Business So I made a marketplace to sell digital products [photos, videos, audio, data]. Requesting feedback!

[Tube Ace]

Taking me three years to build by myself, I'm happy to announce the official launch of my latest business, VendBits.

VendBits is a marketplace for digital products and downloads such as music, videos, photos, games, software & gift cards with transactions made using PayPal, Credit or Debit Cards via Stripe, Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash. Payments are made directly to the seller, instantly.



Upload tokens are required to upload videos (preview or vended) for your items. All other media file types: images, audio and data do not require tokens to upload. Each one (1) minute of video duration requires one (1) upload token. For instance, a 20 minute video requires 20 upload tokens. Unused tokens will remain in your balance and can be used later with additionally purchased tokens.

Token Pricing
15 minutes - $14.95
60 minutes (1 hour) - $39.95
120 minutes (2 hours) - $59.95
240 minutes (4 hours) - $99.95

All sales are subject to a 10% sales fee, due the following month.

Please feel free to signup and add your products.

Would surely appreciate any constructive feedback. Thanks!

[sarettah]

Good luck. (not sarcastic there, actually wishing you good luck).

.

[Tube Ace]

I appreciate it. I nearly lost my sanity, freedom and life several times building this thing. I have to make this work or it's all over for me. My entire life and future is on the line.

[NoWhErE]

Cool. Out of curiosity, what's the difference between your site and the hundreds of other similar sites? (Other than the $1 per minute pricing on video uploads)

[Tube Ace]

Originally Posted by NoWhErE

Cool. Out of curiosity, what's the difference between your site and the hundreds of other similar sites? (Other than the $1 per minute pricing on video uploads)

I'm only charging to upload video because of the hosting costs.

VendBits accepts all media types and doesn't have a review process.

The following are all considered competitors:

StubHub - only sells tickets - $13B valuation
Shutterstock - stock photography, stock footage, stock music, editing tools - $2B market cap
Audible - only sells audiobooks - (owned by amazon, $1T market cap)
Beatstars - only sells music beats - raised a total of $10M in funding over 1 round
Patreon - does not host video content directly on site - $4B valuation
Coursera - only sells courses - $3B valuation
Udemy - only sells courses - $2B valuation
Envato - graphics, audio, video - WP themes/plugins - Community earned over $1B by 2020
Spotify - Podcasts and Music (streaming only) - $20B market cap
Gumroad - eBooks, downloads, courses - $100M to $500M valuation as of Mar 16, 2021
Sedo - domain names only - $?M revenue

[TaiGhost]

Do you have any steps in place to make sure thieves are not uploading other people's content?

[sarettah]

Originally Posted by TaiGhost

Do you have any steps in place to make sure thieves are not uploading other people's content?

That's a very good question.

.

[Tube Ace]

Originally Posted by TaiGhost

Do you have any steps in place to make sure thieves are not uploading other people's content?

Not at the moment. If it becomes an issue, I'll deal with it then.

[bill_musk]

Originally Posted by Tube Ace

I'm only charging to upload video because of the hosting costs.

VendBits accepts all media types and doesn't have a review process.

The following are all considered competitors:

StubHub - only sells tickets - $13B valuation
Shutterstock - stock photography, stock footage, stock music, editing tools - $2B market cap
Audible - only sells audiobooks - (owned by amazon, $1T market cap)
Beatstars - only sells music beats - raised a total of $10M in funding over 1 round
Patreon - does not host video content directly on site - $4B valuation
Coursera - only sells courses - $3B valuation
Udemy - only sells courses - $2B valuation
Envato - graphics, audio, video - WP themes/plugins - Community earned over $1B by 2020
Spotify - Podcasts and Music (streaming only) - $20B market cap
Gumroad - eBooks, downloads, courses - $100M to $500M valuation as of Mar 16, 2021
Sedo - domain names only - $?M revenue

I'll be straightforward with you, because nothing is as good as a bad critic:
- The design is terrible. It looks like it was done in 2008
- Having to pay to upload a video is insane when there are 1000s of sites taking videos for free (adult, non adult, private, public)

Now a few questions pops in my mind:
- What's your marketing strategy?
- What's the difference between you and all the online shops like sellix.io, Sell.app, Shoppy, and all the similar free marketplace?

[TaiGhost]

Originally Posted by sarettah

That's a very good question.

.

Considering what goes on in porn, NFT sites and all the rest. There needs or should be something in place to guard against it.

[w4mmaps]

My constructive feedback is that if you want this to work I would personally recommend you consider:

1. Don't charge a dime for adding products, videos etc. Nobody will want to pay to do these things, especially on an unknown platform with no brand or credibility.

2. I understand WHY you have payments go to the seller directly, but asking them to pay you 10% the next month isn't the way to go, you should be handling the transactions and taking your 10% on a platform like this.

3. For items which don't have an image change the "Preview image not available" to something more attractive.

4. Between your items/listings there is a lack of space and it all crams together too much. put a little spacing between everything.

5. I understand why you are going broad and accepting everything, but you'll probably have an easier time getting traction if you at least start on a niche, and then maybe expand from there. So whatever is easiest to sell (sexy selfies, websites, homemade xxx...) you should focus on getting sellers in that area on the site, getting some relevant traffic of people who buy THAT sort of thing, and getting something going with that first. Right now you are being way too broad... nobody is buying a picture of a boat or a video of a waterfall, dial in on something and get that going first. I have a feeling the easiest starting point might be something adult lol.

[Publisher Bucks]

My feedback, in addition to what has already been mentioned (especially taking your cut the second a sale happens, whats to stop me selling something, getting the money and not paying you next month?) would be to add an ebook/audibook specific category.

[lock]

Don't charge for uploads create an affiliate system. Not half bad looks are easy to change.

[k0nr4d]

Stripe will kill your account if someone uploads porn

[DVTimes]

I do not get what your offering to be honest.

[DVTimes]

Why not sell on the other platforms that are free to upload and have millions of views?

[brassmonkey]

do your homework... you can't charge for those things unless you go big

[LouiseLloyd]

I would have used a ready made e-commerce CMS (open source) solution you could launch in a few days, prior to investing so much time in creating something custom, besides I don't have the dev capabilities.

Good luck and sure it will evolve into something that is a success.

[DVTimes]

Vendbits to me sounds like its for computer games.

[Sharon1974]

Originally Posted by Tube Ace

I have to make this work or it's all over for me. My entire life and future is on the line.

If you need money you could try this :-) https://tubeace.com/how-to-make-5000-per-month-building-adult-video-websites/

[Tube Ace]

Originally Posted by bill_musk

I'll be straightforward with you, because nothing is as good as a bad critic:
- The design is terrible. It looks like it was done in 2008
- Having to pay to upload a video is insane when there are 1000s of sites taking videos for free (adult, non adult, private, public)

Now a few questions pops in my mind:
- What's your marketing strategy?
- What's the difference between you and all the online shops like sellix.io, Sell.app, Shoppy, and all the similar free marketplace?

What specifically makes the design look like it was done in 2008?

Considering Boostrap CSS initial release was August 19, 2011 and mobile responsive design didn't gain traction until at least 2012, your opinion is rejected. Next...

What platforms have 0 upfront fees to add video? What are their fees on the backend? 40%, 50%? VendBits fee is 10%

I have a lot of ideas for marketing, which I won't discuss here. Just need to figure which is most effective.

[Tube Ace]

Originally Posted by TaiGhost

Considering what goes on in porn, NFT sites and all the rest. There needs or should be something in place to guard against it.

Thanks for reminding me to add an NFT Category. https://vendbits.com/category/nfts

When I typed 'NFT' into google, the first autosuggest result was 'NFT marketplace'... that's promising

[Tube Ace]

Originally Posted by w4mmaps

My constructive feedback is that if you want this to work I would personally recommend you consider:

1. Don't charge a dime for adding products, videos etc. Nobody will want to pay to do these things, especially on an unknown platform with no brand or credibility.

2. I understand WHY you have payments go to the seller directly, but asking them to pay you 10% the next month isn't the way to go, you should be handling the transactions and taking your 10% on a platform like this.

3. For items which don't have an image change the "Preview image not available" to something more attractive.

4. Between your items/listings there is a lack of space and it all crams together too much. put a little spacing between everything.

5. I understand why you are going broad and accepting everything, but you'll probably have an easier time getting traction if you at least start on a niche, and then maybe expand from there. So whatever is easiest to sell (sexy selfies, websites, homemade xxx...) you should focus on getting sellers in that area on the site, getting some relevant traffic of people who buy THAT sort of thing, and getting something going with that first. Right now you are being way too broad... nobody is buying a picture of a boat or a video of a waterfall, dial in on something and get that going first. I have a feeling the easiest starting point might be something adult lol.

Thank you kindly for the well-articulated response.

1. VendBits only charges upfront for videos, every other category/media type is free. I decided on this because video hosting can be expensive. I may drop the video tokens in the future. Personally, I don't think charing $59.95 to upload 2 hours of video is a lot to ask for. It's an experiment. In fact, it should serve as a good filter to keep low-quality garbage off.

2. eBay had payments go directly for sellers spanning three decades until they introduced 'managed payments'. The fact the payment was made directly to my PayPal account at the close of sale was my favorite part of selling on eBay. Never had to wait days, weeks, months for payment.

3. What exactly do you suggest other than this if there is no video, audio, image?


4. I appreciate the suggestion, I was thinking the same. I changed CSS element .item-preview{margin-bottom:X} from 2px to 10px.

before:


after:


Opinion accepted.

5. I understand that. I just wanted to seed the marketplace with IP I own myself, most of which are photos and videos. I don't expect people to actually buy my vacation/travel photos shot on my iPhone for stock photos/videos. I agree adult content would be the best selling, but I'm focusing on non-adult at the moment. I may launch a separate side marketplace which only accepts crypto payments since I couldn't do PayPal/Stripe, but then I'd have to get adult billing and manage payments and payouts myself. Surely a possibility though.

[Tube Ace]

Originally Posted by Publisher Bucks

My feedback, in addition to what has already been mentioned (especially taking your cut the second a sale happens, whats to stop me selling something, getting the money and not paying you next month?) would be to add an ebook/audibook specific category.

Nothing would stop you from not paying the 10% after the sale. It's setup on good faith and how eBay worked for 25 years. If payment is not received by the 20th of the following month, the seller's items' payment checkout is disabled and they cannot edit/add new items.

eBooks fall under 'Writings' category.

Audiobooks would be under 'Audio' category.

I will probably add sub-categories in the future for easier browsing and have different form fields for 'Add Item'.

Thank you for your suggestion/questions.

[Tube Ace]

Originally Posted by lock

Don't charge for uploads create an affiliate system. Not half bad looks are easy to change.

Having been in adult industry for a long time, I surely know an affiliate program can help the marketplace grow. Just have to code it out. I'll probably release the API for adding/managing listings first though.

Opinion accepted.

[Tube Ace]

Originally Posted by k0nr4d

Stripe will kill your account if someone uploads porn

This is exactly why I don't process the payments on my accounts. Sellers add their own PayPal/Stripe accounts and Crypto addresses.

[Tube Ace]

Originally Posted by brassmonkey

do your homework... you can't charge for those things unless you go big

Nearly 70,000 useless posts over 17 years. Why would that stop now?

[Tube Ace]

Originally Posted by LouiseLloyd

I would have used a ready made e-commerce CMS (open source) solution you could launch in a few days, prior to investing so much time in creating something custom, besides I don't have the dev capabilities.

Good luck and sure it will evolve into something that is a success.

Too late for that now .. but thanks

I'll make this into a success, no doubt about that. Anyone thinking or saying otherwise clearly knows nothing about me.

[Tube Ace]

Originally Posted by DVTimes

Vendbits to me sounds like its for computer games.

Kinda has a retro 80s vibe/sound I suppose.

Think of it as a vending machine for digital products.

I was very happy the name was still available when I registered it 3 years ago.

I use this for the OpenGraph image which shows in link previews when shared on social media:





This guy added me on instagram after seeing me running up and down stadium steps for hours. He was speaking in Spanish and pointed to his head and said he can see the metal fortitude I have, which is obviously undeniable.

[bill_musk]

Originally Posted by Tube Ace

What specifically makes the design look like it was done in 2008?

Considering Boostrap CSS initial release was August 19, 2011 and mobile responsive design didn't gain traction until at least 2012, your opinion is rejected. Next...

What platforms have 0 upfront fees to add video? What are their fees on the backend? 40%, 50%? VendBits fee is 10%

I have a lot of ideas for marketing, which I won't discuss here. Just need to figure which is most effective.

Well if I knew you would be all pretentious like that, wouldn't have even bothered.

1- A lot of platforms have 3 to 5% fees on the sale, nothing upfront.
2- They often have the best UX and UI designer and looks nothing like your platform. Well maybe you're a design genius, but It's clearly not my taste.

Good luck anyway. Hard pass on my side.

[Tube Ace]

Originally Posted by Sharon1974

If you need money you could try this :-) https://tubeace.com/how-to-make-5000...ideo-websites/

Thanks for the suggestion, but in order to afford a wife who is prettier than myself (I need a Grace Kelly), I'm gonna need a lot more than $5k/mo

[Wautier]

I can see that you poured your soul into it, but the branding is very weak, the logo is bad, and the UI just shows the lack of professionalism, and gives you the impression that it was made by some random guy, and that it's going to go offline in a year or two.

Put simply, neither do the branding, nor the UI inspire much confidence into the service as a whole.

While it's something that means everything to you -- personally, it's not something that could get much use anywhere outside of the adult industry for Billie Eilish's latest feet pics, especially if you don't have the proper tools in place to make sure nothing infringing is being offered, etc.

It's a commendable effort, but I don't know the viability of the said setup, even if you were to re-brand, and invest into a proper UI... you still need to think about how you're going to charge the customers. You need to provide a little bit of protection to the sellers, too.

If you want the full truth... setup some cam stuff,or re-do your product. Make a niche based cam site aggregator so people can easily make niche WordPress cam aggregators. During the setup, they could choose the niche (BBW, Asian, Black, etc) and choose all of the cam sites that they use, the tags that they want to use, and they would end up with a niche cam site aggregator in the end with an option to create blog posts, and go through all of the available models all the whilst respecting CB's rules of not saving thumbnails, etc. But retaining original model data, and letting visitors comment on the model profiles. Moreover, you could also record last seen / last broadcast time, and let visitors vote on the models. The niche sites themselves would serve as a way to promote models from those niches, but also let webmasters sell links and blog posts too, so the layout would have to be made with a blog site in mind, something along the lines of BoobieBlog.com, just a tad better, of course.

The homepage should show the latest posts, along with a widget of top models, and the model browse page should be done separately, along with an index of all of the model profiles in the database.

If anyone ends up offering something like this, I can just say that you would get a lot of customers, especially if you offer an easy way to add/remove sold links, too.

Good luck. homie.

[Tube Ace]

Originally Posted by bill_musk

1- A lot of platforms have 3 to 5% fees on the sale, nothing upfront.

Name 3 please.

Originally Posted by bill_musk

2- They often have the best UX and UI designer and looks nothing like your platform. Well maybe you're a design genius, but It's clearly not my taste.

Do you think Amazon, the most value company in the world's design looks particularly great? or Ebay?

[brassmonkey]

Originally Posted by Tube Ace

Nearly 70,000 useless posts over 17 years. Why would that stop now?

they have a ton of these scripts. with more features.

[Tube Ace]

Originally Posted by brassmonkey

they have a ton of these scripts. with more features.

You haven't created an account or uploaded anything so how would you know this?

[brassmonkey]

Originally Posted by Tube Ace

You haven't created an account or uploaded anything so how would you know this?

ok i will make an account

[Tube Ace]

It's a marathon, not a sprint, boys.

[Tube Ace]

Originally Posted by w4mmaps

3. For items which don't have an image change the "Preview image not available" to something more attractive.

Furthermore, not that you could have known this without actually creating an account and adding an item or any media files - this is what an uploaded audio file looks like in its preview:

[CaptainHowdy]

Originally Posted by Tube Ace

I nearly lost my sanity

That goes to show on your recreational threads :P . . . All the best.

[Tube Ace]

Originally Posted by CaptainHowdy

That goes to show on your recreational threads :P . . . All the best.

Thanks for the best wishes

[Tube Ace]

If anyone has any video content they would like to upload, hit me up for some free upload tokens. I made a nice little free credit function:



and a nice little page showing token transaction history.



You guys really have no idea about the functionality I added into this thing until you start using it.

[Tube Ace]

Originally Posted by Wautier

I can see that you poured your soul into it, but the branding is very weak, the logo is bad, and the UI just shows the lack of professionalism, and gives you the impression that it was made by some random guy, and that it's going to go offline in a year or two.

Put simply, neither do the branding, nor the UI inspire much confidence into the service as a whole.

Is the logo and UI REALLY that bad, or important for that matter? Are you guys just trying to purposely waste my time?













Check this out.. I saw an ACTUAL VENDING MACHINE on the side of the road in Mexico with a similar logo a year after I created mine..



Pretty funny, eh?

[O MARINA]

Serious Business mon

[Tube Ace]

I ironically just posted that Serious Business meme in our other thread.

It's all connected, mon. I'm on the right path...

[O MARINA]

Originally Posted by Tube Ace

I ironically just posted that Serious Business meme in our other thread.

It's all connected, mon. I'm on the right path...

I saw and thought you saw this one

[DVTimes]

Vendbits.com is probably not going to work.

Your wasting your time.

But I could be wrong.

[O MARINA]

Never say never

[Wautier]

Originally Posted by Tube Ace

Is the logo and UI REALLY that bad, or important for that matter? Are you guys just trying to purposely waste me time?











Check this out.. I saw an ACTUAL VENDING MACHINE on the side of the road in Mexico with a similar logo a year after I created mine..



Pretty funny, eh?

It's that bad.

It has no class, it looks cheap, and it makes me think of a boy downloading random fonts off of DaFont.com, loading them up, and hoping he finds something that looks passable.

eBay's current logo came to be through years and years of progress, and in my opinion, it's one of the best examples that you could have used.

Facebook's is super simple, but it's classy, and the font is that unique that you would always know it's that Facebook.

To be honest, I think that I may be the one wasting my time here, because you couldn't care less about anyone who disagrees with you, or doesn't respond to you in a way that you can go back to them with something like: "register and check the site first".

There is no need to do any such thing; you can tell right off the bat that it needs further work first.

[Tube Ace]

Originally Posted by O MARINA

I saw and thought you saw this one

[Tube Ace]

Originally Posted by DVTimes

Your wasting your time.

But I could be wrong.