Hey man, I know a lot of work is going into this plus legal but isn’t that idea totally backwards? I saw people today on FB asking why they should join the site and outside of the trading idea that’s a really good question, I don’t see how you’re going to attract anybody to use this without trying to compete with other sites.
Understand and thanks for letting me know. Do you mean I should list comparisons on the site or compete in another way?
I do Facebook, Instagram and Google Ads to try to target musicians. I try to highlight the differences in some of those ads.
In addition to the Ads to attract musicians, right now I'm starting to contact music stores around the US to get them to join. I believe it needs sellers first, buyers will come if there's listings. I believe it will take a while and I have created a 12 month roadmap that doesn't bleed me dry and targets a niche within this niche to try to build it. I don't expect overnight success, it took Reverb maybe 3 or 4 years before they started really gaining momentum.
For reference, here are a few differences:
- lower fee (not much, but lower), hopefully can lower more in the future if things work out the way I'm imagining it to be
- ability to trade
- ability for a music store to accept trade-ins
- Protections; the terms are set by each seller, any disputes are settled according to those terms.
- No PayPal - this is also a negative because it's so popular, but there is no buyer coming back 180 days after a sale to file a dispute.
- sign up using your social media account (Google gmail account, Facebook or LinkedIn)
I tried to integrate with Gear Message boards (like this one, TGP, others) so you could use your Rig-Talk account, but none have that ability. I contacted XenForo (the software company that this site and many others are built on) but they could not do it either. So that was a bummer.
Will build more features as time goes by, but will take a while to catch up with all the bells and whistles on those sites for sure.