Anyone sell stuff on ebay? I have an app idea. | Hacker News Reader

Anyone sell stuff on ebay? I have an app idea.

9 pointskapauldo16 comments

I've got a really simple app I'm building for my wife, as she's starting to sell stuff. I was wondering if anyone here sells stuff regularly, and has active listings. My idea is really simple, it's a quick dashboard of your items with a place to comment and share on twitter and facebook. You can use the dashboard to check in on your items, as well as link to from your postings ("see my other auctions"). I have a prototype working, which I'm happy to share. Could this be an affiliate business? Anyone interested in kicking this idea around?

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Sounds like a cool idea. I do know there are several platforms currently out there that may be similar or give you ideas:

http://www.channeladvisor.com http://www.vendio.com http://www.auctiva.com http://www.auctionsound.com

Good luck and hope this helps.

Thanks Jeff, I actually looked into all these and they're all freemium or paid and complicated. I just wanted something really really simple. Like, a morning cup of coffee type thing - check my email, check my auctions, check facebook, etc. In fact, in my prototype, every single ebay user is already in there, I just mashed up the API. It's like a super super lightweight dashboard.

Netvibes has a widget for monitoring your auctions, but I'm not sure if there's a social sharing feature like you describe.

It was a YC company (Auctomatic) and it was acquired.

I do apps for a living for people. If you'd like to talk, an email address that reaches me is in my profile. (I really wish HN had private messages...)

On that note: You should think about sticking up a email address in your profile kapauldo

You have nothing in your profile.

Thanks! Did not realize it needed to be in about. It is there now

I agree, I wish HN had private messages, and I confess, I didn't know I had a profile on HN. I'll update and get in touch with you.

Make sure you guys put your email in the about part of your profile (you will see it written twice, once in the email slot, once in the about box).

Thanks, this comment helped me fix it! (My profile now has an email to reach me)

It seems that auctomatic is just the app you are looking for.

I'd LOVE something like this for Craigslist!!

is it auctomatic.com? all the links are dead.

After the company was purchased by Live Current Media, the team was split up to work on various other projects (Cricket.com, Perfume.com) while Auctomatic was left to languish.

Eventually the servers and services got shuffled around, and at some point stopped working, but since it wasn't profitable and there was no engineering time to work on it, it was left broken and unusable. Now, all the employees that knew anything about it have left (save one), so there's no one to make it work again.

Too bad, it was a pretty cool idea.

If it was a PC app, you could crack it and make it work again. This is just a waste of effort all round.

Craigslist is bizarrely closed and out of touch. I don't know why they won't release an API, they'd multiply their revenues by 10.

Do you plan to take this onward to the iTunes App Store?

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