Morph market.....

[jplehmann]

Hey guys, I always love to show up to a vigorous discussion on MorphMarket. I think some good information have already been given, but I'd like to also clarify some misconceptions and give some insider info, not just for those people but for others reading through. I hope the admins won't delete this message but will allow me to provide answers to the questions raised about this community resource.

How's MorphMarket different?
> What is the point of building something that has already been done? ... otherwise there is nothing that differentiates MM from everyone else.

At the risk of being trolled I will respond to this. I think this is important to understand where we fit into the Ball Python community.
- The main thing is that it's completely custom software, designed to be genetics-aware, so that it's uniquely easy for both buyers and sellers to find and list their animals. This enables the many specific features unique to MorphMarket, surrounding the searching and listing aspects. Please consult this table which lists off a lot of these features. There may be some other sites which provide a few of these, I'm not going to quibble about that, but it's the entire package.
- As a result, we've become the largest inventory of Ball Pythons for sale on the web, for any site that attempts to cater to this audience. This is important because there have been some other sites with some decent functionality, however without a significant network of buyers and sellers the platform is worthless (FB and Craigslist may have more but not in any systematic, searchable format).
- The genetic calculator is arguably the best in the world in terms of accuracy and ease of use, and I think Matt Huck who helped me build it would agree (if it's not MM's then it's his -- there are a couple known corner-cases we don't handle yet).
- Due to the search functionality and ever growing set of ads/images, it will have or maybe does already have the largest collection of morph-indexed images of Ball Pythons. (Don't get me wrong, I still use WOBP also for seeing a couple of exemplary pictures of a specific morph combo so I am not saying it's the best for this.)
- For a nice overview of distinguishing features, watch our demo video.

Restricted to Big Breeders?
> They only show the big breeders

I don't know what basis there is for this statement. The only qualification to be in the "active breeders directory" is to have an ad listed presently. There are hundreds more "sellers" who have nothing listed, and hence are not listed there or on the MorphMap.

How we Make Money
> They probably make just enough from adds and memberships to keep the site running... it needs as many paying advertisers as possible.

This is incorrect. We have never asked for or received a dollar from anyone. Not for listing ads, and there have never been any ads on our site, paid or unpaid.

That being said, we have always been up front about that fact that some kind of premium plans will eventually be introduced. But this will only be for breeders, and even then our plan is to retain a free-level of service (unlike sites where you cannot list anything without paying). Right now we are fueled 100% on hobby passion and encouragement from our fans, and thankfully we get a lot of that.

Non-responses and Stale Ads
> A couple breeders never contacted me back. There is a bunch of stuff that is no longer available. One of the "breeders" tried to take me for a ride. So far for me the site is only good for a quick price check.

These are two legitimate challenges, that as others have pointed out affect us as well as any other classifieds-style site. We are aware of this and have taken measure to improve it, and have a bunch of other plans to improve it still more in the future. I have written on stale ads here: http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...=1#post2441216

On responsiveness of breeders, rather than ban them we have taken a style of notifying/warning the user about the level of responsiveness they should expect from the person to whom they're inquiring (Facebook does this also regarding how fast people usually reply to messages). In a few cases we've gone as far as removing the option to inquire to them through our site (ie, email) because of repeated problems. In that case you have to contact them yourself (using contact info on their seller page). At the core, email is fundamentally unreliable. So it's something we're working on and as I said have specific plans for additional changes later this year.

In sum, these are challenges that all sites face but we are committed to being creative and going and beyond to find out how to best address them. It will just take some time.

Vetting Sellers
> If they want to stand out, they need to find a way to vet their retailers.

As just mentioned we do provide some light analytics on sellers, but in general vetting sellers is contrary to the other complaint here made about only allowing "big sellers". And we want to be open to big and small breeders.

Reviews are something we'd like tackle one day, and it's something everyone wants... until you have someone falsely accusing you in a public review. It's thorny. We're focused on our core product right now and will leave that to other places for now.

Going Local
> Don't know if I will because I get a lot of my stuff local.

We have all our sellers approximately geocoded so you can see them on a Google map and in the future search within a mile radius. This is only really useful if your city has a lot of sellers, so it will continue to improve as the market grows.


I know it's not the conscious intent, but some of the attitude here sounds like: "I want something unlike anything before, I want it perfect right from the start, and I want it for free." Choose two. We are less than 1 year old.

In the future please feel free to tag me, and I'm happy to jump in with some answers. But most people who want to see it improve send ideas and feedback directly. That being said, I'm glad to engage public discussion.

And per the original topic, we just added Boa Constrictors -- have over 400 listed from almost 50 sellers. You'll see more species added soon. Here's a screenshot: