Way off topic here

[mpdaddy]

Hello Everybody

Before I begin I just want to say that I am more of an open source kind of guy. If I make something, I almost never do it for the money, I do it for the challenge of doing it successfully. With that said, I don't care if I can't make money with any of these ideas, I just want to create something that people will use and find useful.

Although I love making the plugins and I will continue making them, I want to get back to creating my own site using IndexU. I have many ideas, but I want your opinion on them. I think they sound good, please tell me what you think.

############ Idea #1 ############

A site to rival Hotscripts. I love Hotscripts, but there are so many junky and dead scripts listed there, that it is hard to weed through them sometimes. I want to make a scripts site that will have quality listings and give the user a little more detail before they have to visit the site.

I think the price of the script should be listed without having to visit their site to search for it.

I also want to know what type of support they offer and if there is an extra cost. Did you know that PHPLD charges a yearly fee for forum access? I would like to know that before I even look at the PHPLD site. Do they even have a support forum? Lots of scripts don't even have a forum and only offer email support. To me, that means they are hiding something if you can't read what others are saying about the script.

Also, I would require all script owners to update their listing every 6 months. Hotscripts has tons of scripts that say they were last updated in 2003, 2004, and 2005. I would send a notification when 6 months is approaching and let them know they need to update their listing or it will be deleted.

What do you think? What would you like to see in a script site? Do you think I am foolish for thinking I can compete with Hotscripts? Yahoo used to be the big dog and I used them daily, then Google came along and now Yahoo is for my email and checking stock prices only.

If I created a script site, should I email script owners and ask them to add their listings? Would that be considered spam? Should I focus on one scripting language (php) or do them all like Hotscripts? Focusing on one format in the beginning will get me better targeted traffic, at least that is what I am thinking. Later on, if it's successful, I could add more script languages.

############ Idea #2 ############

First let me tell you about ResellerRatings.com. They used to be dedicated to gathering feedback and reviews from customers of online retailers. They were nuetral and unbiased. Online retailers would get listed either by users of ResellerRatings or the retailer themselves. After you made a purchased a product or service from a site, you would go there and add your review and rank then in a number of areas (shipping speed, ease of checkout, etc.). This would let other users know what they can expect if they bought from the same site. It was similar to Ebay's feedback system except that the retailer could not leave feedback for the user, hence the feedback was much more honest than Ebay's. A few years ago, they switched from their main focus of gathering reviews to becoming a price comparison site with feedback and reviews hidden within their mess of a site. Hence, from their original concept came my idea.

I originally purchased IndexU to create an online retailer review site similar to what ResellerRatings.com used to be. I want it to be categorized which ResellerRatings is not, it's listed alphabetically. I want to have a similar review and rating system with the ability to customize the review questions on a site by site basis.

My concept is similar, I want to have detailed unbiased reviews of online retailers. I want to be the place you check before buying something from a website you have never heard of. We all know that it is pretty safe to buy from Amazon or Newegg, but what about joesvideostore.com. Check my site first and see what others are saying about Joes Video Store. Or better yet, just click the "myreviewsite" button on your Google toolbar and instantly it will tell you whether I have any reviews for that domain. OK you can stop looking for the myreviewsite button, it's not there, Yet.

Do you think it is stupid to think that people would check my site before buying something online? I used to check ResellerRatings all the time before making purchases online. Maybe I am in the minority though. Have you or would you check a retailer review site before making your purchases? What do you think about this idea?

I used to be an online retailer of computer hardware. It was located at abcshopper.com and I closed it in 2003, newegg was too hard to compete with. Believe it or not, I am still listed on ResellerRatings and I still get traffic from them to this day.

Getting back to the subject at hand, what do you think about either idea? Did you even read this super long post? I have other ideas too, but I don't want to make you read any more. I just don't want to create another link farm, there are already thousands of link farms.

As I said earlier, money is not my goal here. If I create it, I want it to be useful to the users. If my users find it to be a useful resource, then to me it is successful.

Please tell me what you think. Even if you tell me that I am stupid, I want to hear it. You will not hurt my feelings, so go ahead and take 5 minutes and give me your comments/suggestions.

Regards
Wayne

[mpdaddy]

Hello Again

I just want to comment on my own post, sorry.

Holy cow that thing is long.

If you agree, you should have seen it before I went through it and took out about 10 paragraphs (i'm not lying).

Please do read it and give me your comments.

Regards
Wayne

[Bruceper]

Should you create a hotscripts competitor? Sure why not. Hotscripts gets lots of traffic but their script listings suck. Old broken links, dead sites, scripts that dont exist any longer, broken downloads.

I was actually talking to John and Dody about this tonight.

Hotscripts is also very expensive.

All your points are good, I would set listings to expire in 180 days and users could come renew them for free by editing their listing, which would give them another 180 days.

Emailing script owners would be UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email) which is spam, so yes that's a bad idea.

BUT I guess you saw the suggestion I posted in the project tools today about a PAD file importer.

I don't think you'd need to contact script owners, you'd only need to contact the companies that make submission software and add your site to their script. That's the ticket!

IndexU can do so much, including hosting some free scripts (which wouldn't expire) and can be customized to include pretty much anything you want.

If you decide to do it, I think we'd be happy to be your first customer if you can get some meaningful traffic.

As for the resellerratings site, quite often when I am searching to buy something that I can't get at a known estore I search for ratings/comments/reviews about some obscure store that I've never heard about.

Again, I'd say go for it.

Myself and other users have proven that IndexU doesn't have to be about links. And with Deluxe you can turn the URL off if you want, I wish it was that easy when I did my recipe site.

Your ideas are sound, it will take time but the core is there in IndexU and it would be pretty easy to set it up. You'd just need your theme done which is the biggest usage of time.

Then comes the marketing. With the PAD files it should be easy to get listings. Next you'd have to get the traffic. The same with the review site. You have to get the traffic and on this one you also have to gain user trust.

As a side note, we created a filter for hotscripts so that we could spider it and pull all it's categories with TextPipe Pro so that MAY be available (the category database I mean).

[FSGDAG]

I think Bruce has pretty much said it all... I completely agree with his post and think both ideas are a GREAT one! Not to blow smoke up your skirt but I think if anyone can make both those ideas possible, its you! You have a great ability when it comes to this.

I understand what your saying about 'open source' and just wanting to make something useful for users to use... BUT... One of the hard things your going to face is building traffic and really getting your name out. Your going to want to make it so that if your site is not thought of first, its alteast the very next thought after HotScripts, etc. In order to do that advertising and marketing will be an expense. So that might be something to consider.

Good luck with both Wayne... I cant wait to see them, and use them!