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Show HN: I built a Rotten Tomatoes-style platform for durable products

buyforlifeproducts.com

371–380 of 413 posts

Re: Show HN: I built a Rotten Tomatoes-style platform for durable products

#371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because you aren't aggregating professional reviews of these products outdoorgearlab.com looks like a professional review site to me in the context of being an affiliate marketing / review site. IMHO almost all reviews online are affiliate marketing these days, so what I'd really be interested in is a site that hosts reviews and doesn't allow _any_ affiliate marketing or external links. IE: No incentive to game the…

Reddit is the biggest player in this space right now. "[xyz product] reddit" are very popular search terms.

companies must be paying for positive comments on reddit communities at this point.

Re: Show HN: I built a Rotten Tomatoes-style platform for durable products

#374

The cost of a product is not only replacement price but also replacement time. Replacing with an alternative is more cost than an identical. High-quality long-life products have excellent value efficiency. The key to online review info is convenient centralized interfaces and accurate-trustable reviews. Curation is the future.

It would be a great feature to log replacement time and adjust life-time price as a product property.

Re: Show HN: I built a Rotten Tomatoes-style platform for durable products

#375
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think because without Reddit every result is an affiliate blog trying to sell the product. Reddit feels like the reviews come from real people.

How to build the next Google: all good results these days are within communities, and Google search has become useless for most of these searches. So don't build a search engine: build a "rotten tomatoes for X" where the sources for each X are "the top N subreddits/communities/editorial-sites/forums for X". For example, supplements: examine.com, reddit /r/supplements /r/nootropics (long tail ones), wikipedia, etc. Th…

I had a similar idea: build a kind of "stackexchange" of search engines. You start with a "generic" search engine infrastructure, and each community runs its own instance, tweaked accordingly. This would mean:

* The community chooses what goes in the search database, the rules for the crawler etc.

* People in the community can vote on stuff, etc.

* The engine can be customized to have some "semantic" understanding of what is scraped (i.e. on a math-oriented instance, it would understand latex, in a cooking one, it would be able to parse recipes if they respect schema.org).

I really believe in this kind of concept of "user curated, community oriented" search engine, since this means taking pretty much the opposite approach to what google does, thus:

* this wouldn't compete on google's own ground ==> higher chances of success.

* you could keep more control on the data

* the engine wouldn't pull any tricks on you by trying to overfit what you meant

* lots of customization options, etc.

But I never had the energy to try and start something with the idea…

Re: Show HN: I built a Rotten Tomatoes-style platform for durable products

#376

I like the concept but since it's open to the public it will suffer from ignorance. For example, take the Salomon Quest boots that are listed. I own a pair of them. While they're good boots for the price they do not deserve an A- score. They are not BIFL. The soles are glued making them not resoleable. The sole on one of mine has started coming unglued too. The same can be said for the Victorinox Fibrox knife that ha…

"BIFL" footwear; genuinely curious, does such a product even exist?

You can certainly buy shoes that will last for decades, if you're diligent with maintenance.

BUT, you're still going to need (probably) multiple resoles, patching, and what not.

Take a look at the shoes Prince Charles is wearing - they're bespoke shoes from the 50s.

But you need to ask yourself - at what point do you just scrap them, and buy a new pair?

Some people love the vintage "relic" look - but every resole and patching is going to cost you money. Purchasing a pair of $1000 shoes, and then spending $1000-$2000 on maintenance the next 50 years will make sense for some, but not for others.

I personally, would much rather just buy a new pair of $500-$1000 shoes every 10-15 years, and discard the old ones when they start to look too shabby.

I live my guitars old and reliced, but shoes ? No thanks. When / if my shoes need patching, I'm throwing them.

Re: Show HN: I built a Rotten Tomatoes-style platform for durable products

#377
Late to this but I've owned 2 Leatherman Waves and will continue to own them as long as they are produced. I've lost one, and the second purchase included having the tool replaced for free after 5 years when I'd ruined most of the features due to hard use. This was a mix of 'professional' and hobby use.

This brings to mind some considerations for you:

1. Professional tier tools are often much hardier than consumer, and often a pro tool would last a lifetime for a consumer user, but only a few cycles professionally

2. Warranty and replacement is very important here. Example is Osprey who _had_ an incredible no questions replacement, but they've changed it while keeping the "all-mighty-guarantee" name.

Elements to consider. I'll try add a Leatherman review.

Re: Show HN: I built a Rotten Tomatoes-style platform for durable products

#378

Cool project. How do you intend to keep ratings aligned with durability rather than “I bought this a few weeks ago and really like it so I’ll give it 5 stars!”?

I'm in the same boat. I started living a more minimal lifestyle about 2 years ago. All my stuff fits into a 35L bag.

So I prefer to pay a premium for high quality durable products. If they can solve the trust problem, I'd be a customer.

I hope for a larger counter movement to the consumerism today. Reward companies for making durable products and punish those who don't.

Great idea!

Re: Show HN: I built a Rotten Tomatoes-style platform for durable products

#379
post #74

Looks great. This is probably on your TODO list, but I wanted to make sure you were aware in case it isn't. Your terms of service and privacy policy are: a) Not linked to anywhere except the login screen in very small text. Seems to be part of Google sign in? b) Clicking them goes nowhere. I suspect you setup Google login and didn't provide links to a terms / privacy screen. If you're going to be collecting logins (m…

Really? How much time do you spend reading ToS and privacy policies?

About 0 minutes per week

Re: Show HN: I built a Rotten Tomatoes-style platform for durable products

#380
You need to start with a niche and a community.

That means a geographical restriction and product restrictions.

Good candidates for a niche include things that people only buy once or intend to buy once where the cost is high and people can afford the time to do their research.

You also need your niche to be something people are passionate about and therefore willing to put in the effort writing reviews.

Once you have momentum in your niche you can then accept reviews for a wider range of products. Then, if that goes well, you can go to other markets, for instance open up in the rest of the English speaking world.

Facebook started with one college, went on to other colleges, went on to the colleges outside the US and then opened their doors to everyone.

Gamification works too. If you can get people in a trade to be motivated to write reviews then you can give them internet points that they might like to have.

Also try and work on your own pain points. What have you agonised over buying to arrive at a choice that has worked for you?

Products also need the resources to keep them going. Service manuals and part numbers matter.

How people use the site matters too, for adding in reviews you almost need a complete product database of every product ever made by barcode with GTIN images magically appearing.

If you can engage people to submit reviews, e.g. this week we are looking at toasters, what you got folks? as the topic. Then people could be prompted to help out.

As mentioned though, the scope is considerable, larger than an ecommerce project and you need to focus on a niche, get that working and then use the platform for everything else.

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