My recent musings on Gopher-commerce. Humbly submitted to the community for discussion…
I bought an 1802 kit from TMSI and it could have been done over Gopher. Out-of-band payment and I had to fill out and send an order form. It went really well and I’d definitely do it again. An experiment in this space could be low-stakes; stickers or something. If Gopher is best thought of as an improvement on FTP, Gopher commerce is an improvement on sending an SASE with a dollar bill. I’d try it.
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Yes, 100%.
One of the challenges will be getting order information from the buyer to the seller in a way that is consistent and error-free. Item numbers, unit prices, shipping, tax, total due. Without a shopping cart application, sellers might be best served by bundling shipping and tax into the item price. Alternatively, gopher commerce could make use of a purchase order/invoice pattern. That’s a bit more work for everyone, but should reduce miscommunication.
This is really encouraging, thanks! Yeah, this is really what I’ve been thinking, too. Was thinking about stickers and even T-shirts… Wanted to get them printed at a local shop, too – seemed especially appropriate.
Also thinking about this for slightly larger-ticket items…
It might be worth thinking about some kind of rating system or method for confirming purchases a la Reddit marketplaces. Maybe buyers can create a gopher-accessible file with purchase details and sellers can link to that as a way of building a reputation.
(btw, @wgs, I hope you don’t mind my using your proxy… I couldn’t figure out the best way to share the plain gopher:// link. Lemmy seemed to be struggling with it…)