The new Reputation system

The problem is and old one: how do you know if someone will flake out on you? The idea is simple: implement a reputation system that tracks when people flake out.

Today we launched the first version of our new reputation system. It tracks the following three things:

1. The number of items you bought
2. The number of items you sold
3. The number of deals you flaked out on

Everyone starts at 0 reputation. When you buy/sell items on the site, your reputation goes up. When you make someone an offer, but then back out of it (flake out), your reputation goes down. Flaking out is also weighted more heavily than not flaking out, so in order to have a positive reputation score, you have to stick to your word more often than not.

Improved notifications

From the popular to the obscure, finding things on FeelGoodTrader has never been easier; so easy that you don't even have to come to the site to find new listings!

If you sign up for an account on FeelGoodTrader (it's free after all), then you can setup notifications for anything you can imagine, and get an email or text message when those things are posted on FeelGoodTrader.

Say you want to know when someone posts a listing for an "Xbox." Simply create a notification for it, and as the listings roll in, you'll get a message in your inbox, and a little notification count at the top of your FeelGoodTrader page after logging in.

Notifications work equally well for really obscure items. Say you're looking for a 1957 Chevy - just create a notification for it and you'll know as soon as it's posted. You can create as many notifications as you like!

Notifications are collected into a single place so they're easy to see.

Create a notification

You get a count of all your notifications

Sample notification email

A list of your open notifications

FGT Launches notifications

Wouldn't it be nice if FeelGoodTrader would let you know when new things were posted? As of today, it does.

We've rolled out the initial notification feature just a short while ago. What it lets you do, essentially, is type in a search term (e.g. "Google TV"), and if FeelGoodTrader doesn't have any listings for it a button shows up saying "Notify me!" when listings like this become available.

Give me some notification love!What you need to get notifications

FeelGoodTrader is now open to everyone. Simply sign up for a free account, and you can setup notifications for any search term that you like. Just go to your "profile", put any search term you want into "Create new notification", and bingo - you're ready to go.

Next time you log into FeelGoodTrader you'll see all the new buyer and seller listings for any/all items that match that filter. Pretty cool, huh?

List of notifications in your profileCan I get notifications in email and SMS?

Not yet. We're really close to having this finished, and expect to have an announcement by next month. Email notifications will come first, followed by SMS.

Development update

Things are rolling along well at FeelGoodTrader. The most critical features are in place, the nastiest bugs have been squashed.

Here's the top 3 things we'll have on launch day:

• Buy/sell any product or service - just submit it, and start selling it
  (ok, almost, any product or service. We don't do prostitution, drugs, or other illegal activities here)
• Trust-based community, where you're connected to the people and businesses that you want to buy and sell from
• PayPal is our preferred provider for payments. You don't have to use them, but there's plenty of good reasons (security mostly) to use them 

We're thrilled to be launching in just under 21 days! It's getting so close we can taste it!

Feature preview: the Browse Box

The Browse Box works like a shopping cart on other sites: it's a place that you put stuff to look at later. Simple.

The 1-minute video below demonstrates how it works.

Get an invite, be the first to use FeelGoodTrader

FeelGoodTrader will launch its service in an invite-only beta in the Fall of 2010. You can request an invite by going to feelgoodtrader.com, and filling out the "Invite Request" form on the front page.

We will then send out invites when they become available. The folks to receive an invite will be the first ones to use the service, and will comprise the founding community of the service, largely setting the tone and feel of the site.

How will invites be given out?

Ok, so building a service like this, and actually having it work, requires a decent number of individuals. After all, you need to have a group of people to buy and sell from. It's even better if people on the site live close to one another.

Why does geography matter? It's simple really - if you want to put a mountain bike up for sale on the site, you need a community of users that live nearby to sell to unless you're going to ship it. Otherwise the service is no good. Similarly, if you're looking to buy something locally, but none of the users on the site lives anywhere near you, then you won't be able find anything that you want that is anywhere near where you live or work.

When is launch day?

Launch day, the day that we open the site to the first beta users, will be in the Fall of 2010 (in just a few months). A specific launch day will be announced soon.

Top 5 reasons you'll love FeelGoodTrader

5. Search, don't sort

We put seach right up front. No more clicking through ad after ad of stuff your might or might not want, or scrolling through pages of postings just to find the really obscure item you're looking for. Cut through a lot of the noise quickly by searching and you're done!

And when you really do want to just "window shop", browsing your way through listings, you can still do that too.

4. Fewer spam posts

Everyone knows that spam sucks. When posts are listed with the newest stuff on top, there's motivation for users and spammers to post and re-post their ads multiple times per day in order to keep them toward the "top".

FeelGoodTrader doesn't allow a user to post the same ad more than once, and for good reason. If your ad is easily searchable, you don't need to worry about whether it's "new" or "old", or how close it is to the top of the page. You only need to make sure that your ad can easily be found by the people who are searching for it. That's it!

Another source of spam comes from anonymity, and the fact that anyone can post anything at any time, as many times as they want. Anonymity for spammers results in a lot of junk ads and scams, the same way that anonymity in email is one of the things that allows for so much spam email to exist on the net.

But doesn't anonymity equal privacy? No, not really. FeelGoodTrader will provide a number of controls to its users that will allow you to be private, and buy and sell to the people you want to deal with. But removing anonymity for spammers means it's a lot harder for them to spam the site and get away with it. It means a better experience for everyone who is actually legitimately trying to use FeelGoodTrader for a useful purpose.

3. Tagging support

Every ad has a rough location (ZIP code), and a list of user-specified tags to make it really simple to find relevant ads, nearby.Tagging isn't exactly a new idea, which is why we're wondering why no decent classifieds site support it! The lack of support confuses us, really. That's why when we built FeelGoodTrader it was obvious to us that being allowed to tag your classified ads needed to be in the mix on day one.

Users can search tags, ad titles, and the ad descriptions easily. You can also click on tags to filter listings down to a given category with a single click! Any why doesn't anyone else do this exactly?

2. Notifications

FeelGoodTrader provides a number of notifications through email and SMS on your ads. You don't need to log into the site to be connected.

1. The almighty Browse Box!

Just click the big, green "plus" sign, and it's in your browse box.We think one of the best features of FeelGoodTrader is a way to more easily comparison shop.

Looking to buy a good, used mountain bike? If you find an ad that you're interested in, just add it to your "browse box" by clicking the friendly, green "+" sign. Add as many ads as you want to you browse box. When you're done browsing and ready to buy something, just go into your browse box and all the ads you were interested in are collected in one spot.