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Luthier bid site

#101
Yeah, I knew the menu layout was limiting in certain respects. There could be a "contact builder" option in each of the menus that each luthier could opt to check if he desires; things he may be willing to entertain that don`t really fall into a "check box"; he may want to select this option for bodies, but not necks, for example. There could also be two main categories: standard design types, and complete one-offs. The builders could, of course, elect to be included in one or both. The one-off category would involve more direct communication and less menus.
 
#102
Bongo, this is an amazing idea. I know because I had it six months ago and was like "naaah, too much liability there," -- still, I think it's great. I hope it works out.

I'd suggest you find a pro-bono lawyer in the crowd to assess this for possible liability issues before going whole hog with it. If you want to PM me I might be able to help out with that angle if you don't know someone.

A per-posting fee akin to a classified ad seems like the best way to roll. Luthiers are on such short margins I wouldn't want to see them have to pay for access or anything so I'd stick that on the buyers, myself.

Assuming you would be refunded if you didn't get at least one response, I'd probably drop 10 bucks on an ad myself.
 
#103
Liability is surprisingly easy to limit in this type of medium. You just post a notice that you are not liable for a dang thing. This is not medicine, food production, or anything of that sort. It's like the gigs listings on CL, or a dating site. None of those places guarantee positive results, or that things won't go horribly wrong for one or both parties in a deal, and all expressly disavow any liability. It's part of the TOS/TOU.
 
#104
So far I am still sticking with the model I proposed earlier, i.e. builders pay me for access to customers, and customers pay builders for access to their time and effort. The goal of the mechanism of the site itself will be to make both of those as efficient and effective as possible.
 
#107
Musiclogic said:
I don't think that model is going to be successful. But that's just me. There may be guys looking to pay for access to customers, and people who will pay to ask questions.
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I agree with this--I think there has got to be a better way about it than with making the luthiers paying a fee to be accessible. If Luthiers wanted to pay for customer accessibility, then they would have budgeted money to get on google ads--there is a bigger audience, and if you only have $X to spend on advertising, then you are going to spend it on whatever reaches the most customers (imo it would be google ads)

I also don't think customers would want to pay either, as it's just a question--it'd be more economical to just keep googling luthiers and emailing them. The draw of the site would be for networking, and you don't really want to present either side with much of a hurdle.

I liked the idea of the 3rd party involved being asked for adspace purchasing--the parts makers/sellers, like stew-mac, or maybe even graphtech and hipshot and similar businesses. My thoughts on that are that maybe having ads for parts might even be considered helpful, as they might help the customer better flesh out what they want on their instrument.

Maybe even GoogleAds might be a good idea, as they pick out certain keywords in the text to supply ads, and they should be relevant to the instrument design. Heck, maybe it'll hook up customers that way, and the luthier didn't even know it, but either way, if the payout is based on clickthrough, then the page would still bring in some money, even if it's not that much.
 
#108
superbassman2000 said:
I agree with this--I think there has got to be a better way about it than with making the luthiers paying a fee to be accessible. If Luthiers wanted to pay for customer accessibility, then they would have budgeted money to get on google ads--there is a bigger audience, and if you only have $X to spend on advertising, then you are going to spend it on whatever reaches the most customers (imo it would be google ads)

I also don't think customers would want to pay either, as it's just a question--it'd be more economical to just keep googling luthiers and emailing them. The draw of the site would be for networking, and you don't really want to present either side with much of a hurdle.

I liked the idea of the 3rd party involved being asked for adspace purchasing--the parts makers/sellers, like stew-mac, or maybe even graphtech and hipshot and similar businesses. My thoughts on that are that maybe having ads for parts might even be considered helpful, as they might help the customer better flesh out what they want on their instrument.

Maybe even GoogleAds might be a good idea, as they pick out certain keywords in the text to supply ads, and they should be relevant to the instrument design. Heck, maybe it'll hook up customers that way, and the luthier didn't even know it, but either way, if the payout is based on clickthrough, then the page would still bring in some money, even if it's not that much.
Click to expand...

Funny that you mention that, as I actually work for bing.com and am very familiar with online advertising (or at least the technical side of it).

I do agree that forcing both sides to pay fees is kind of a step backwards. If you could get enough money from companies like you mentioned advertising on the site to cover the costs of maintaining it that would obviously be ideal.
 
#109
That's an extremely big "if". The only sites that make enough money to cover their costs, by advertising sales alone, are ones that get a very high flow of traffic with very low upkeep labor (e.g. link farms). Even Talkbass, with its literally hundreds of thousands of members and untold numbers of non-member viewers, still has to ask for membership fees in order to pay for operations.

I already have sites that I run as a "labor of love", straight loss out of pocket day in and day out, and I'm not at all interested in making this one that way. :)
 
#110
bongomania said:
That's an extremely big "if". The only sites that make enough money to cover their costs, by advertising sales alone, are ones that get a very high flow of traffic with very low upkeep labor (e.g. link farms). Even Talkbass, with its literally hundreds of thousands of members and untold numbers of non-member viewers, still has to ask for membership fees in order to pay for operations.

I already have sites that I run as a "labor of love", straight loss out of pocket day in and day out, and I'm not at all interested in making this one that way. :)
Click to expand...

Fair enough. I just hope that the fees won't cause people to lose interest. I do think it would be worth while for plenty of people.
 
#111
I agree completly with Bongo that he shouldn't have to cover it, what I am saying is like a membership for both the builders and customers... Builders yearly, and. Prospects 3-6-9-or 12 month options....something like that. Like Jason said, we as builders have the Luthiers Showcase at top of forum we can use for around $12.50 a month with a dedicated and targeted prospect base. So it has to provide something different and attractive for both sides.
 
#112
Certainly! What I see as "missing" from the Luthiers Showcase and from LAG is a spot specifically for consumers to describe what they want built, and say "who can build it for me?" I also see a need to reduce the expense (to builders) of handling all the tire-kickers. Both of those things have value, nu? So the question is "how much value", and what else would need to be in place to make it worth the effort/cost of participating.
 
#113
This is something the build only guys need to address, because I run a public repair shop locally, and parts business along with building, I can be more flexible and there are a few of us that do that. This is where a direct discussion would have to take place between you and participants as you running and maintaining it would have to be able to price your time, plus doimain fees, and host maintainenceso knowing overall overhead will give you a point to start from. I have posted things I think would help, so what others think will be helpful.
 
#114
Just my 2 cents: it's probably a better idea to get a few bucks from the buyers than to try and get it from luthiers. There are far fewer luthiers than customers, and the customers tend to be the ones with the money to spend. Many custom builders aren't making a whole lot of money at it, especially these days.
 
#116
I'm not a builder, but I've been learning web development and often ponder creating sites like this to suplement my massive (right...) musician income. So I have a number of thoughts.

First, it seems like there will be more interest from customers (or tire-kickers) than builders, as has been mentioned, so the site would need to be designed to be as nice to the builders as possible. In this case, they're like the celebrity you want to have come to your event. They can can just as easily go somewhere else, so you want to make them as comfortable as possible where they are. So in terms of web sites that means things would need to be as automated as possible on their end. If they have to read through hundreds of listings about making 42-string basses where all of the strings are tuned to the brown note, they're not going to do it very often, especially the guys with waiting lists. They would need a simple, concise way of being notified with all the pertinent preliminary information, and not have to go looking for it. Even official site emails would probably become too much of a nuisance, just like the Talkbass subscription emails I get every day. How to do this? I don't know yet, but it needs to be considered or I fear it would fail.

It looks like we're looking at a couple key features: Everybody has a user account, like a message board. Builders have profiles that show what they tend to do, worded in a way that suits them. Customers post "ads" in some fashion about what they're looking for. There is a communication system between the builders and clients (PM, chat, etc). Perhaps a rating/feedback system (though it has challenges as pointed out). Money handling (fees, cuts, advertising). Everything else is just working out how to do those things.

As for paying to join: I think that would be a huge deterrant for joining a start-up website. Who wants to pay to belong to a ghost town? Especially when our society is gradually moving toward everything online being free, like Gmail, Facebook, YouTube, craigslist, heck even this site, etc. And these places are not toy websites, they're the top entities in their line of work. However, a commission based pay structure (similar to Ebay) wouldn't be as big of a turn-off.
 
#117
Now that the general philosophy is out of the way, here are some specific ideas:

I believe that with properly designed input forms, you should be able to save a lot of time for people on both ends. If you ask enough builders what their questions to the customer would be, I bet there are a lot of the same questions. Use a form to immediately turn those into data that can then be sorted, searched, reported to builders, etc. But nothing is black and white, so plenty of "other" boxes would need to be used.

How about have a few categories of builds? They could include parts assemblers, people who stick to their models, completely custom builds, overhaulers, people who make specific parts (necks, pick-ups, etc), and whatever else comes up. Then each builder could select which categories they want to be in. Also, the customer's ad can have check boxes for which category(s) their ad applies to. This would help sort the clutter.

Whatever happens, I would recommend following the facebook model. That site is constantly changing based not on how the site was designed but by how people actually use it. Take the whole status update for example. It was more or less a mood indicator. Then people started writing whatever they wanted. Now they're removed the "is" and it has become more like a message board or twitter area. The news feed has actually created a new type of communication that has never existed before. But they watched how it was actually used and fluidly adapted without it really being noticible.

Great thread. I would love to help however I can. The modern use of the internet is changing the way the music instrument industry works and I think the biggest changes are yet to come. This site is inevitable. At some point in the future it will exist or be part of another site, even if this attemp doesn't work out. However, how it will exist will be very interesting to see.

If you can't tell, I'm excited. Let's do it!
 
#118
Thanks for the input. What I'm thinking about ATM is for the site to be free to join and navigate for everyone, but that messaging and photo-posting would cost; and that the paid memberships could be bought on an as-desired basis, so e.g. if a builder wanted to contact a "bidder", he/she could buy a month's membership and do the transaction, and let their membership lapse after that if they feel like it. So there would be no constant drag on the finances, only a fee for services used.

As far as websites being free for users, I think you are seeing it from a faulty perspective. Gmail serves ads to millions of people. The end users don't pay for the email, but the advertisers pay big bucks--and in the case of the site we're discussing, the builders would be the main advertisers. I may get ads from Hipshot or whoever, but they will not pay "Gmail rates" because the ads will not be served to millions of viewers. Facebook = same deal. Craigslist went public, and Ebay bought 25% of them, so the income is coming from cash investors. They are free for users to post on, but they have a real alternate cash source. And TB, as I pointed out before, relies on a combination of advertising dollars and annual membership fees.

All of these so-called "free" sites have big bucks flowing in the back door. I don't have that.
 

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