Need some direction to my problem

[Spikeroo]

Hi Guys, I've been researching online marketplaces and decided to finally start mine, however, I'm a little stuck. The website I'm looking to build is very complex. Its a multi vendor marketplace exactly like Swappa.com, I'm basically looking to clone the site, minus the niche of electronics. Its user to user rather than a vendor having their own storefront. I've browsing Fiverr, asked a few local businesses on how much they would charge to build it. The cost the local shops are asking is $10,000 starting. The fiverr users I've found are around $2000 or less, (Bangladesh, china, etc. )

Heres my question.
Should I learn to make it myself? My dilemma is that if I learn to do it myself, it will take months if not years for a single person to develop something so complex. The Pro to hiring would be efficiency, time frame would be less than a month, and it would be done correctly.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[PowerJen]

Thinking outside those options, I Googled Off-the-Shelf marketplace software. There is nothing ready made, but this Ukranian developer site has all the options.
They say 690 hours to build a typical custom multi-vendor marketplace!
Best off-the-shelf solutions for various marketplaces - Syndicode - Ruby on Rails development agency
Maybe try an option like an ecommerce shop that allows you to also have other users.

 

[elina_nazarova]

Hi Guys, I've been researching online marketplaces and decided to finally start mine, however, I'm a little stuck. The website I'm looking to build is very complex. Its a multi vendor marketplace exactly like Swappa.com, I'm basically looking to clone the site, minus the niche of electronics. Its user to user rather than a vendor having their own storefront. I've browsing Fiverr, asked a few local businesses on how much they would charge to build it. The cost the local shops are asking is $10,000 starting. The fiverr users I've found are around $2000 or less, (Bangladesh, china, etc. )

Heres my question.
Should I learn to make it myself? My dilemma is that if I learn to do it myself, it will take months if not years for a single person to develop something so complex. The Pro to hiring would be efficiency, time frame would be less than a month, and it would be done correctly.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Hi!
I would recommend to hire a development company. Your studying will really take months, and it still doesn't guarantee you will build the platform correctly.

Try to search Goodfirms, Clutch, Upwork for a needed software company.

Good luck in your search!

 

[NMdad]

If you're basically cloning another site/business, what value skew(s) will you have? Otherwise, it sounds like you'd just be building a castle on sand.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Ilya C]

>$10,000 starting
This is more or less reasonable, but still very low.

>My dilemma is that if I learn to do it myself, it will take months if not years for a single person to develop something so complex
This is too optimistic. Do you have the specs? Do you have design? Are you going to support mobile, tablet, desktop? What ways are there to register/login? (FB, Google, email/pwd, etc).
How will you store the data of different products (since they have different kinds of data). I'm not even scratching the surface.

Maybe try and find a smaller first step in this business, or an easier business in general. Or an investor. NMdad's question is important - how are you going to be better than the competition?

 

[Jon L]

a $10,000 software project is not complex. a $250k project is starting to be pretty complicated. $1M+ is quite complicated.

You need to start from ground 0 ... define your business objectives.

1) What market are you going after and why?
2) What will bring people to your site instead of Swappa?
3) How will you make money with those people?
4) what feature set will those people REQUIRE in order to pay you money?
5) How will you develop your product beyond that?

Once you have these questions answered, you should draw out all the screens the app will have, how the workflow will work, what the various features will do. At that point, you can start getting quotes, or look at developing it yourself.

Edit: just for some perspective. $10,000 is about a month's worth of work for a full-time mid-level employee at a run of the mill software company. To hire an agency, you'd only get about a week or two worth of work for that amount. This is US prices. If you hire in 3rd world countries, you can multiply that time by about 4.

for some more perspective ... someone in the US that is willing to do months worth of work for $10K is an idiot that can't or won't work for more than minimum wage. ... you get what you pay for.

 

[dshalev]

Take a look at this:
How to build a marketplace without code - No Code Conf 2019 Workshop
This will probably not scale, but for market validation, and first users it might be enough.

main advantages:
1. speed, you can probably make something useful in 2 weeks or less
2. cost, this will cost fractions of developing a solution from scratch

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[dshalev]

Take a look at this:
How to build a marketplace without code - No Code Conf 2019 Workshop
This will probably not scale, but for market validation, and first users it might be enough.

main advantages:
1. speed, you can probably make something useful in 2 weeks or less
2. cost, this will cost fractions of developing a solution from scratch

Also Makerpad tutorial - Creating a marketplace app on Bubble

 

[Spikeroo]

Thank you all for the advice. Some didnt read my post thoroughly. I am NOT in the niche of electronics. I simply want the Layout/functionality of Swapp.com.

Sounds like I need to do more research on development companies.