Many times, supporters have asked us “Do you have anyone who sells (insert product name here)?”
We would tell them to search our member directory for their keyword. Except, our member directory was a directory of people, not a directory of products. It’s fun to scroll through a grid of smiling faces and creative logo avatars when you’re just browsing, but it’s not what you want when you are trying to find something to buy! And so many times, I would search for a keyword that I knew FOR SURE we had a few people that sold the thing, except the directory would come up empty since none of our sellers thought to include that exact keyword in their listing.
So I thought, what if our new community website had a product search, in addition to a people search?
It would be so epic if there were a Google Shopping alternative for creative people – that collates what’s available across all the small and local Etsy alternative marketplaces, and all the independent creator’s online stores – and a bunch of Etsy stuff too, except WITHOUT any of the mass-produced junk from dishonest resellers!
Of course, I’m thinking about pre-enshittification Google Shopping. Have you been on the internet long enough to remember those days? Google Shopping used to be free. You added your stuff to it manually, or via a script or online tool. It was AMAZING for getting traffic and sales to a small independent online store.
We’ve built our indie seller “Showcase” on UNA, an open source independent social media site builder. “Open Source” means it’s completely free for us to use, enabling us to offer it for free, so long as we’re able to get enough volunteers to help us verify new members, and donations to cover our hosting costs. It even means we can freely modify it to match our needs and potentially add in custom features to support creatives as we grow.
Free Google Shopping for creative people is EXACTLY what we want to build. Except, calling it that right now might get us laughed at, deservedly! We need a heck of a lot more people to join us first.
You can check out what we’re building here. Come join us for free and become verified, and share your creations and curations!
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