I just changed the domain for this blog to WatchedItemEndingSoon.com (from WatchedItem.com). We’re getting ready to use WatchedItem.com for a new dynamic banner maker site.
WatchedItem has been a long time in the making. Have you heard the rule for developing a product? “Quality, low cost or fast. Pick two.” I picked quality and low cost. Conserving cash is key. When your cash burn rate is low, you can make mistakes and continue to make corrections indefinitely.
WatchedItem is a free service that creates eBay seller banners and automatically updates the banners with the latest listing information. It’s shows the seller’s profile and info on their listings something like this:
The beta release will include a watcher counter that you can embed in your listings. This will make it a lot easier to show how popular your listings are. Your listing’s watcher count will be updated every 5-15 minutes.
I chose a dynamic image over flash because flash takes so long to load. This pushes the workload to my server rather than bogging down the user’s page loading time. Amazon S3/EC2 and GoogleApps are driving down the cost of servers resources. Yippee!
Now I hope I didn’t jinx the project by blogging about it. We’re about 75% done and my developer, Vitalii, is getting married in August.
Anyone want to volunteer for the Beta trial?
