System

[bbit]

I think a good system.

[P4man]

Is there even a real market for e-gift cards where you live? Serious question, I see the spam often enough but is the demand real even for $? Personally I would never even consider buying that. What kind of gift is that? Giving a gift card is lame enough as a present, making it electronic makes it even worse. I think even giving an envelop with (old fashioned) cash has more style, but I guess thats just me?

Perhaps a suggestion; I dont know the english word for it, but if you get married, people tend to have a "list" somewhere, where you can select the gifts from or donate an amount. Something like that for bitcoin might be neat. I guess it wouldnt be easy to pull off without help from existing services, but if you can,  Im sure there some bitcoin nerds about to get married who might fancy the idea.

[bbit]

Is there even a real market for e-gift cards where you live? Serious question, I see the spam often enough but is the demand real even for $? Personally I would never even consider buying that. What kind of gift is that? Giving a gift card is lame enough as a present, making it electronic makes it even worse. I think even giving an envelop with (old fashioned) cash has more style, but I guess thats just me?

Perhaps a suggestion; I dont know the english word for it, but if you get married, people tend to have a "list" somewhere, where you can select the gifts from or donate an amount. Something like that for bitcoin might be neat. I guess it wouldnt be easy to pull off without help from existing services, but if you can,  Im sure there some bitcoin nerds about to get married who might fancy the idea.

I know what you mean I had the same thoughts as I was doing this as if there is a market for this. After looking around it seems people do use it. Basically, the advantage is liquidity of bitcoins into something you buy at your local store.

Yes, the list you are referring to is a "registery" for wedding etc.,etc., ....

I do appreciate the feedback every little bit helps!

[P4man]

Perhaps you should ask yourself if the people that are into bitcoins are the one buying e-gift cards. Perhaps thats a more useful poll, see how many here buy e-giftcards at all, and how often or for how much. My vote for that poll: never, not once since the beginning of the interwebs.

[casascius]

I've mentioned in another thread that I suspect there's a demand for people to want to be able to spend their bitcoins on big-ticket items.  Like Best Buy or the Apple Store.  Someone wanting a $20 pizza card is doing it for the novelty.  Someone wanting a $2000 card to the Apple Store possibly is trying to conceal his income.  Not saying that's good, but is a potential demand driver of business you should be aware of.

If so, the biggest thing that would matter would be trust.  One would have to have a good answer for, "if I send my bitcoins to this website, are they gone?  What's my risk?".

I would also make one other notable exception, and that's porn.  If you can approach porn websites and ask them if you can sell subscriptions to their sites and give you a piece, you can probably get the websites to cooperate in backlinking to you as a way to "subscribe now anonymously with bitcoins".  Porn wouldn't be high dollar like Apple Store, but the motivation would be somewhat the same: keep line items out of the family credit card statement.

[Noviz]

The only thing I can see this service being used for is to get ones bitcoins into a 'currency' that you can buy things off popular sites... Amazon etc. But when there are several businesses which process btc -> usd/eur/gbp I don't see anyone using it for that reason.
Unless you make your profit margins so small that it would be benefitcial for a user to use your service then I can't see many people using it. And by that I mean profits smaller than it would cost a user to trade btc -> usd then to withdraw to a bank account.
Of course you might get a few people buying gift cards for others as presents but its not going to be a huge amount of trade.

I doubt a site like that would need any real maintenance once its all set up and running, so you could set it up and see what happens.

Incentives - Thinking of doing a "rewards" or "bitcoins back" or "winner contest" for choosing us.

Your only saving grace is probably by introducing incentives like these ones above. Perhaps having a rolling jackpot or something which a lucky buyer could win... or maybe the user with the most recurring orders each month wins something.

[bbit]

The only thing I can see this service being used for is to get ones bitcoins into a 'currency' that you can buy things off popular sites... Amazon etc. But when there are several businesses which process btc -> usd/eur/gbp I don't see anyone using it for that reason.
Unless you make your profit margins so small that it would be benefitcial for a user to use your service then I can't see many people using it. And by that I mean profits smaller than it would cost a user to trade btc -> usd then to withdraw to a bank account.
Of course you might get a few people buying gift cards for others as presents but its not going to be a huge amount of trade.

I doubt a site like that would need any real maintenance once its all set up and running, so you could set it up and see what happens.

Incentives - Thinking of doing a "rewards" or "bitcoins back" or "winner contest" for choosing us.

Your only saving grace is probably by introducing incentives like these ones above.

....and yes that is why I threw that in there even though there is very little profit margin if any so far I've seen but I do have some ideas.

[Noviz]

The only thing I can see this service being used for is to get ones bitcoins into a 'currency' that you can buy things off popular sites... Amazon etc. But when there are several businesses which process btc -> usd/eur/gbp I don't see anyone using it for that reason.
Unless you make your profit margins so small that it would be benefitcial for a user to use your service then I can't see many people using it. And by that I mean profits smaller than it would cost a user to trade btc -> usd then to withdraw to a bank account.
Of course you might get a few people buying gift cards for others as presents but its not going to be a huge amount of trade.

I doubt a site like that would need any real maintenance once its all set up and running, so you could set it up and see what happens.

Noviz thanks for the feedback. Trust me I was as skeptical as you about getting into this and thought out what you have mentioned regarding the fact people would just cash out their bitcoins say to dwolla and then go to the merchants and buy the goods so what is the point of a service like mine?  I don't think I can compete with that I do agree. I guess people just don't want to hassle with it ? With this system you get a egift code within 24 hours or less to go spend at the merchants you care about amazon, newegg etc., etc.,  ... like I said I'll put up what I have so far so people can get a better idea because I don't think I'm clearly stating all the benefits for the service.

Yeah the speed will also be a big incentive to use your service. The quicker you can make it the better.

Just a thought you could do a reverse system where you sell MTGox USD vouchers for cash. Although why someone wouldn't just deposit to MtGox would be the downside to that.

[bbit]

The only thing I can see this service being used for is to get ones bitcoins into a 'currency' that you can buy things off popular sites... Amazon etc. But when there are several businesses which process btc -> usd/eur/gbp I don't see anyone using it for that reason.
Unless you make your profit margins so small that it would be benefitcial for a user to use your service then I can't see many people using it. And by that I mean profits smaller than it would cost a user to trade btc -> usd then to withdraw to a bank account.
Of course you might get a few people buying gift cards for others as presents but its not going to be a huge amount of trade.

I doubt a site like that would need any real maintenance once its all set up and running, so you could set it up and see what happens.

Noviz thanks for the feedback. Trust me I was as skeptical as you about getting into this and thought out what you have mentioned regarding the fact people would just cash out their bitcoins say to dwolla and then go to the merchants and buy the goods so what is the point of a service like mine?  I don't think I can compete with that I do agree. I guess people just don't want to hassle with it ? With this system you get a egift code within 24 hours or less to go spend at the merchants you care about amazon, newegg etc., etc.,  ... like I said I'll put up what I have so far so people can get a better idea because I don't think I'm clearly stating all the benefits for the service.

Yeah the speed will also be a big incentive to use your service. The quicker you can make it the better.

Just a thought you could do a reverse system where you sell MTGox USD vouchers for cash. Although why someone wouldn't just deposit to MtGox would be the downside to that.

I did think of something like that where you sell MTgox USD vouchers for cash there is something to it just haven't put my head around it yet thanks for brainstorming!

[Alex Fenner]

I would use this if it had no interest at all

[turquoise9955]

Yeah, this would be a great addition!