Tindie

It has been a little over 2 months since we rolled out Tindie Fundraisers.
Since then, makers have seen tremendous success launching new products as Fundraisers.

• 74% Success Rate (vs Kickstarter’s 33.41% for Tech)
• Avg. 22 orders per Fundraiser
• 23 Completed Fundraisers

Because of how well Fundraisers were doing, they needed their own section. Instead of stopping there, we kinda got carried away and redesigned the site, rewrote the frontend from scratch, and made the site much faster than before.

Check it out for yourself! We’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback!

Featured Fundraiser

To give you an idea of how well Fundraisers are doing, we have our biggest Fundraiser running right now!

The QR Clock

It was picked up by Hackaday, Geek, Adafruit, Hacker News, and Reddit. We know what you are asking yourself, ‘Is that really a clock that you tell time via a QR Code?’ The answer is ‘Yep!’ Ingeniously hilarious.

Tindie Hangout this Saturday

Working on something cool? Want to demo a product you’re selling? Talk shop?

This Saturday, we’ll have the 3rd Tindie Hangout on Google Plus! The last two have been a blast, so make sure to RSVP!

Tips & Tricks for Selling on Tindie

Sellers, we are starting a new seller tutorial that we are crowdsourcing. Have some advice for other sellers on shipping, manufacturing, or war stories? Please share them in that doc! We’ll be updating it from here on out, and over time, it should become a thorough guide for new makers.

As usual, we’d love to hear your thoughts on the site, these newsletters, or any way we can improve Tindie for you. Just let us know!

Thanks for a fantastic February!

-The Tindie Team

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Happy New Year!

It’s hard to believe that Tindie is only 6 months old. With 2013 ahead of us, we wanted to have a fun way to thank everyone for their support and kick off the new year with a bang…

January Jamboree

Today we are announcing 3 contests- Top Seller, Top Fundraiser, and Top New Seller. For the seller that earns the most, the fundraiser that raises the most, and the Top New Seller, what will you win? Tindie will send you a keg of your best local brew so that you can celebrate with your local hackspace/ maker space/ club! So if you’ve thought about starting that fundraiser or selling that robot, this is the month to start!

*The Tindie T-Shirt will not count for Top Fundraiser.

Good luck to all of our sellers!

New Projects
To help kick off the January Jamboree, just a sampling of the new projects listed over the last few weeks-

Tabularasa PCB

The tabulaRasa is a digital wavetable oscillator with voltage control of frequency, waveform selection, and the amount of interpolation between waveforms.

Arduino Gamer Shield

The Gamer Shield is an easy to assemble Arduino shield electronics kit. This shield is loaded with functionality for all sorts of games. Keep track of player life in Magic: The Gathering, set how many sided dice you need in D&D and roll two die at a time, or set a game timer.

Board X

BoardX is a collection of electronic circuit boards that stack on top of one another to share resources, communicate, and extend the functionality of one another.

Happy hacking!

Tindie Team

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With today being Tindie’s first Cyber Monday, we partnered with some of our small, maker businesses to launch a new feature just in time for today. Seller Coupons! Tindie sellers are now able to make coupons for their products offering discounts or even free shipping. The tindie team is super excited to get this out the door, and a huge thank you to our sellers that helped with today! Just checkout the awesome discounts & a few of the products on sale today!

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Over the last 4.5 months, Tindie has grown to cover 21 countries around the world. We are just cranking. To keep up, we took the last few weeks to do some house cleaning. Late last night we pushed the result – a new & improved Tindie!

• Total redesign, new store pages, infinite scrolling, new categories
• Much, much FASTER
• Brand new backend
• Tindie (the mascot) is now on the site 🙂

We have big plans for the future and the updated site & infrastructure will let us execute on that vision But if you have any ideas or feedback, please let me know! From now until the end of hte year, we will be pushing new features every day because, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed…

Happy hacking!

emile

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It has been 2 months since tindie went live. Originally supposed to be a side project, that has become impossible. It’s become clear – we are onto something.

In July, we did $646 in transactions. In August, we did over $1,800. Thats close to 300% growth in just 4 weeks!

Almost daily, new gadgets are being listed. Projects from America to the UK to Japan. We are a global community that has shipped to 20 countries, and every continent, except Antarctica.

We are proof that there is a shift happening in how technology is made, bought & sold.

To keep tindie at the forefront, I have been spending every free moment working on the site. The truth is that hasn’t been enough. There has been more to do, than free hours in the day. Well, as of Friday, that has changed…

I am now working on tindie LLC (yes, now a company) full time.

We have a special opportunity before us, and I couldn’t devote only a few hours a day to something that (some) tindie sellers are basing their entire livelihoods on. It is only fair that I also put my energy into getting the site, now company, not just profitable, but sustainable.

My goal is to be working on tindie for years to come. Without your success, the community will fail. I’m now dedicated to making sure you all succeed, and that we can continue to be on the cutting edge of this technological revolution.

thank you again,

emile
maker of tindie.com

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Get ready for September…

August has been a crazy month. tindie has grown in multiples of last month which still blows me away. To keep up, a lot has gone on behind the scenes – including overhauling the backend & moving to a new host. This month is setting up next month’s big announcement so just hold onto your Arduinos & Raspberry Pis!

For Buyers & Sellers:

• Source Code! Sellers can add a link to the source code for open source projects
• Documentation links.Sellers can add links to the documentation for their listing
• Anonymous buying! – No longer will buyers have to sign up to make a purchase
• Gravatar support on profiles. Add your gravatar email in Settings to add your gravatar.

For Sellers:

• Sellers Cellar. A new forum for sellers to post questions, ideas, and feedback. A place for Sellers to hangout…
• Markdown. Descriptions are now in Markdown, not HTML. This was done as a security concern. As the site grows, that has become my top priority.
• Markdown Preview. To help with the transition, I added a Markdown Preview under the Edit Description field so you can see how your description will appear. If you have any questions about Markdown, please don’t hesistate to post the question in the Sellers Cellar or shoot me an email!

And to wrap everything up, I was able to get the @tindie Twitter account. I post updates, links and other fun things around the web. If you are on twitter, please follow!

However as one of my old bosses says, rest up! Once September hits, the real fun beings 🙂

emile

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It has been one month since tindie went live.
I can’t thank everyone enough for such a great start and exciting
future. Because the site was started with a public question on reddit,
it seems only fitting to keep it open and public with what has happened
and where the site is going.

Some data from the first month:

• $646 went to makers. Amazing!
• 28,970 unique visitors
• 131,950 pageviews
• Press: Make, Wired, Hackady, Ponoko, Treehugger, and a few more

New features since the last email:

• Forums
• Private Inbox & messaging between users
• New Settings: Twitter account, URL, & User photos

This has been such a fantastic start. You have made this community
special. The gadgets created, comments, and discussions have been great.
However there is one more thing…

In talking to people, there is a problem that 2 groups have, but share a
commmon solution.

1. Sellers that want to list an item, but do not know how many orders
   they will get & how many parts to order.
2. Builders want to order a part, but it makes more sense to order in
   bulk rather than a single piece.

Both of these occasions need a system for pre-ordering. That is the next
big feature coming to tindie.

It’s called Starter\
Allow people to post a gadget or part that must reach a certain number
of orders in a period of time before everyone is charged. If the listing
doesn’t reach the predefined level, then no one is charged.

This will allow more gadgets to be posted without the overhead of a
single order while also helping builders access parts in a pool rather
than pay higher prices individually.

I’m starting to build this feature now, but would love to hear your
feedback here:

https://tindie.com/forum/topic/228/

Thank you all again, and I know we, as a group, can’t wait to see what
you build next.

Here’s to the crazy ones,

emile

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tindie is doing fantastic, and I’m still just trying to keep up. In the last week, I made some pretty dramatic changes to setup changes that will come in the next week – hopefully before OSCON. If you are coming to Portland for OSCON, let me know and lets meet up!

New Features

• Send private messages through Wanted Listings! –No more posting your email address publicly for the world to see. If you want to share sensitive information, you can send private messages to the person that created the Wanted listing.
• Emails on new comments –When you get a new comment on your Wanted listing or Gadget, you’ll be notified.
• Faster! –I made some behind the scenes changes that have made some processes much quicker.
• Gadget Sort –Sort gadgets by Most Popular, Most Recent, Most Expensive, and Least Expensive
• Breadcrumbs & Design changes –Just trying to make the site a little bit cleaner & easier to use

Sellers Corner

For people with gadgets for sale, a few new policy changes. If you do not have the following bits of information filled out, unfortunately, your gadgets will not be available for purchase. Please make sure that all of your gadgets have-

• A domestic shipping amount (something greater than $0.00)
• The number of items in stock (something greater than 0)

Also please make sure you have your PayPal email saved. I can’t send your funds without it and therefore can’t list your gadgets for sale until that is saved. If you have any questions, just let me know.

Featured Gadget

Iron Man Mark IV Arc Reactor!!! (yes you read that correctly!)

But thanks again everyone. I’m working on some fun features, so be on the lookout!

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It has been a crazy week since I opened tindie to the public. The
response & support from everyone has been amazing. Since a lot has
happened in such a short period of time, I thought I’d write a quick
post to log it all.

New Features

Thank you to everyone for your feedback and ideas. Here is a short break
down of the updates made off your emails & tweets –

• HTTPS!!!
• Gallery view for gadgets
• Category & sort browsing
• Updated Product Page
• Add Shipping information to completed orders
• New blog!

Most Ordered Gadgets

As far as orders – it has been truly exciting to see people posting
projects & ordering off the site.

• MiniStylophone
  Kit
• Arduino Holder with Battery Mount
  Kit
• MSP430 Launchpad OLED
  BoosterPack
• GoPro Time Lapse and Control
  Board
• The Stella Amp
  (kit)

Press

And lastly, the press caught wind of what we are up to and wrote a
couple nice things.

• hackaday – An Etsy for
  electronics
• wired – tINDIE: Like Etsy for Electronic
  Tinkerers
• treehugger- DIY Hardware Superstore Tindie is an Etsy for Gadget
  Geeks

But thank you again to everyone for making the kick-off of tindie a huge
success. I can’t wait to see what projects people build in the future.

-emile

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tindie is live!
after a few months, countless cups of coffee, and a few thousand users
later, tindie is live. there are already some
really awesome projects up for sale so definitely check them out. if you
aren’t a maker, no problem! join the conversations on the ‘wanted’
section. makers, if you need some inspiration, just look there!
but thanks to everyone for your support & patience. i’ve done a lot of
the upfront work, but i need your help to turn this into a vibrant
community. please tell your friends, makers, hackers, builders and all
around crazy friends to post & buy gadgets.
anyway, thanks again for signing up. only time will tell where it goes
from here.
-emile

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