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?
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.
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.
Crypto. Since chargebacks dont exist and no central entity is needed
But then you end up using crypto
Crypto itself isnt the problem. The problem is people trying to trust 3rd parties as we must in the current banking system. Tbf, i do think most crypto is a scam and only use a very limited subset. monero, Ethereum, and bitcoin are the only ones i will seriously touch.
The issue then becomes conflict resolution.
Let’s set aside the ocean of scammers out there and look at issues buyers and sellers often have.
I’m guilty of missing an issue with an item that I did not disclose. If I sent that to the buyer and I wasn’t included to give them a refund, what recourse would they have other than a bad review?
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I’ve actually had a package delivered light.
I ordered two gas struts for my car, the corner of the package had clearly gotten damaged during handling and I only had one gas strut.
I have a friend who works at a distribution center for one of the big private carriers. He says that packages get ripped open on the automated conveyors and lose their contents all the time.
In that case I would accept the return and file an insurance claim. If that buyer is doing that enough then the insurance underwriter will come after them and you definitely don’t want an insurance company on your ass.
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I think a good starting point would be to have your Wordpress website with the ActivityPub plugin installed (which makes every product page a Fediverse-friendly post) and WooCommerce or some other type of e-commerce product on it. The payment will still not be free software (Stripe & Paypal, usually), but at least you own your shop and you can easily share it with the Fediverse.
With all due respect, I think money exchanging hands can stay out of the fediverse. It doesn’t line up with it being free of advertising.
Setting up local swap shops would be more in line with the ethos I’ve seen on the site so far.
Speaking of advertising it wild how Ublock origin doesn’t have any numbers alerting me of trackers and ads it has blocked.
