Topic: I'm done? Far from it! - page 6. (Read 12223 times)

I like you Logan, but take a few deep breaths, its not easy out here by any means!

Get back to us tomorrow, stick around even..

This is ridiculous. If people like your product better than coins they'll give you coins for it. Is your theory that every bitcoin business has failed and every one in the future will?  

I can see a practical generator of demand for gift card at a small loss... it isn't quite an above board one... but someone who wants to launder money or evade taxes via Bitcoin would probably be happy to buy a high-value gift card to places that sell high-value items (e.g. Best Buy) if it meant their income stayed under the radar...  I don't think that's happening much at this point...

Sorry dude, always sad to see a member go.

Running a bitcoin business isn't a walk in the park. Hell, starting and running any business isn't easy.
I'll tell you, my first business did not see a profit for 2 and a half years. You just gotta keep pumping your heart out and give it your best.

I hope you can use this negative experience one day to drive positive energy into your new venture and I wish you the best of luck on your future endeavors.

From one New Yorker to another, cheers

-Charlie

Everyone who has worked on a web-service has had their share of failures. I have had my share.... currentkey.com, bumperize.com .... I am keeping my fingers crossed with Search Bitcoin :-)

My point is that most web-services fail. Sorry about your run.

I just took a quick look at the site.  I saw a $5 Amazon gift card for $7.  Why would anyone spend $7 on a $5 gift card?  You could trade the bitcoins through an exchange, transfer via dwolla and have cash in hand for less than that.  There is a definite need for someone offering the services you are trying to offer, but you need to offer a good deal.  You were not.  40% markup on products and then blaming people for not buying them is bad business.  Sorry you failed, but YOU failed.  Don't blame the community.

I feel bad that your business did not work out as you had expected, but when you say "I went through the hassle of creating the site, moving it over to GoDaddy so it was a dot com, made it all professional" and "I could toss money at the site all day but it was all of you."...

Well, I don't mean to be rude, but it's easy as pie to set up a zencart store, not to mention that it's free. And it doesn't look like you have done much to the out-of-the box configuration. Your main banner is a generic message for goodness sake. Registering a domain name is no big deal whatsoever, that is a moot point, I've bought 2 this week already. And how much money have you tossed at it exactly? Have you advertised it? How much do you pay for hosting? Not much I'd imagine, by the slow speeds of your server. I mean, what significant overheads could you possibly have?

I think you are mainly just angry that nobody was interested in buying your cards. It is a very niche market, and bitcoin does not do well in niches right now. I fully agree with what you are saying about miners cashing out their bitcoin instead of spending them on goods and services, but this is not the right way to react.

You need to compose yourself, let go of the anger, and try and think of another way of earning those darned elusive coins. I agree fully with you, as a fellow bit businessman. It's hard to convince miners and speculators to part with bitcoin for anything other than fiat currency. The bitcoin economy is in terrible shape right now because of this, and in a way, it goes against everything that the bitcoin project was set up to achieve. I hope all you miners and speculators out there are proud of yourselves. This thread is evidence that the bitcoin economy requires people to SPEND their bloody coins, not hoard them or cash them out.

Anyway, rant over. I empathize with you logansryche. But there's not much us service providers can do, other than try and get it though to people that spending bitcoin is the only way to make this project work long term.

Yeah..  how hard would it be to throw up a banner made up of a bunch of overlapping card images for example?
Who wants to deal with a merchant who doesn't appear to have put some time and effort in?
The message to the customer is that you don't have the time or don't care - which naturally makes them wonder just how much time and care you'd put in if for example there was a problem with their order!

Then there's that.

1hr of learning GIMP never hurt anyone.

http://www.gimp.org/
http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/

Well I'm not surprised you didn't get customers..
off the bat
1) 'sales message goes here'?
2) incomplete contact details.
3) no indication of payment methods.. and specifically.. nothing regarding bitcoin?

Those are just basics.. and there's much more that could be done.
It needs time and thought.  I would have thought you could ask for suggestions and get feedback from a forum like this.

Anyway - honestly, it looks like you just haven't put all that much time into it.
I'd put the gift cards on the front page and make it obvious you can pay in bitcoins.

*shrug* Sounds like you're just down.  Find something you can get your teeth into and work on bit by bit (no pun intended!) in the meantime - and give it another shot when you've got your confidence up.

Utter poppycock!
Accept people's criticisms and advice. The site doesn't inspire confidence. So *fix* it.

Man, I hate to say it... but the problem was with BitCard. People are undercutting you, because it doesn't look like you're buying your cards wholesale. People are undercutting you, because they are bulls and have the financial backing to take relatively small losses. People are doing better than you, because they are proactively marketing their products and their sites.

It has nothing to do with the community, it has everything to do with you. I hate to say it and I hate to see you give up. But that's life.

My favorite quote of all time:
I try to live by that. Basically, what he's trying to say is that you should learn from your mistakes and use what you have learned to do better in your next endeavor. As well as not to lose hope, keep your head in the game and eye on the prize. I probably wouldn't have made it through college without this mentality.

I don't see how your site relates to Bitcoin though

As I said "bro" when I first proposed BitCard everyone was game. Everyone knew what I was selling and what my prices were, and since this is really as far as the community goes for BitCoins, I will bash it if it says one thing and does another. I'm also not about to turn BitCard around into some "all products" store and drop more money into another potential site/store no one's going to buy into. There's already 3 or 4 of them around. BitCard is the only one of its kind. It's that way for a reason. The problem isn't BitCard or my way of running it or my way of marketing it, it's these folks on here that think their BTC is going to go up so they'l hoard it and not do anything with it. It's bad for business'.

sorry bro... welcome to capitalism.  Some fail, some succeed.  Instead of bemoaning people for not buying your products, why don't you use that energy to research products that people actually are buying.  

sounds like you aren't cut out to be a businessman.   You have to be prepared to fail in order to succeed.

No, I had it posted on fei.x10.mx/store for a while and someone commented that it didn't look legit or professional because it wasn't a dot com, so I went through the hassle of setting up a dot com with GoDaddy which lead me to btcwebhost. The current site is indeed thebitcardstore.com and I think I spam'd the crap out of it once a day in the marketplace section of the site. After a while, some that visited the site said good job while others said that my prices were high and why couldn't I sell like , their prices are lower then yours. I also had a problem with BTC prices in Zen Cart since I'm not a PHP writer, and the module for open cart is non existant but the prices are currently listed in Zen Cart as USD with the option to pay for them in bitcoins if that makes sense.

This started out as a very heartfelt project that I was sure I could get up off the ground, however a business doesn't stay around very long if there aren't any customers.

I believe it was http://www.thebitcardstore.com/

I've never heard of it before this thread either.

Although, I don't see BTC Prices anywhere on the site.

Never heard of it.  Was this it?  http://www.bitcard.us/    'Coming soon' and last updated in July?

I don't have a clue about the backstory here.. but sorry to hear what sounds like an entrepreneurial spirit crumble.

It's not that, I have the resourses and the stock.. it's the community who thinks that bitcoins are here to be mined and then cashed out for profit. 6 months ago when I started BitCard the idea was fresh and good. Anything card related to be sold in bitcoins instead of dollars. I went through the hassle of creating the site, moving it over to GoDaddy so it was a dot com, made it all professional, and ya know what? No one bought a d**n card. I thought I'd juice things up a bit, so I added gift cards and card only games and games that had card in them.. something to bring in business but then select few decided to undercut my prices and sell those gift cards for less then what they cost. You can't sell a $20 card for $6 and expect to make anything off that. So because of all of that, I have made my decision. It wasn't the rate that bothered me or the money.. I could toss money at the site all day but it was all of you. You made me fail. This community as a whole who overlooked me becuase I was selling at spot price made me fail. You who decided to undercut me so everyone would leave me alone and let me die out, made me fail. Is it alot of anger? You betcha, but it's justifiable. I was even going to go off and add some more games that just came out in the mall for this month but then the fiance reminded me of how I've never sold a single item on the site, leading to this.

Sorry to hear about all the bad stuff happening.  Good luck to you!