Hello Everyone,

Throughout quarantine I've had time to work on a project I've been wanting to pursue for some time. I've begun developing several websites for selling various forms of media. Currently the game site and the music site are up and running, though not officially launched. The sites allow third parties to signup and sell physical and downloadable products, as well as having their own storefront on the site. I'd like to Invite anyone with something they want to share to come sign up and add some products. We are going to offer some benefits that aren't offered elsewhere such as

Low Commission Rates: We take 10%, you keep 90%. This rate is pretty low, based on my research, plus it will be well worth the 10% investment based on what we offer.

No Signup or Listing Fees: We don't charge to become a seller and we don't charge to list your product.

Curation: We will be playing every game submitted and checking to make sure it's not garbage. We only want quality content and will make sure that we don't simply have crappy asset flips on our site. This doesnt mean that we will reject games we don't like or have unique styling. There is a difference between Intentional styling choices of graphic and gameplay and something just thrown together to make a quick buck. We don't expect perfection but we want to see some polish.

Marketing and Review: We will be doing various forms of marketing for every game. Let's Play Videos, Video Reviews, Posting Trailers, Distributing to influencers for marketing purposes. We succeed when you succeed so we want to help you succeed.

In time we hope to grow to a point where we can become a full on publisher, making physical copies and signing studios to deals. Maybe even moving into the console game market.

So there's my sales pitch. If you're interested please check out https://gameblast.tk

Also, i'll throw in a plug for my other site for those who like to compose music, the site it https://musicblast.tk

Thanks guys,

Hope to see you there.

Nice idea. Kinda like the one I'm working on. I just gotta get further
on in the game before I can launch!

Yeah, I tried to do a soft launch not too long ago to kinda beta test everything, but surprisingly, nobody i knew wanted to partake. So I figured i'll just start by trying to gather up some vendors and start marketing, working out any issues as they present themselves. Honeslty, it was a little bit more difficult to set up than i thought. I mean, I've worked with WordPress before, but have never set up a marketplace before, Never setup SSL Certificates before, never worked with domains outside of simple forwarding. Those were things i had to research and learn in order to get this thing running. But since i got laid off permanently in March, and this whole Pandemic has pretty much destroyed my chances of getting another job any time soon, i felt like this is something i had to jump into and make work so that hopefully i have a chance of supporting my family when the unemployment runs out. I think i got a decent starting point, just wish it was a little easier to convince people to come sell with me. But i figure if i keep pushing forward things will come together.

What payment methods are used on the site?

I can't see without buying, but Just so you're aware, if your site uses credit or debit cards for payments then you can't advertise it here as per the AUP.

So i guess i might be in a little bit of a grey area here. The website does accept credit and debit cards, but does so only through paypal and stripe. Commissions to vendors is also paid automatically to vendors on a monthly basis through paypal or stripe. The AUP states(which admittedly i should have read prior to posting this ad) you can sell on the forums via paypal, but i think the intent with that rule may have been to sell between users on the forum, not for situations such as this where the website is selling with paypal. That being said, i may need to seek guidance on this matter, who should i contact?

Truthfully, at the moment i'm not even interested in selling anything that's on the site, what i need if to get developers to sign up and upload some games so that i can start doing reviews and stuff. The physical products that are on there now, i would actually prefer if people didnt purchase at the moment because then i would have to take time to process orders when i'd rather be working to get developers to sign up and submit their games.

Honestly I've actually come into a lot of resistance regarding getting anyone to even come visit the site, much less sign up. so far i've had maybe 20 views and 0 signups. People seem to be very Leary of it. Is there some reason why? does it look unprofessional? not enough information on the site? not enough information in my sales pitch? Right now feedback is probably more important to me than anything else. what can i do to make people want to visit and sign up?

Sorry, i got a little off topic, so who would i contact to determine whether i can keep my post up, would it be Lee himself or would a moderator be able to make that call?

Thanks,

James

For me, I don't sign up to websites unless I'm going to use it, as there's no games on there yet and I'm not making games there's no reason for me to sign up. I did take s look around, and apart from some small issues with formatting it looks good so far.

I notice it is wordpress, what store plugin do you use? I use WooCommerce, but it's starting to get a bit complicated to admin and getting themes to work with it can be a pain.

I used WooCommerce with the WCMP plugin to allow vendors. I I agree, the whole thing is a bit complicated, especially with the WCMP plugin, but after a few days of poking around and doing research i got it going the way i wanted. I'm sure i'll have some issues pop up but i'll figure them out as they come. I also used BuddyPress to add social functionality, which further complicates everything, lol. Especially since WCMP didnt originally support BuddyPress, but they literally just released an update within the past couple days that adds support for BuddyPress so i'm kind of excited to see how that works when i find time to go mess with it.

I found buddypress to be a real pain, there's so many issues with its theme integration and style sheets, I had to write my own theme to get it to work on anything looking half decent, and then I couldn't get WooCommerce to work with my theme so gave up lol.