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[job]Automotive Classifieds

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 9:35 pm
by eksai
position has been filled

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 9:55 pm
by Benjamin
No thanks.

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 10:08 pm
by eksai
astions wrote:No thanks.
http://astions.com/index.php

its quiet obvious that I'm not looking for a "Up to 8 web pages plus a home page and a contact us page for a total of 10." type of website, so why even bother posting? :roll:

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 10:14 pm
by Benjamin
eksai,

The site is apparently only worth $1,500 or a promise of future income to you. The packages on my site are by no means an indication of what I could do for you, or what I have built for others. Your offer is frankly too weak for a real developer to consider.

You may find a taker, and that is fine, if your willing to sacrifice quality.

Honestly, I'm too busy to accept the offer anyway, but if I were to bid on it, my price would be $22,000 for up to 4 months development.

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 10:17 pm
by eksai
and thats exactly why I want to stick to equity

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 10:21 pm
by Benjamin
Fair enough.

Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2007 6:43 am
by onion2k
Just for the record, a mate of mine is a Java developer for Autotrader. I know for a fact that they have a dedicated team of more than 20 guys working full time on keeping the site going. Noone would be able to build a complete car classifieds site on their own in 4 months regardless of the money.

Re: [job]Automotive Classifieds

Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2007 7:09 am
by Oren
eksai wrote:4) Contracts
-You will have to sign an NDA contract.
-You will also have to sign a service contract which will outline what exactly you are responsible for, and the compensation you will receive for your work.
So basically, the one who will take this job (no one will, but let's pretend for a second) will sign a contract and will have 101 obligations to you and your site while you will have 0 obligations to him and you don't promise him anything.
Am I right?

Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2007 7:16 am
by feyd
It's best we keep our negative comments to ourselves and stick to the topic.

Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2007 12:20 pm
by eksai
onion2k wrote:Just for the record, a mate of mine is a Java developer for Autotrader. I know for a fact that they have a dedicated team of more than 20 guys working full time on keeping the site going. Noone would be able to build a complete car classifieds site on their own in 4 months regardless of the money.
What is a classifieds website, but a searchable profile database? Do you honestly believe you need 20 people to create that? You can't compare a full blown website with thousands of features that interact with each other to a fresh one. Youtube for example was started by 2 guys, but now have that 20 developers that you talk about. Its all scalable. Same goes for craigslist.

As far as not being able to build it, in 4 months, I believe you are wrong. Like I said this isn't going to be a full blown copy of autotrader, I just gave that as an example of the scale.
ore wrote:So basically, the one who will take this job (no one will, but let's pretend for a second) will sign a contract and will have 101 obligations to you and your site while you will have 0 obligations to him and you don't promise him anything.
Am I right?
Actually the deadline for this is Monday night, because Tuesday I will be selecting from the number of people who've contacted me already. If you've coded for a while, you know people screw people over all the time. You work hard for weeks, submit a project, then don't get paid and the person disappears but takes your work. A contract protects the rights of both parties. By which I mean, I will be guaranteed a completed project, and you will be guaranteed your percentage. Why percentage? because with the number of people that already contacted me, everyone except 1, are taking the % option.
feyd wrote:It's best we keep our negative comments to ourselves and stick to the topic.
To tell the truth I actually don't mind it. These types of comments keep the flaky and risk averse people away who are out for a quick buck. Life is all about taking risks, you can invest 3 months and quiet possibly never have to work again, or you can continue to do those 1 time freelance jobs, not knowing if you'll even have work 2 months from now.

Thats why I'm out to do this, a year-two of hard work making the site grow, and there is very large possibility that it will generate more income in a year, or even a month(hey we all can dream), than I would hope to achieve in a lifetime working for someone else.

Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2007 1:10 pm
by Oren
Basic math:

x % from 0 = 0
x % from (small_amount) = even smaller amount (0 <= x <= 100)

Life is about taking risks right? Then take this risk: Pay the developer who will do it as much as he charges, if everything works as you believe it will, he will give you back the money you paid him for the project and instead you will give him 33% (or whatever % you promised) from your monthly income - for the rest of the site's life.
That sounds more fair.

Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2007 1:50 pm
by eksai
Oren wrote:Basic math:

x % from 0 = 0
x % from (small_amount) = even smaller amount (0 <= x <= 100)

Life is about taking risks right? Then take this risk: Pay the developer who will do it as much as he charges, if everything works as you believe it will, he will give you back the money you paid him for the project and instead you will give him 33% (or whatever % you promised) from your monthly income - for the rest of the site's life.
That sounds more fair.
a) If I was payinga developer who charges for work, I would go to a freelance bidding site, and get it way under book value. Paying $22,000 to someone in the USA for work that would cost $2000 elsewhere is pretty stupid
b) Your way is hardly fair. The concept of risk vs reward, works this way: you take a lot of risk, you deserve a lot of reward. You take no risk? You deserve no reward.

With your way, you take no risk, yet you want the best reward no matter the situation.


Its kinda like what happens when you work for someone. They take the risk of paying you a salary, but they have full rights to every single line of code that you write.

Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2007 2:31 pm
by Benjamin
I do consider offers like this but rarely accept them. Generally my criteria is that..

1. The client must still pay, although at a reduced rate.
2. The client must be able to demonstrate his/her ability to market the final product.
3. My own market research indicates positive results.
4. I feel that it will be successfull.

It would cost me the developer quite a bit in lost income to build something like this.

I learned my lesson from this a long time ago when I wrote a script for a guy. He stated he would be able to sell hundreds of copies, but the actual sales were far below that.

Luckily I broke even in the long run, but my experience has caused me to change my policies.

I had another guy a few months ago who couldn't afford a site and he made me a list of laptops and computer parts he wanted to send me. I declined the offer even though it was a good idea because I didn't feel he was compentent to market the site.

There isn't anything wrong with eksais offer. At this point I can't even consider it due to prior obligations, but if I were to consider it, I would need to see that you are willing to accept as much risk as me, the programmer.

Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2007 2:32 pm
by onion2k
eksai wrote:What is a classifieds website, but a searchable profile database?
Well, off the top of my head you'd need:

Searchable profiles of cars advertised
A user registration system for both buyers and sellers
Uploadable images with thumbnail generation for advertised cars
Bank integration for advertisers to pay to add an advert
Scheduled removal of expired adverts
A complete database of cars with models and variations so advertisers can categorise the car they're selling
Some sort of geographical mapping system for users to locate nearby sellers
Administration tools to report on total money taken, adverts added, users etc to tally against total money taken for accounting
Some sort of anti-fraud capability to combat people trying to add adverts without paying

Probably a couple of dozen more things I've not thought of yet. You're right that a classified adverts system is an easy build. But once you start adding payment systems and stuff it gets very complicated. Noone ever realises how complex even a basic ecommerce site is until they start building one.

Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2007 2:36 pm
by Benjamin
onion2k wrote: A complete database of cars with models and variations so advertisers can categorise the car they're selling
I wonder where one would find that.