Yeah, it was amazingly lucky! Pinguino (the photographer) said her creative commons images are used a lot online, so that may have helped. Have you done any image searches to be sure yours haven't been used?
I have, but no luck so far. One thing I need to be honest about tough is that the photographs I have available for my goods are not professional.. it's getting better but not there yet. |
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I run a small bitcoin venture, in essence it's an e-commerce selling bitcoin niche items. Almost a year in the game and the business landscape is starting to show very strong sings that I could soon be able to operate entirely outside the fiat economy. Geographic location plays a major role in how far one can take this, I am lucky to live in the nation with the highest bitcoin penetration in the world, Finland. I would like to argue that many larger nations are by far more ahead of the curve. The US, Canada and Germany do clearly have a vastly larger amount and diversity in services and goods available for bitcoin directly. This obviously is due to their larger size, which directly translates in to a larger customerbase.
Here is a list of the goods and services I need and use so far, some are ofcourse restricted by location, while others I can purchase from where-ever in the world:
Web hosting, was the first service my business purchased with bitcoin. I found bitronic technologies early on and have stuck with them ever since.
Image design and fabrication. Note that this can and has been synonymous for product desing for me. I've used beefsock's services, found here on bitcointalk, a couple of times and have been satisfied. My logo and the pvc keychain I produced are he's desingns based on my descriptions.
Shipping, to be more specific: Stamps, I ofcourse need to use finnish stamps so the selection of providers to work with is severely limited. However reaalimarket.fi, a finnish online-store, does accept bitcoin and do carry stamps. The price is slightly higher than it would be at any kiosk or store, but when bought in large enough quantities the time I save by getting them delivered instead going out and buying them myself, justifies the added expense. I need to purchase about a months supply at a time, in order to only pay 1% more. Free business idea: if there is not a service selling local stamps in your region for bitcoin, look in to it, on itself it's propably not a viable business, but surely could be a profitable service when added to an existing business.
Envelopes and other office supplies. Reaalimarket does carry a couple of different envelopes and a variety of office supplies, that cater to my needs rather poorly, they would propably be willing to add more suitable ones if I'd ask for them. But as the price of their current items is relatively high when compared to the ones available in the fiat-economy allready (+60%), I doubt I would actually end up purchasing from them anyways.
Payment gateway services, while I do want to keep my funds in bitcoin when not elswhere needed I do need to price my goods in a fiat currency, so I need someone to calculate the exchange rate and provide a customer with the payment address and/or Qr-code. Providing customers with recieps is an added benefit. Several options are available for me, I've worked with three different providers to date and have settled with one for now. I am anticipating that competition over fees will emerge soon.
Computer hardware, not that I need much, but when I do I can find it available for btc. Most recently I purchased a couple of harddrives from bitcoinstore.com, since then a couple of european competitors have emerged, which is good because of the 24% vat when purchasing from outside the Eu is more or less a dealbreaker.
Marketing, a vast variety of bitcoin ad networtks do exist, but show little promise. The person getting paid .0000001 btc for clicking a link or watching a video just does not make much of a customer. Buying traffic would be easy, but pointless. There are also a good amount of listings about vendors accepting bitcoin. By far the most comprehensive still seems to be the original bitcoin wiki one. I do hope someone gets this concept right, sadly I do not have any ideas or pointers on how this will be achieved to dish out.
When I first started out I had moderate succes with providing revards for a mining competition on the bitminter pool. The mining community overall does seem like a solid and fruitful starting point for marketing.
I have aso talked about an affiliate deal where the linker would get a persentage of sales coming trough their link, but have atleast for now opted against it.
[edit] I did also approach bitcoin magazine via email to query what an advertisement in their publishment would cost me, sadly they never responded. They have however published some mentions of my venture in their online content.
Accounting I have been approached by a finnish accounting service that would of have been available to provide the service I need for bitcoin, I chose againts it for now, mainly because my venture is small enough for me to handle it myself with ease. However I am starting to lean toards going with them next year, depending on how the last quarter of this fiscal year goes for me.
What I cannot currently purchase with bitcoin directly, various proxy-services do however allow me to purchase most:
An internet connection, no ISP here takes bitcoin directly and I cant remember seeing any mention of one that did anywhere in the world, correct me if I am wrong.
Cell phone service. Do note that I would not be interested in a prepaid service, I'd just like to see a bitcoin option in my bill.
Taxes, cannot be paid in bitcoin.
The three above ones I can however pay with bitcoin by using a proxy service, bittimania.fi has a service where they pay any finnish bill, up to 500€ whatever amount for you in exchange for bitcoin for ~1.5% fees. I have not used there service yet, but do believe that I will be using it. However I do consider proxy services like this a temporary thing. Within a few short years I anticipate that I can pay atleast an isp and a cell phone service provider directly in bitcoin. Taxes however seem to be far far away in the distant future, I am somewhat reserved about using a proxy service to pay taxes, while technicly entirely possible: how dodgy would it appear when another unrelated company pays my taxes ?
Goods, I have been approached by three manufacturers who have offered their vares for bitcoin. One of them, bkeychain, I found suitable and we struck a deal and I am at current their Eu reseller. The majority of my goods is still sadly paid for in more traditional currencies, I have talked to my main manifacturer about bitcoin, but have decided agains pushing the issue, I myself dont respond well to pressure and feel confident that they will eventually get there. While obviously constantly remaining at risk of losing my business to someone that does accept bitcoin.
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any updates? )
Niko is back in Finland, shipments should start next week (its sunday night in Finland atm.) This info is extracted from a finnish bitcoin forum. |
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Webpage has been offline for a while, mining is working normally.
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Diversify!
You prolly cant do all three efficiently, but what's keeping you from buing one rig and coins directly ? No need to put all of your eggs in the same btc-basket.
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My ears are bleeding. Asmuch as I appreciate the effort I just cant stand this piece, get Zhou Tonged to whip the next one up  |
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do we have any background of rep on Bitfury? I did some searching in the rep forum but no dice.
Tier 1. Fpga mining hardware manufacturer, whoms hardware would of have been a huge succes the first time around if BFL hadn't countered with outright lies about performance and delivery times... and the hardware ended up being vastly profitable for anyone who bought it. |
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Wow, this thread really went to shit. Unwatching it. I hope Knc open another thread for the next announcement.
Indeed. |
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I hate to be the elephant in the room, but any word on August shipments?
I know you guys said late August, but that is approaching quite soon.
As you can see, we've hit a setback unfortunately. Luckily we identified this in time (before all chips were soldered to non-working boards). It'll take ~2 days to produce the boards, but up to 5 days to ship them to europe, so I might be going to China to test them on location to save time. We might find someone locally to do this also, but if I go there I'll be able to take some pics for you. I sincerely apologize for this delay. We're working hard to keep the delay to minimum.
Update
I've added option for UPS Express Saver shipping, and dropped the prices a bit as further october orders will most likely ship in very late october. Those who picked first october orders are likely to receive theirs in very early october, if not september.
Regarding invoices: there was a problem on the site. I will need to send invoices manually. You will get an invoice, don't worry.
I need to sleep now. Shanghai awaits tomorrow. I should have more news for you in about 30 hours.
Thats the latest. |
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1PPX88HnkTACPvBy1UkFCa9ziQPiNLFKMp Ty
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I'd like you to consider an option to list items in multiple categories... for example as far as I can tell you have (atleast) two places to list keychains in.
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Do you want me to top that...!  |
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btctrinkets is still looking for a north american and an asian reseller in order to offer customers in those regions faster and cheaper shipping. If your interested please get in touch.
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Im so jealous, Ive gone as far as to post some images of my goods on free imagebanks online with credits to use freely, but havent seen a single taker so far. I mean comeon Casascius coins are cool but the articles really need more diverse images! |
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Shipping from ?
...this should be default info whenever you sell physical goods, as for example to me it can make a 24% difference in the actual price I end up paying before I have the product in hand.
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Make sure you get the plain steel kind, don't fall for those pretty all plastic or plastic-coated ones, they won't work.  They do if you peal away the plastic |
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Two new products added to my selection a rehash of my tiepin with a more plain metal coloured base pin.  ..and the more exciting one, because it's the first good Im adding that I did not need fiat to aqquire: bkeychain's very nice metal bitcoin keychain.  |
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Copy pasta with a side of translation from the finnish bitcoin forums: Odottelen yhä H-Boardeja tehtaalta, niin käytin ajan hyväksi ja korjautin M-boardin. Still waiting for H-Boards from the factory, making good use of the time and fixed the M-board.Nyt on uusi M-board valmis tuotantoon! The new M-board is now ready for production!Uutta: 3kpl 3-pin Molex tuuletinliitännät, 2kpl Molex Mini-fit Jr PCIe liitännät New: 3x 3-pin Molex fan connectors, 2x Molex Mini-fit Jr PCIe connectors |
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