations. I have faith we find people want to pitch in. I'm and a few others are already willing to donate for the new site.
 
113 Though I have a felling to start up this site will cost more, you did shared many great resources. For most of the site I would try to find as many volunteers as possible. I know I'm willing to help and I sure many others wrote in this thread is willing to as well.

Also, whoever we choose to host this site, it should be a cloud based provider that makes it easy to add more server capacity as the site grows.
 
I'm basing the $100 estimate for that kind of setup on my previous projects. (I buy hundreds of domain names and launch websites on them.) If you use existing open-source software to do most of the heavy work, the costs can be very low. :)

$100 is a conservative estimate for the scenario I mentioned. It could be done for more like $63 over the first year, if all of the labor is on a volunteer basis.
 
113 said:
I'm basing the $100 estimate for that kind of setup on my previous projects. (I buy hundreds of domain names and launch websites on them.) If you use existing open-source software to do most of the heavy work, the costs can be very low. :)
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The only reason I said it may be more than $100 because I assume we want our site to grow and as the site grows, more resources is needed. But as a whole, you did point out the start-up costs for hosting the site can be low. I also agree using open source software can keep costs low.
 
FYI you then need a Federal tax-ID number as a small business & you need to file taxes quarterly. You also need to incorporate, preferably as a limited liability company to ensure you don't get sued & won't lose your personal assets. This is just the legal side of things & that alone will costs you hundreds of dollars.

The website would have to be sophisticated to allow ALL of us to upload images of artwork. The model should be based on Etsy or art.com. A template website would Not work bc only 1 administrator can upload images. You'd need to Hire a programmer & he would charge $5-10k for the development of the site.

Not trying to burst your bubble but this is the reality of small business. Again, consider KickStarter for seed money.
 
JDartistic said:
FYI you then need a Federal tax-ID number as a small business & you need to file taxes quarterly. You also need to incorporate, preferably as a limited liability company to ensure you don't get sued & won't lose your personal assets. This is just the legal side of things & that alone will costs you hundreds of dollars.
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This can be a complex topic as each country is different. Small business in Canada only need to file yearly and this I know because I file taxes many times. Also, in Canada, you don't need a tax ID if your sales is less than $30,000 per year. Despite I see your getting us to consider other things, if
Slithytoves in a different country than JDartistic, then the business structure and laws might be very different for Slithytoves country.


JDartistic said:
You'd need to Hire a programmer & he would charge $5-10k for the development of the site.
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Despite traditionally programmers do cost money, there been many products people willing to volunteer their time for free. I do have faith we can find people interested volunteering that believes in our cause. I'm one of those people willing to volunteer
 
The Penguin said:
Despite traditionally programmers do cost money, there been many products people willing to volunteer their time for free. I do have faith we can find people interested volunteering that believes in our cause. I'm one of those people willing to volunteer
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Hooray! I think if folks can volunteer services, that's ideal. :)

FYI the biz laws in The US are rather strict. Maybe someone can volunteer legal & CPA services.

I mention the website costs bc I had an ecommerce site for 2 years & got out of cuz it was too expensive & I didn't have the traffic. I know nothing re ads & marketing. I did okay - made about $10k a year selling art but It wasn't worth the hassle. I did just as well selling at local art festivals.

Anyway, I'm not trying to be a naysayer. Just practical experience. I still say KickStarter could help fund this. :)
 
I think lots of people got a little too excited about the idea. We've got no replies from the original poster yet, I hope all the responses hasn't freaked her out :) We still don't know who's going to be the leader and the owner :) It reminds me of this: one person has written a song and wants some musicians to help recording a few parts, while those musicians already thinking about joining the songwriter's band :) there may not be a "band" at all, Slithytoves didn't say anything about creating the marketplace together, she just asked if people here can offer some help. I hope she's not going to give up on the idea because of all the things that need to be done in order to implement it. And I also hope, Slithytoves will clarify what she wants to do exactly. :)
 
JDartistic said:
I mention the website costs bc I had an ecommerce site for 2 years & got out of cuz it was too expensive & I didn't have the traffic. I know nothing re ads & marketing. I did okay - made about $10k a year selling art but It wasn't worth the hassle. I did just as well selling at local art festivals.
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Getting the traffic for the site would be very important. One way to get the word out for the site is using social media. Of course need to think of other ideas as well for this.
 
The Penguin said:
Yes she did. She did made one reply for this post. Also realized it is the weekend but I sure Slithytoves will be back here soon. People can get a little busy sometimes.
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Ok, I see it now, it was on the 1st page. I don't know, maybe I misunderstand something. I guess other posters see the whole situation clearer than I do :)
 
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