Business Idea
Bitwants was a peer to peer crypto shopping platform, where people can shop using crypto on different shopping websites like AliExpress, Bangggood, Gearbest etc. It can also be called as crypto buying platform where people can buy crypto using fiat (by placing orders with their credit cards on their behalf) exactly like Brawker.
Watch this video: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2wu51h
I still want it to make it like brawker but should work for all types of goods. Physical and Digital goods both e.g if someone wants to buy a course online or someone want to order on aliexpress.
How Bitwants was working on backend business side?
I was working on Bitwants solely, i had to keep reserve in my webmoney and paypal account as it was Webmoney can be used among all these Chinese websites like AliExpress, Banggood, Gearbest. So i receive crypto from customer and spend my webmoney by fulfilling his order and then mark his order status as paid.
What happens if i ran out of reserve ($)?
Second option was to exchange these crypto on localbitcoins to fill your reserves again and spend it again.
How i couldn’t scale it up?
These are few reason for it.
- Resources - Resources were not great and scalable, our website code was not upto standard, there were bugs and vulnerabilities which couldn’t let me scale. I cannot accept 3rd party brokers (sellers) on my platform even though i had many requests for brokers (upto 90 applicants)
- Solo - I was working alone on project and there were lot of orders which i couldn’t accept was dealing with only high order values.
- Marketing - I didn’t spent any single penny on it’s marketing also didn’t want to because our platform could go down as result of huge traffic. I remember it went down when Bitcoin.com wrote about us
Why i’m selling?
These are few reasons i’m selling this business.
- Crypto regulations - It’s getting worse and worse day by day. In Pakistan if banks or any govt body founds that i am making money from crypto business they can close my account and i could face lot of trouble. Reference
- Interest - I lost interest in it when the gave my developer order to redevelop it again, paid him some money. He delayed it so much and when delivered and showed me some work. I wasn’t happy with his work. So all time and money lost on it’s development made me lose interest.
Any stats of websites?
Total users at this point are 2843 with around 100 brokers request. Platform has around 35,968.53 USD in sales till yet.
How platform makes money?
These are few monetization models
- Flat fee on each order which i set at 3% which is visible to customer.
- Margin on exchange rate which i set at -13% this is hidden from customer.
- Affiliate earnings - You get 5-15% from the store you bring sale to.
- I had a plan to charge flat subscription fee (10$/mo) with no order fees and priority support.
What you have to do continue project?
I will not recommend you to continue the project with existing code. Will recommend starting from scratch in a scalable stack like NodeJS or React. Add support for multiple cryptocurrency. Reach back to current users i am 100% sure they will come back.
Try to automate the whole escrow procedure.
Reach out to news publishing sites like CoinReport and News.Bitcoin.com
Add digital goods supports as well.
Accept as many brokers as possible.
How much money can platform make on each order?
If you set 3% flat fee + 13% exchange rate margin and 5% affiliate earnings. So total will be 21% of margin. So you if you reach 5000$ in sales each month. You are making at least 1050$ a month. This is a realistic figures, people mostly buying expensive goods like Mining equipment from AliExpress, Computer Hardwares etc.
Why this idea will work again?
Purse.io is only big competitor at the moment. They only accept Amazon at the moment. There are still no big platform for Chinese sites like AliExpress. I still receive queries from customers when service will back again.