UK based after market site?

[aZooZa]

Simon and I are interested in exploring development opportunities here. Maybe a co-operative might work where the commissions are very low and the system is designed and policed by a small group of trusted domainers.

[suzi]

Originally Posted by aZooZa

Maybe a co-operative might work where the commissions are very low and the system is designed and policed by a small group of trusted domainers.

Sounds good - but would that achieve the ultimate goal of taking on Sedo? It ultimately needs to be big enough and robust enough to attract wide interest and exposure - not just a(nother) domainer to domainer platform.

[aZooZa]

Originally Posted by suzi

Sounds good - but would that achieve the ultimate goal of taking on Sedo? It ultimately needs to be big enough and robust enough to attract wide interest and exposure - not just a(nother) domainer to domainer platform.

I don't think my suggestion limits the ultimate scope of the project. In my view it would need to start small so that the system can be tested - rolling it out to a wider audience wouldn't be technically challenging.

[cvs]

Originally Posted by aZooZa

Simon and I are interested in exploring development opportunities here. Maybe a co-operative might work where the commissions are very low and the system is designed and policed by a small group of trusted domainers.

I'd be interested in helping out where possible, as I am sure many would be on here.

[Brassneck]

If somebody could get this off the ground then surely a win-win situation all around.

Stephen.

[j13]

I'd be glad to help do any of the graphics for the site (Wouldn't be hard to out do the stock image smiling women of sedo )

[Skinner]

If it starts as domainers, those who have posted on this very thread, must have inexcess of 5-10k domains to seed the site, which would give is a pretty formidable start.

[suzi]

Originally Posted by Skinner

those who have posted on this very thread, must have inexcess of 5-10k domains to seed the site

and that's just Edwin!

[Edwin]

The software's about 1% of the issue. The bigger problem is putting together a credible, stable, reliable and trustworthy end-to-end service that will take care of both parties to a transaction while safeguarding their interests and guaranteeing that transactions take place and payments get made. And that's going to take real money, and lots of bums on seats since you can't do decent customer service without a decent customer service team.

Not to mention that you're going to need formidable business banking services with all sorts of ring-fenced safeguards so that the funds people pay in are protected no matter what happens to the company. You're going to need to be able to take in and pay out huge numbers of transactions from a few hundred to potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds. This brings in all kinds of new issues and wrinkles.

A "collective" is NOT the way to go about dethroning the Sedo king.

[tifosi]

Originally Posted by philiporchard

What kind of investment would it take from us, to fund a software build of this size?

It took me ~4-6weeks to do DACr from start to finish. This I'd estimate - if it includes payment gateways 3-4x that, otherwise 2-3x that.

For all its complexity sedo is still basically an offer/message/list system. The db wouldn't be massively complex. Sedo's issue is multi tld & server loading.

S