Hello all! I created a site called Keebswap, a mechanical keyboard marketplace and successor to Agora Mech. Keebswap allows you to buy/sell any mechanical keyboard related items and is free to use for both buyers and sellers.
I know this is a shameless plug, but I’ve been a member of the MK community for years and was growing tired of the buy/sell format of forums. The vision for Keebswap was to create a marketplace that is easy to use and organized while still giving everyone the feeling of community.
The site was built from the ground up to encompass features that I felt reflected how we currently buy and sell in the community.
I’d love for everyone to check it out and ask questions/start a discussion. Thanks a bunch
Agree, hitting that critical mass will be a clincher. There won’t be much draw until then.
But also, avoiding all the negativity and piranha-like buying/selling of mechmarket. If you can manage to enforce quality in some way, that could make it standout.
Ease of use, search-ability, organization and automation. Buying is as simple as a couple clicks. Selling is as simple as filling out a pre defined form. When your item sells, your stats are reflected real-time. Buyers can also leave reviews on sellers which further establishes credibility. On Keebswap the focus is on the items and I made it as easy as possible to view everything you need to know about an item in the shortest amount of time.
I agree. The short term goal is to spread the word and get people listing as to diversify Keebswap’s offerings. As far as enforcing quality, all listings go through an approval process before they are available for sale. This is to ensure things like time stamps are valid and listings aren’t spam.
The web looks good and I think is a laudable goal, but dethroning reddit’s mechmarket this way sounds very ambitious to me. This experience is not different enough in my opinion… I think it is more likely that something like a discord style markets takes a big chunk of the stuff being sold. I don’t like them, but they do come with a different experience and qualities.
Another thing I personally would have concerns with is the fact that you don’t talk much about governance of the thing. We repeatedly see platforms that communities have put a lot of effort and time in developing being “sold” and “monetised”. How are you gonna convince me that will not happen with this platform. Because if this acquires the critical mass needed it is very easy to monetise. With a reddit forum is a lot more difficult to do. What stops you from adding fees then? What stops you from selling the site?
Sorry for the honesty and being a bit cynical!
Good luck!
Thanks for the response! My goal isn’t to dethrone Reddit r/mm at all. Keebswap basically started as a way to solve my own problem and kind of grew from there. I just wanted to give people another, albeit easier and more efficient option than forum selling/trading.
As far as governance goes, I’m a hobbyist. I created Keebswap as a passion project and have no intention of monetizing it. At the end of the day IF the platform sees a growth in traffic and therefore cost to run it, I would consider running ads on the site before anything else or possibly collecting donations similar to Wikipedia.
Don’t apologize for expressing what’s on your mind; I’m grateful to be able to have a discussion with the community
Could be a great idea, especially with the current state of r/mm. I have a couple of boards to sell, so I’ll give it a chance. I’ll post back later with my experience.
@keebswap I just signed up and I can already give you a bit of constructive feedback. You should really allow users to attach their imgur albums for timestamps, even if it’s just a link. You’re likely to get a lot of folks like me who are cross-posting items between r/mm and your site. Having to download all those images from imgur and upload them to your site seems unnecessary.
