Introducing Peerhub to the Steemit Community
Dan spoke about Steemit's plan for world domination here and described how the Steem network can extend far beyond just a social network and can be used to bootstrap an entire economy using Steem Dollars. I agree!
The Peerhub marketplace will now be focused around Steem dollars and the Steemit community. Just like Craigslist you can post listings for Goods, Services and Housing.
Here is an example of what a listing looks like:
Here is an example of the Gallery View of listings:
Here is an example of an AirBnb-style room listing:
The Peerhub Difference
I started Peerhub in early 2014 and worked on it for a year before putting it on hold. It is meant to be a Web 2.0 upgrade to the old online marketplaces that include Craigslist, Ebay and Etsy. It is meant to use the best new blockchain money of the world and be a foundation for a New Economy. Peerhub started with Bitcoin as a payment option, but I wasn’t convinced mainstream users would spend or want to learn about Bitcoin. People don’t want to spend an entirely new and volatile currency and Bitcoin owners really want to hold Bitcoin as an investment just like gold. I had Peerhub waiting in the wings until a strong cryptodollar solution came along and am confident Steem dollars and the Steem community will be a perfect fit for this platform! I expect that the Steem dollar will eventually become much closer to parity with the US dollar and that there will be much more liquidity in the near future, so let’s do this!
Open & Social Platform
Peerhub is meant to be an open and social platform. However, you can remain anonymous on the platform if you want because all you need is an email address to sign up. The social revolution of Facebook and Twitter hasn’t extended too far into marketplaces yet, although Etsy and Airbnb have led the way. People make purchase decisions based on social influence and trust so there is definitely a huge opportunity for more open and social marketplaces.
Product & Technology
Search Bar / Filters / Menu
This marketplace platform was designed around making things very easy to use and our goal is to maintain a minimalist and intuitive UI/UX. We also want to keep the website performance high and loading fast. Our core philosophy is making things simple, easy and fast. Excluding the time to find a photo and write a product description, it should take less than a minute to sign up and post an item!
Reputation System & Private Network
User Trust Ratings
One of the key features of Peerhub is a very simple trust system. All you do is click a button to trust or untrust someone. The higher trust rating you have the more comfortable others can be with buying and selling from you. Anyone you trust is part of a Private network and you can list goods/services/housing to only those in your Private network if you choose. Sometimes you may want to sell an item for a deep discount or give away something for free to your Private network. Sometimes you don’t want to rent out a room to a stranger, but might be willing to rent to someone you know.
Rating System
Rating systems are difficult. Some are too complex and many aren’t meaningful. We have a simple four-point rating system that adds more meaning than Ebay’s three-point rating. We have the following: Love, Like, Neutral, Dislike. Hence with the Love button you gain a greater ability to distinguish between products & services. We will also allow both buyers & sellers to review and comment on each other.
Messaging System
You can communicate with other members individually, as a group in your private network or in a forum with the entire community.
Local Filter
You can list items from anywhere in the world, but currently addresses and the Local filter just work for those in the US. The Local filter displays items within a 50 mile radius of an address. We would like to expand the Local filter for our international audience soon.
Steem Payments
All you have to do to accept Steem is to Edit your profile section and add your Steemit username in the form next to the word Steem. Whenever someone buys an item from you, they’ll know what Steemit account to send the payment to. That’s it!
Business Model
Listing, buying, or selling in the marketplace is completely FREE! How will we survive? The main way we'll make money is from the Peerhub Store. It's important to know we have a sustainable business model, otherwise we won't have the resources to grow our platform much less maintain it.
Peerhub Store
Our main priority is building up the marketplace, but we do have a store section we’ll use to sell thousands of new products we have access to through wholesale relationships. We'll start with books, health supplements and children's toys since we have access to good wholesalers in those categories. We have a book distributor with access to millions of books. Watch out Amazon!
For now we’ll only sell items in the Store for Steem dollars. That will encourage outsiders to purchase Steem dollars on the platform. Here are just some of the items we have in the store:
Books
Health Supplements
Children's Toys
[Note: We are in the process of updating our store listings so for now please message us before you purchase so we can verify the stock in our product inventory. ]
In The Future
- Easy payment/checkout system (eg. Steempay integration)
- Steem Escrow
- Customized shopfronts: Add your own business logo, theme, style and personalize your store.
Community & Contest
Community & Contest
We’re extremely excited to have @anwenbaumeister take the lead role in growth & community outreach. She’ll also be posting newly listed items in the marketplace weekly and that should help you advertise your products to a wider audience! Peerhub is live in beta so please sign up and list some items!
Now Let’s Have Some Fun With The First Peerhub Contest Raffle!
We’ll have our first ever raffle contest for a total of $300 in Steem dollar prizes! If you post a listing on Peerhub or if you reblog this post, you can earn raffle tickets to win Steem dollar prizes!
$100 First Place / $40 Second Place / $10 Third Place
$100 First Place / $40 Second Place / $10 Third Place
Both raffles expire next week at 11pm ET Tuesday on September 27th. We’ll make final determination of all qualifications and rules are subject to change for unintentional errors and omissions. @anwenbaumeister will announce the winners of the contest next week.
Thank You. Good Luck. Have Fun!
https://www.peerhub.com
Let’s build this New Economy together. The Economy for You and Me!
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