TransMarket?

[Tammy Hope]

the other night I was posting an ad on Craig's List seeking to buy new or used women's shoes in my size that I could afford.

As I was doing that, it occurred to me - given that trans persons have rather unique needs, as well as often sharing a common economic situation wouldn't it be cool if there was a website that was designed to be a buy/sell/trade/give site particularly for the transsexual community?

Based on a Craig's List type model?

Is there one? If not, how would one go about starting one? I have the basic idea in my head and would love to volunteer my services (and get in line for any potential profits down the line!) but I don't have the technical know-how.

Anyone up for a partnership?



anyway, if anyone knows of a site in existance like this please hook a girl up!

[sd]

It wouldn't be difficult at all to be honest, start to finish about an hour for me (including finding the software, setting up domains, etc...).

Is there a market for it though? Most seem content to just donate their stuff.

[Tammy Hope]

My thinking is that there would be sections for what you wanted to sell, and a seperate section for bartering and another for free things.

It seems to me that given the size issues, and the particular needs, if we could donate to each other that would be a greater service to the community than just donating to Goodwill or whatever.

Besides, we have things that are not the sort of things you donate. for instance, I'm sure girls have breast forms that are rendered obsolete as their body changes. It stands to reason some girl out there had rather give, for instance, $50 for a used pair instead of $200 for a new set or whatever just making up numbers for example) and some girls might be content to just donate them to girls who couldn't afford any.

I'm sure you could have an area for event announcements or recommendations for services - no doubt that sort of thing would duplicate what's available elsewhere but it would broaden the traffic stream perhaps.

You might also have ads for employment opportunities (or at least posts pointing out that Company X has an inclusive hiring policy and so forth)

Not suggesting you try to do it all at once, but I could see it growing into something beyond the simple exchange of goods.

My assumption is that once the traffic picks up to a reasonable rate, there would be the potential for ad revenue from those who catered to the trans market.

To be sure, I'm speaking from a gross lack of hard knowledge here. Just brainstorming.

[Jay]

That is a very good idea!

If only I had money and the expertise to make one!

Jay

[Cindy]

Nice concept Laura, but how large is the market? At Susan's there are about 3000 members ( sorry for the very bad pun). I think the EBay type of systems need to attract hundreds of thousands to be worthwhile, not so much in profit, but finding people who want particular goods.
Possibly try to set it up under Susan's Site? Then she can retire a rich lady . We do have some swap meets at a TG society I go too, but they are of a limited success due to the number of people and the variety of sizes.

But keep working on it. The internet is there to make money!!!   In that vein I read today that there are people making $4000 a day in selling on line fake Viagra, I'm not sure what a fake erection is called? Oh Dear?

But due to a scientific breakthrough I have made the a new cream, only available to my friends at Susan's. Rub it over the breast tissue 3 times a day and in 30 days you will have size 40 DD perfect orbs. Just send ne your credit card details and bank account number for verification and the cream is in the mail. Money back if I can be found!

Love

Cindy

Good luck Hun

Cindy

[Miniar]

Maybe a sub forum on susan's would be enough?
I don't know. Cause I know that at my height I have some things laying around that would go to better use in the hands of one of you girls than if I were to keep 'em... Like some boots..

[Tammy Hope]

Nice concept Laura, but how large is the market? At Susan's there are about 3000 members ( sorry for the very bad pun). I think the EBay type of systems need to attract hundreds of thousands to be worthwhile, not so much in profit, but finding people who want particular goods.

Well, there is the practical aspect of who wants Item X and Whether anyone has Item Y I'm looking for (in the right size and so forth) but to refer back to Craig's List, it's my understanding that a lot of what gets advertised there get's no response, but that doesn't mean the site doesn't get a lot of hits - there are a lot more people who browse such sites than actually find what they want.

That's traffic that advertisers are interested in - you can sell ads for a blog, for instance, that has a relatively small slice of internet traffic. I'm not sure (I should probably research this pint) exactly what the threshold is in terms of enough hits to put you in the black but it isn't as high as most people would think.

But it would definitely be a marketing thing. There are 3,000 members here and presumably the more active of us are active elsewhere so between word of mouth, link-swapping agreements, and so forth, you could within a year or two become relatively well know within the target audience.

Or so it seems to my fevered imagination.

[Sarah Louise]

Personally, I don't think it would be a good match for Susans, too many legalities and potential problems.

Sarah L.

[Tammy Hope]

Well, for the record, I'm not suggesting it as part of Susan's - but I'm not sure what sort of legalities would be involved.

Other sorts of swap-market sites seem to do ok on that front.

[MaggieB]

There are companies that deal with trans folk now.  Some are outrageously expensive and others are not.

Here is one that some locals recommend.
http://www.carlas.com/

Maggie

[Eva Marie]

I've had the same idea, primarily because shopping for fem things is very uncomfortable for a lot of people. I have no idea if a site already exists somewhere already doing this, but I do think that the idea has some merit.

Whether it would be better to pursue the ebay model (match up buyers and sellers) or the store model (carry merchandise) is debatable. And also, as someone else said the total number of possible customers is a concern.

[Tammy Hope]

I'm sure there's a decent number of store-models out there and I'm not in a position to carry inventory anyway.

[sd]

I can only see problems.
It's not a bad idea, but due to shipping, it seems much more of a localized thing. Granted the board could be setup based on locales. Still, I'm just not sure it would work so well. 

By the time you factor in locations, plus how often people purge during transition, versus how many are in transition at the moment, it just seems like a needle in a haystack. Especially if you factor in sizes. It's a lot of details to match up amongst a small population.



In terms of legalities...
That isn't so difficult. Basically the person running the site absolves themselves of all responsibility and does not interfere unless legal action amongst two people occurs. You don't get involved and you don't take any responsibility. All transactions are a deal between the two people, the site simple facilitates contact.

Ebay gets involved because of how it runs. They take payment for the transactions, they rate the transactions, and they handle payment for the transaction. They even facilitate safe harbor and shipping. Therefore they are held somewhat accountable.

Limit yourself to only facilitating contact and legally you are safe. Yes, someone can bring about a lawsuit, but it will not get far (standing in a court room is a near impossibility). The most you really should get involved is a request for IP address, time/date and email address, from a court, lawyer or police. 



As for the economics...
It would have hosting fees to deal with ($3-$10 a month, plus domain name, and I would recommend a private registration. For a com,net or org, that would be about $20 a year (.info is about $12 for private, but I recommend a com,net,org). The software could be had for free.  So a low ballpark figure of $48 to $140 for everything.

Most ad companies will not deal with a low hit site, which this would be. Google used to. Almost none pay before you reach $100. It takes A LOT to reach $100 with banner ads. Figure 120,000 views before you hit $100. In other words, it won't support itself. Granted it's not a lot, and with some marketing you could easily get that with private ads or donations. However, it has very limited appeal and returns and the whole point is about being cheap. So I wouldn't count on donations too much. Trying to sell private banner ads is like pulling teeth.

[Tammy Hope]

IIRC, Craigs List wasn't started for profit and kind of stumbled into it.

To me, this would be that sort of thing. If I could afford to start it just as a good deed - a service to the community - I would. And will someday i hope.

the discussion of revenue is more of a pipe dream i guess, but I'd love it if I were pleasantly surprised.

One thing about the hit count - I suspect these sorts of sites get way more hits than they do actual deals being made. Even the closet lurker who dares not buy will probably "window shop" fairly regularly...

[sd]

Very true, they do get more hits than deals. However you are hitting a small moving target.

Craigslist does charge for certain listings. That is where their income stems.


There is also the one problem few know how to counter. Many think the internet is like the movie Field Of Dreams where "if you build it, they will come". They don't. Getting people to your site, is the single toughest thing on the internet, by a long shot. Building it is the simplest part.

Oh and while Susan's has 3000 members, how many have been here in the last 90 days? How many are duplicate accounts. How many signed up and never returned or even finished registering.




Please don't get me wrong.
Honestly, I like the idea, I just see a lot of issues. Web sites come and go so fast, most never see the one year mark. So I hesitate to just jump in.

[FairyGirl]

I own/run an online store now (and for the last 5 years) that is based on commissions- we have vendors who are charged a percentage of their sales to sell their items in our store. This is all digital merchandise mind you (digital art), so we don't have to worry about shipping or any of that, but otherwise it operates like any other store. There are hosting companies that provide database access and even store software as part of a package deal along with hosting. We use Zen cart store software but it's heavily modded for our own purposes and we did have to pay a bit for that. I also had to obtain a local business license, a business bank account, and pay business and personalty taxes, so there's that to consider as well.

[tekla]

Most e-commerce sites have bricks and mortar examples in real life to follow.  So the bricks and mortar equivalent to such a service are two fold.  One are stores that sell specialty items often dealing with a large TG population, second is the mail-order business, which was how the stuff you're talking about was done before the net.

Most large cities have one or two of the first, though the prices are high, the quality is low - they do offer non-judgmental shopping experience.  The other, in the pre-net days, there was exactly one, Michael Salem out of New York.

So, how do you compete with the on-location sites that people like so much, because they like to shop, try stuff on and all that.  And how to you compete with the on-line sites that are already up and out there?

For a lot of us, what we seek, want and enjoy is the freedom to shop in real stores just like everyone else. So you can eliminate most of the people on these boards who live in places where they can do that.

I would think the real numbers are lower than you suspect them to be.