Making A Decentralized Marketplace Work On Steemit
Even before the feedback system was instituted, I was thinking about ways to bring value to steemit from people who may never want to blog, but have goods or services they wish to offer other users and are tired of paying ebay's fees. Ebay offers a great service, but sellers are being charged increasingly large amounts of money to continue selling there.
Steemit has the opportunity to expand on what a site like ebay can. Not only can physical goods be bought and sold, but services like photo / video editing, content editing, song writing, and any other (legal) service can be offered at a price to users of steemit.
With the reputation system rolling out already, a buyer and seller feature could be similarly implemented. While initially the goods and services should be limited to a certain dollar amount to keep a buyer from sending steem or steem dollars and the seller never sending the good or service. On each user account, you should have the ability to leave feedback when you purchase something or sell something to or from another user.
Those that take advantage of the system will have feedback in the negative and no longer able to participate in the buying or selling through this market. It may be beneficial to have some witnesses resolve any buyer and seller disputes and to try to make sure that both users are happy with the transaction. Again your reputation means everything and to be able buy higher dollar items or sell them, you would need to have a certain amount of positive feedback.
As per ebay - " How are Feedback scores calculated? "
Hopefully in the near future people will be able to list goods and services with hashtags (hashtag)editing, (hashtag)appbuilding, (hashtag)songwriting, (hashtag)pokemon-cards, (hashtag)cell-phone) so that buyers can do a simple search and see a list of goods and services available sorted by default with the highest positive feedback for sellers.
Example experience for Buyer:
- Search for (hashtag)cellphone
- See list of users selling cell phones based on seller rating feedback (also can search further, eg iphone android etc.)
- Send seller requested amount of steem/steem dollars for product (including shipping) with a note describing item and transaction
- Seller notifies buyer by secure messaging system or email to exchange mailing address if needed
- Product is received by buyer
- Feedback is left for seller
- Product is enjoyed
- Creator of this selling platform receives a very small percentage of the sale (should decrease over time as more transactions occur) so initially, maybe a penny per transaction because of the small amount of transactions, but when the transactions become a million a day, the fee can be even less. The developer of this project should be rewarded, but doesn't need to be greedy like ebay is because of its shareholders.
Example experience for Seller:
- Seller lists good or item with description and pictures similar to ebay and add tags to the listing to make it easier to find for buyers
- Seller receives payment for product including shipping
- Seller is told the buyers address and email address to mail goods/service
- Seller ships item
- Seller leaves feedback for the buyer
In a perfect world this would be the end of the transaction, but there will be disputes that occur. Hopefully steemit can join a free listing site like craigslist paid listing site like ebay to get the both of best worlds. A very low fee marketplace that has a feedback system to keep people honest
This is the very early grass roots idea for a system like this and hiccups will come along the way. I know there is already a payment system being implemented and tested, and I hope this will add value to further the steemit platform. I would be happy to work with a team or hear feedback here as well. The ideas are endless, as reputation becomes worth more than its weight in gold. There won't be any whales with negative feedback who will survive here. People can always take advantage of a system, so initially smaller dollar items should be sold until everything is ironed out. I'm excited to see what might come of this and where it will lead.
I'd appreciate feedback or links to other people's posts that have similar ideas about creating a marketplace for steemit. You will then be able to show friends you can simply sell things here and not need to blog at all, which is of little interest to some.
My dream would be to see the following happpen. A new musician signs up and blogs about their music. Then posts a few songs and gets constructive feedback and criticism from users. Then releases an album that can be purchased directly from the musician in SBD or Steem. As the musician gains success and engages with their following, they can offer different merchandise and concert tickets all if one spot with steemit. I would love to have some musicians, artists, photographers really take advantage of this platform and become successful. Being able to be supported from the very beginning with a small following all the way up to mega stardom. It would be cool to say you went to a concert of someone whose career was launched by steemit, and even cooler to say you helped fund one of their first projects