Topic: [DVC]DevCoin - Official Thread - Moderated - page 240. (Read 1059181 times)

Those are all good ideas and there is no limit to what are imaginations will allow us to conjure up... by allowing other crypto coins to be sold, it will open up another alley of possible sales, and someone can take charge of those auctions. This way there is no drop shipping etc etc, its totally legal for us. So offer to buy coins, ofcourse the end user gets them at discounts but we make profit since if we sell 1 bitcoin it would take X amounts of bids, and we would get Y amount of bids, it is highly likely that Y > X, because X is not that much compared to the total value of a bitcoin.

Either way if we allocate shares for this, like I said worsed case the things go for free, just like we are giving shares to writers today, we are not earning anything on that, so atleast we have the "possibility of earning today" by allowing auctions bring in profits. These are instant profits or losses we can see today and not wait years for ad revenue to "maybe" pick up on devtome, who knows if it will or wont happen, but I think once we realize how profitable an actual business is funded by devcoin that it will be the direction of growth for future projects.

You can block countries that wont accept this style of purchase, also you wouldn't allow paypal at all, users must come in with crypto to avoid legal stuff. They pay with devcoins and recieve product just like any other bitcoin related vendor today.

Yeah, having blocks of coins and other digital prizes would really be the way to go when this is first getting started. I want to bid on some of those prizes you mentioned right now.

You have to be very careful with PayPal. It has come to my attention that sellers of crypto are getting their accounts suspended as they could be considered a financial service or currency exchange. This is not something to be taken lightly. I know I suggested an auction site, and some one else mentioned possible legal ramifications of any type of business associated with dvc attracting attention for what may have been an idea with good intentions, but could possibly be perceived as being something more than what it really is. I would suggest that for now this idea be considered more deeply before being implemented. I don't believe it is wise at this point in time.

Such a site probably requires very good knowledge of your traffic.

You need a certain number of bids on any given item just to break even on that item, so you need to know how much traffic you can drive how fast and how much of it statistically will actually bid - or even be able to bid if it takes a while for them to read all about it decide they want to buy some bids go get the right kind of cash to buy bids with, have it confirmed enough times on its blockchain, and still manage to get in a bid before the auction closes.

Maybe a lot of lead time would be good, like have the first feature of the site be the ability to buy bids, with the knowledge the first auction will be in a month, or in 90 days or whatever, with the price of bids going up constantly as the time of the first auction approaches and a foreknowledge of what things will be up for auction based on how many bids have been sold by the time the actual auctions go live.

Like...

Day one, wow, we only just started, buy bids today for only X coins, if in 90 days when the auctions open at least Y bids have sold a share of devcoins (worth 1000 words or 40 hours of work, truly, check out our page about devcoin shares) will be the first auction!

Day two, wow, we already sold so many bids we already know one share of devcoin distribution will be the first auction, that is only 89 days from now folks! Today bids cost X2 each and if by the time auctions go live we have sold Y2 total bids then the second auction will be for one share of devcoins and three links from relevant Devtome articles to articles of your own in your own blog, though notice of course (see link) that if you were yourself a Devtome author links from the Devtome would be a perk to you so we are also throwing in twenty thousand GeistGeld, ten thousand CoiLedCoin, five thousand GRouPcoin, two thousand I0Coin, one thousand IXCoin, one hundred NaMeCoin and fifty milliBiTCoins!

Day three, wow, check out how work on the site is progressing! Plus we sold so many bids yesterday that we already know the third auction is going to be for two shares of devcoin distribution, one whole bitcoin, ten whole namecoins, one thousand IXCoins, five thousand I0Coins, ten thousand GRouPcoins, twenty thousand CoiLedCoins, fifty thousand GeistGeld, full setup of a dedicated server running all the merged mined coins so you can merged mine all eight merged mined coins using p2pool, and the first month's hosting fee for that server! Today bids cost X3 and if we sell at least Y3 the fourth auction will be .... etc etc etc...

Probably 90 days is much more realistic a lead time than pretending we will be fully ready for the first auction in only one month.

Also maybe  even once auctions start they can always be determined well in advance like that and based on number of bids already sold, so that the site always has up front in advance all the wealth required to buy all the things that have been scheduled to be auctioned in the future.

-MarkM-

Since users would be purchasing bids and not crypto, I think that Paypal (or at least balances on Paypal) could be used as an option as well.

Right its a tradeoff of convenience and losing some profit by acquiring devcoin at market. So this is a business decision and not a whim decision because we are in crypto land!

Coins would only be used to acquire bids.

Converting bids back to dvc is where the profit is eaten up. If you accept only dvc then user eats that loss and market rises on the exchange they buy devcoins for bids.. I think this is better for starters and maybe add other coins once liquidity is good enough to avoid high exchange fees.

It might be wise to not limit the site to just one crypto. You can advertise Devcoin just as easily by accepting 2 or 3 cryptos and it gives the users more options on obtaining coins.

No shorter auctions just at first start them staggered? like one a day at noon est or something.. then add more as we get comfortable.. I think they are a few hours long which drives people to bid but we can male it whatver we want I think 2 hours is fine mayne even less.. everytime you bid it adds 10 seconds.

With the amazom thing yea thats a good idea but we need to find out if we buy and auction doesnt get sold (small chance) then we need to ensure we can hold inventory without worrying about fees etc.. but I think once we start it will flow after bugs are ironed out.

First since alot of people are interested maybe want to provide input we can hear them all out and get the go ahead as a bounty if no objections and then we cam start development.. if people want to help lets collaborate and share the wealth

Devbids.com
Dvcbids.com

We can accept coinpayments it would add user convenience.. amd later convert to dvc at market but the spread and liquidity will eat into profit that way as otherwise the bidder eats cost of acquiring devcoins at market or earning.

Ahhh so you want them to last a while. The thing with Quibids is that it lasts only a few minutes each auction. They have 100's of them / day. I love the idea of doing gift cards and extra bids etc.  I think it is a great idea, I just think it needs to be thought out really well first and maybe have a few people work on it.

Keep in mind that you could just list items that are featured on Amazon.com, Walmart.com etc and then ship the items directly from Walmart or Amazon to the winner. In the case of Amazon, using Prime would give the winner upgraded two day shipping.

Yea I was leaning towards dropshipping since we would have to warehouse merchandise otherwise. Im sure quibids started off drop shipping and now made enough money to support their own thing now. Yea we will see how it goes but I think one set of auctions per week staggered so that the site isnt sitting stale?

Ok, lets start with the site names


CryptoZing.com

Both and yes the site would have to have ability to block some countries.

Are you talking about a site that would ship physical goods or just people winning digital gift cards? Might have to put some heavy restrictions on the countries that can participate in it.

I love this idea, I thought about doing a site like Quibids when it first came out (as a secondary to it) but never got to go through with it. I would love to see someone do this! I think that 10hr/week upkeep on the site is a little (a lot) under rated. I think it will take a few people a little more then that to admin that site and make sure the auctions are continuous as well as sending the items to the correct person when they win, and what not. I think that upkeep will be a few people at 20-40 hours / week, and maybe one or two people doing the auction set up and buying items to send (though this can be done after the auction ends and with the winnings and have the items dropped shipped. just a thought).

May be a good idea to just take a few hours and write up a business plan and start figuring out numbers.

Chad

Id like to propose a bounty, which is a business. An auction business which is run by Devcoin. A quibids style website that offers items that Devcoin puts up for sale.

This way the problem of fraud between users is minimized since with traditional peer to peer auction sites its always a battle to ensure the item was recieved and the user paid, especially when the website never sees the item.

The goal is to create a profitable business by selling bids, the profit realization is the difference between what the item was bought for by Devcoin and how much it sold it for in calculating number of bids to sell * price of a bid.

For example on quibids: There is a futureshop $50 gift card which just sold for $1.74. The person who bid last and wins will get the great deal. The site makes profit because each bid costs $0.60 and moves the price by 0.01. A total of 174 bids for the gift card means the site makes $104.40, so a total of $54.40 profit. Shipping cost is added to the final price so the website doesn't pay for this.


Every round we can fund new items for auction and I will be responsible for being the admin for this, and shipping items out etc. As time goes by we will need multiple people doing it if it grows.

The long term cost is the shares assigned per round to purchase the items for auction assuming they get sold for free. This is the same cost as devtome currently as no profits that I know of are being driven in. The benefits are the profits on average of items sold for more than purchased. All coins given to the website are held in a secure wallet that may be used by Devcoin for other purposes like ensuring sell side liquidity in the market.

The work comprises of three parts:

1) create the website (starting from a template)
2) allow devcoin payments to purchase bids
3) Everyday work to ensure the site is operation

And reporting can be done each round on the profitability of the venture. If we find things are being given away for free essentially because noone is interested in cool stuff then we can always stop funding it

If I work on it my estimate would be it would take me:

1) atleast 4 hours a day for 4 weeks to get a website up that is functional
2) atleast 4 hours a day for a week to allow coin payments for bids
3) Atleast 10 hours a week for site maintenance.

Thats a total of about 150 hours.

50 shares sounds about right if we think that writing 1000 words of a "good" article takes 3 hours (generously), and each 1000 words is a share.

Jag

That's true, I was just starting a blog for DevCoin related stuff, but really we are trying to figure out what to put on the front page of DevTome, not on the blogs, though you are right, it would work better for the news on the blog. Featured articles and what not each round would be good. News, not so much I guess.