The one marketplace that actually worked

The one marketplace that actually worked

Look at my about page. Thrustable, Bidlyt, Claimbase. Marketplaces, all of them. All dead.

tatooinemarket was different. I decided to do ecommerce without writing much code. Built it on Shopify, went out and partnered with local Tunisian stores in Montreal, integrated with Facebook and Google Shopping, ran some ads. The goal was just to get any amount of sales. Every other project I built had zero traction so the bar was low.

It worked. Orders came in. The Shopify cha-ching notification is genuinely the best sound in the world when you’ve never had a customer before. I was fulfilling them, building a brand, creating a box and shipping products to real people. That part was actually fun.

Eventually hit a plateau. The Tunisian community in North America is a few thousand people. Once you’ve reached most of them you’re kind of done. My edge was sourcing from Montreal and selling in English to a broader market but I never really pushed that.

Masmoudi was one of my early partners, I helped them sell their products through the site. I got bored, they were interested, so I sold them the site, the brand, my custom theme, and the customer list. It’s now part of villagehalal.com .

Didn’t make much money. But it’s the only project where I actually learned sales. Getting on the phone with a store owner and convincing them to work with you is a completely different thing than writing code.

That’s all for now.