I am working off not enough sleep, so this may already exist or be a bad idea, but this thread got me thinking and so I posted this idea on Mastodon:
What if there was an interoperability commerce-focused protocol (built like ActivityPub does for content) where sellers could connect their single listing/post/etc. to many websites without having to manage the item individually on each website and the websites made money by commissions through a sort of affiliate program if the purchase was made through them?
I’m not a tech/programmer person, I’m more of a systems person, so I’m a bit out of my element.
Someone started working on something similar: https://codeberg.org/grindhold/flohmarkt
Awesome!
Functionally I think it could work well, shop listings are no different from posts but with a price and a buy link.
I don’t know if it would be a good idea as a few challenges immediately come to mind:
If your site hosted products from a decentralized web, how would you guard your site against bad actors or scams?
How would you be able to monitor stock?
How would you negotiate deliveries or a unified shopping cart?
How would you instill trust in a user that a product was legit and could be backed by a return or a guarantee?
How would you make sure your site maintained a perception of quality items?
For this to work, I imagine you would have to only Federate with store fronts you were actively affiliated with, ideally in your area or under the same delivery umbrella at which point you might as well have a unified store front. The decentralized aspect would probably create alot of hiccups and distrust you wouldn’t want anywhere near money changing hands.
I think a decentralized storefront would basically look a lot like AliExpress or Amazon if you went the store route, but without any big company backing or a unified delivery service. It could also be a large, even less trustworthy and hard to manage Facebook Marketplace or Gumtree. It wouldn’t survive long.
What could work though is if you were partnered with a bunch of individual, small stores that each were making a name for themselves within a similar space. Their stores could feed products to a larger store that users could search and browse in, but be taken away from it back to the smaller store if they wished to purchase an item. I don’t think you would need Activity Pub for this, just a feed from the store with tags/thumbnails/descriptions/prices this could probably be handled with a plug in that linked their store to the larger site allowing their products to be searched.
Sorry for the delay, my wife gave birth and it’s been a busy few weeks. These are all great questions/points. Thank you for such a great reply!
Yes, we need something like that! There is less FOSS development on this side of things because a malfunction can quickly lose someone money and you end up in a lawsuit, but I really hope we compete with Amazon one day with this.
Yeah, @PotjiePig@lemmy.world raised some good points about potential problems. But it’s no impossible in theory. Like you say, I’d love to see something from the FOSS world that could take on Amazon. Amazon is a bully and a design thief.
But also, I think Amazon’s website is just the visible part of their value. I have helped my wife set up shipping for a webshop, even just within Japan and it is a major pain. Automated interfacing with shipping, with customs (a pain of their own), owning warehouses, having a variety of payement options and litigation helps, all of that is part of the package.
If you are seriously going into this, first, I want to say good luck because I hope something like that exists, and second a recommendation: try Amazon as a seller, to see how it works on this side as well and have an idea of the experience to emulate.
Those are great points, too. I know a few sellers and have noticed their complaints about Amazon have increased in recent years at the same time my satisfaction with the platform as a buyer has been going down. You have all given me a lot ot think through. Greatly appreciated!
Maybe it could work using a simple affiliate model. Affiliate links just point to items in stores. Then cap the affiliate share so it doesn’t jack the price.
