Bitcoin Forum

Just launched https://www.btcdeals.com/ (https://www.btcdeals.com/)

Eventually this will be a BTC only deal a day site - but as I start things out the products will be on the much cheaper end to gauge interest and test things out. In the beggining I may not change the product every day either - but hopefully I will be able to pick up rather quickly.

Products will be electronic/computer/gadget related. Products will launch at midnight EST and run for 24 hours. The price in BTC will be determined based on the previous days Mtgox average.

Feedback and comments are welcomed - this is my first site dealing with Bitcoins, and it's basically a weekend project though I think I managed to get it quite polished in that time. If you have any questions feel free to leave them on here or via the support form on the site.

Will you be doing international shipping?  ???

Sorry - yes it's free shipping worldwide - making that clearer now!

PM sent

very nice idea indeed, plz add twitter updates so i can get your deals in the future.

+1

@BTCDeals just created!

Setting it up and creating appropriate links on site - thanks for the suggestion :)

Really like your idea.
This will help in promoting the spending of btc.

You wouldn't happen to be using dealextreme or something like that? ^_^

You've spelled "Dollars" wrong on the "BTC?" page: https://www.btcdeals.com/BTC/

This looks like a cool site. I don't think I want a flash card reader, but I'll check back.

Cool. I'll be watching.

For this particular first test run - yes. But I do have a a tax id and all the proper paper work to work with a specific wholesaler that I use. The investment on my part will be a bit larger dealing with those products so I want to make sure the idea makes sense, that my code works as desired and also to gain a little trust before I go that route.

Cool, now I can buy cheap stuff off there without mum getting angry cuz im using her creditcard haha :)

Also, does it just have to be 1 a day? Couldn't it be like 5 or something?

I'm going to stick with the one product type a day for now - I'm already trying to keep up with my initial orders since I didn't streamline that enough yet. Once I get it worked out I could always add more products :)

If you have requests for stuff I am more than willing to hear them!

great biz!  This was one that I was gonna try for heh. Guess I can scratch that off the list for now!

We need more ways for users to use their BTC!  The bitcoin economy needs to be based on purchasing, trading - not just day trading and mining!

Brad

Thanks! - fixed that. Copy was literally the last thing I did before going live - so I am sure it could be updated to sound a bit more professional as well.

I figured the flash card reader would be a good test start - not something that most people will care about, cheap enough for those who say why not, and it allows me to at least get the site going. Better items will come in time :)

Put something other than a cardreader on it, and i'll buy (for a reasonable price), haha, too many readers lying around.

get yourself a certificate plox

Which certificate?

Your Twitter icon link is breaking the https lock icon. It should be fixed to:

https://twitter-badges.s3.amazonaws.com/t_small-a.png

Woops - thanks - fixed.

And with that I am going to get some sleep :) 5:30 am and spent the last 24 hours working on this. Rest is needed!

ah you do have one, it's just invalid:

"This web site does not supply ownership information."

Fix your browser.

It also told me, using newest firefox, that the certificate was not confirmed.

And which firefox would that be?

mmm is the btcdeals pricing correct?

0.13 BTC for usb card reader + free shipping? That would suggest you are asking around $1.20 with shipping included?

Im asking cause if you made an error then you are about to lose alot of money.

Hmm odd - checked using FF 3.6 and it shows it too... I set it up using the free SSL certificate that you get when you register a domain at Gandi.net and provided full and valid information. Looking it up real quick doesn't show a general incompatibility with their SSL certs. Will look in to this further and hopefully can resolve it quickly.

Wondering if it's related to it still being new? I literally registered the domain 10 hours ago, and started the SSL process 8 hours ago and I think I only received the actual certificate around 7 hours ago. I've dealt with SSL before, but never in this timeline - anyone know if that could play a factor?

100% correct - and I am still earning a little off the top. Hopefully will be earning more on larger items when I feel more comfortable with everything.

3.6? Thats like a millennium old now! FF5 beta is out

I prefer Chrome - and on this particular machine I am on now I rarely used it for development (i.e. FireBug). Will check on one of my other machines after my morning coffee.

Yeah, I use chrome aswell, just saying that 3.6 is outdated :P

Seems that the certificate was valid, but that nginx doesn't perform certificate chaining which throws FF off. Fixed now.

Oh yeah, you have to cat your chain file and your certificate. I dimly remember having to do something like this.

Wanted to give a big thanks to our first day customers as well as twitter followers - glad this is working out so far!

Just watched the site automatically rollover for product #2 for day 2 (wanting to make sure it works right ;)) - a 0.34 BTC brushless cooling fan for video cards - something more appropriate for the immediate community I hope :)

I will keep an eye out for something I might like, so far very decent deal(s) for really cheap.

For those hitting refresh at midnight - the site was mistakingly showing the cost at 2.20 BTC when it was supposed to be 2.00 BTC. This has been fixed - sorry for the mistake!

Would love to hear from the community as to what products they are looking for. Make your suggestions and I will see what I can do in the future :)

PM sent

Awesome idea.

A nice site, however wouldn't it be better to inject BTC payments into existing auction sites?

I mean for the success of Bitcoins it needs to reach the masses. While it's cool for someone to build a business based on BTC, this remains a tiny niche in the market.

Of course. Go do it and keep us up to date with your progress.

How does the international shipping work, do you offer full shipping tracking and which shipping service do you use ?

I think the overall success of Bitcoins will require more businesses to work on top of ot in conjunction with the Bitcoin currency. Aution sites make sense in this scheme, but it will require actual retailers and other business models to work with as well to show proof of concept to other businesses that they can succeed while changing from a fiat currency. Currently the niche of the market is the fact that sites are accepting Bitcoins - and in our best interests (whether as long term investments or get quick rich speculators) to make sure that the exposure to Bitcoins is as large as possible - so expanding to all niches is a good thing (especially if it's on the "legal" side of business practices - not that I disagree with other sites - but it's a different type of exposure that Bitcoins need).

He's using a site like dealextreme, and just ordering them, and putting in your shipping address, they usually come from china, but most of the parts are well made. They don't offer tracking (or very limited) as it can take a while to get there.

Pretty much - though on larger orders there is a tracking system automatically added - I am not sure what the price range cutoff is, but in the case of yesterdays MicroSD card that was also going for 2.00 BTC, those orders did include tracked Air Service. Oddly, it seems that yesterdays orders are in status packaging, while other sales even from day 1 aren't in that stage yet :(

Reaching out to them now and will update everyone's orders today with a note on the status...

Yeah, that's happened to me before as well, they said it depends how backlogged they are, and whether they have them in stock or are waiting for their supplier.

Well - I am working with my other supplier now to figure out how to handle worldwide shipping... it would be US based so I have some logistics to work out - but got my credit approved, and now just trying to make that happen. The DX route made sense for now (and occasionally may still make sense) but this will have better deals on higher end products (as an example, I have compared the prices on products woot.com has offered with those from my supplier, and there is room to undercut woot while still making a slight profit).

Yes that's right. I just wanted to point out that this alone does not suffice.

Oh alright sweet.

/offtopic I now have 2 bitcoins. I'm not sure whether I should be happy or sad...

Thinking of moving the update time to noon each day EST instead of midnight EST - any objections to this move?

nope

cool site!

Thanks!

Also an FYI to all - tonights deal will be the last one to launch at midnight - this deal will run for 36 hours instead of 24 hours and then Sunday at 12 noon EST will be the new deal. This will be easier for me to handle immediate orders (fun stat - most orders happen right after a new deal launches) as well as let me get on a better sleep schedule as I will be starting a new job in two weeks - need to get in to a proper groove ;) To help with this I will be launching a countdown clock on the site tomorrow to show the time remaining until the next product.

One more thing - looking for suggestions from the community on what they would like to see. Feel free to PM me, tweet me or post in here. I'm sure some people want cheaper items, and others want more luxurious items - but an idea of what you, the actual customer wants will help me make this a much better site.

I like this Site! Fresh layout, simple rules ;)

Just wanted to thank everyone for an awesome first week - I have placed quite a bit more orders than I thought I would in a weeks time, and am glad that the site is filling a need in the bitcoin market (loving the repeat customers as well :))

I have some updates that I will be pushing to the site this week - including an hourly update to the mtgox average so that the price is a little more current as the day passes - as it currently is, a product made perfect sense at 3.5 BTC when the deal started, but after 12 hours the price was already horribly skewed due to the massive fluctuations in the exchange rate. I also think this will make it more interesting for you, the customers to determine the best time you want to buy the item.

I am adding a countdown timer to show the remaining time of the deal - it will make the site more obvious as to how it works when a new customer lands on the home page and sees nothing but a product. Done!

Last, but certainly not least, I will be rolling out an affiliate/referral program. By advertising a link or banner for BTCDeals with your unique referral code you will get a percentage of each sale that your link refers. Details to follow!

Also I have some cool products lined up for this next week (at least they are cool to me - and hope you guys do too :p)

Thanks again!

Testing out a new Happy Hour feature - just started now and will last for the next hour! Item will be listed for just one hour but only limited quantities will be sold - so don't face a Sold Out notice, and check the site out now! (After the Happy Hour we will be back to selling a regular item for the remainder of the 23 hours.)

https://www.btcdeals.com/

What wrong with your Site? I thought it will have new Items on Monday

I want to buy things :D

me too... but it is still down

Sorry for the issues today - I had a busy day and seemed to have made a typo when I scheduled todays item it was set from midnite on instead of noon - so I guess the first 12 hours the site was broken - will have some updates for the site over the course of the week to make things a bit more interesting :)

ordered stuff weeks ago. Still nothing showing up in the mail... anyone else have this problem?

nope, got mine about a week after the order

Please send me an email or private message on the forums with your order number and I will look in to this right away. All orders are placed with my suppliers as soon as possible, generally the next day once a new deal is live - though I will admit that my workload over the last week has become really high and sometimes it takes a day or two - but if your order was placed weeks ago then it should be there already.

Anyhow, please contact me with your order number and we can resolve this :)

Please note - most of my items need to go via Hong Kong customs - this does become a slow process at times I've noticed.

I have been really bad at updating people's orders with the status of their packages as well as sending notification emails (they might look automated - but it's just a template I modify and manually send each time). I am working on fixing this this week and hope to have things streamlines - the honest truth is I have more orders than I expected this early on so it's been slowing me down on my duties. This will be cleared up asap, that's a promise.

And as always if anyone has any questions regarding the site, their orders or whatever, feel free to contact me!

Probably the issue. Alright email sent last night. I can not find my order # though. :( I'll look harder toady.

I responded to your email earlier - and will send over your order number as well shortly (on the bus right now and my connection is acting up). Please report back to the forum when you get your item :)

there is anyway that you will get that product back so i can get one?
thanks

Added some more stock so you can place an order - an hour and a half left on todays item.

i already ordered one ... really awesome ...
thanks alot man ...

Good idea, i'll have to watch this one :)

You have a really good site! I'm looking forward to see what deals you have coming up.

hey
i bought a jammer and i didnt get a email of the purchase to see if it has been sent ...
thanks

i have sent you my information ... if you could send me the order status it would be great.
thanks

Just to keep the thread up to date - this was responded to in PM and the confirmation emailed. :)

Announcing the first BTCDeals.com Day of Deals - every 20 minutes a new product will be displayed for the next 24 hours.

Wish me luck :p

Awesome website! already fetched some stuff, to bad I can't be glued to the screen for the next 24 hours :P.

Best of luck with the business. I like the customer service. Excited to see what will be available.

Glad you guys like the site!

Thought I would post an update to the forums about some upgrades the site has received recently - besides the obvious day of deals which was a lot of fun :)

1) The site now automatically sends out confirmation emails once 5 or more confirmations have been made on a payment. This was one of the biggest complaints - and rightfully so. The confirmation email will now be sent as soon as the confirmations are there (it checks on a 15 minute interval) so in general you should get the confirmation email within an hour.

2) The site now uses a rolling weighted average of the market - so you may see the price fluctuate occasionally from the launch time to the final time. So even when MtGox hiccuped the other day with those two dips to 2.99, the site didn't go ballistic - had the price stayed down, well that's another story.

3) During the checkout process, when you are presented with the bitcoin address to send payment to, you can now click that address ad you will get a QR Code. This was requested by a user a while back, and I finally got around to implementing that.

4) The site has been given a wider layout and slight changes here and there in design (mostly minor - like renaming the top menu buttons, rewriting the about section completely).

5) A new "past deals" section has been added as per requested to show past deals that have elapsed. More updates to come in that area.

6) Just added a side deals bar - this makes sense in the wider layout and allows me to showcase additional deals every day. These will be updated every hour in the very near future, and will sometimes be related to the current deal, or completely unrelated. The deals on the side deals may not be as good of a deal as when they are featured, if they ever are. The featured item will always be the best deal on the site - just something to keep in mind.

More updates to come - and always welcome to hearing other suggestions!

It's been 7 weeks now, and all my orders says "Order confirmed" but that's it, nothing is sent, said he was recovering from a visit to the hospital and that he would get back on track asap 18 days ago, I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever see the stuff I ordered..

sublimnl, how is it going? shouldn't you be getting out old orders before you start up the website again? ???

You *clearly* have no idea how his site actually works.  BTCdeals takes your order.  Once payment is confirmed, BTCdeals sends your order info to some factory in China (seriously!) where they drop-ship the item directly to you.  The Chinese shipper likely has thousands of orders in the queue that they go through fulfilling.  Even after it is shipped from China, it still takes quite a while for the item to make it though customs, then travel across the pacific in a freakin' boat!

If you can't be patient, you just shouldn't be ordering from BTCdeals...

Two weeks later, I now am of the opinion that BTCdeals is a scam.  My first order went through, the second seems to have been a scam.

I know it takes time, but two months? and I've been in contact with him over mail for about a month trying to get a clear answer on how far along just one product is, most retailers does at least have access to some admin area where they can see if it's been processed/shipped out and so on, I don't care when the other items arrive, but he should be able to check one item shouldn't he? and many drop shipping wholesalers/manufacturers in China/Asia are known to... slack with orders unless they get reminders!

I know he's busy and probably has plenty of orders to process and plenty of whiners wondering when they'll get their items(me included), but that's just who I am :D, sorry about that but, dealing with impatient customers is in my opinion part of the job! ;)

I'll wait another month or so before I start worrying for real, so no need to flame... you know how it is when you're waiting for something fun to arrive and you get impatient.

Still waiting..

No response from 2 emails..



2 months

At this point, I'd rather have my coins back than the useless crap I ordered

I kinda agree with you, but at the same time not, I ordered a wireless logitech mouse and a dvi-d cable that I'll need when I buy a new monitor in a month or so, the rest is just small gadgets like a wireless internet dongle, bluetooth dongle and some other small things, I deffo want the mouse and the cable... I'm to lazy to buy it with real money/sell off bitcoins so I'll hope for the best and see what happens, he better not run off with our bitcoins.

He does answer most of my emails, but it's mostly stuff like, "I'll look up your orders when I get home from work", "I'll check it up later", "I've been sick/been to the hospital over the weekend", no real answers about the orders so far and I never hear back from him the times he said he'd get back to me, I do understand that he's busy, and shit happens, but, one simple answer with a checkup on one single order and perhaps a rough estimate on when he places the order would get me satisfied, and he have failed to deliver that over the last 6 weeks(roughly two months since i placed the orders).

It just bugs me,because for all I know he hasnt shipped it yet..

I bought all my stuff during the day of deals.. the last one

Now I see there is another today.. 

How about we get ONE done and away with before attempting another ?

site down??

I still don't have anything for my 2 orders...

I hope bitcoindeals.com straight there support staff out.
I mean, those guys promised alot and this can be destroyed by a couple of some serious forum complaints posts.

Its funny, right after, as in very next day his SECOND time through a " day of deals"  his site is down..

He still hasnt shipped out FROM THE FIRST day of deals..

People..

We have been scammed.. time to realize it

As someone who only two weeks ago was defending BTCdeals, I agree that this pattern is wildly suspicious.  At this point I consider myself scammed.  I did place one successful order, but as pointed out, that must have been one of the early trust building transactions.  My second order, placed just before the first day of deals, still hasn't arrived.

My apologies, to edasvangen in particular.

Sooooooooo........?

Now I'm mad... guess it's a good thing I bought the stuff when the bitcoin value was high, so I only lost about 4-6btc, which was most of what I had... god damn scammers!