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Comment by mywittyname | Hacker News Reader

This is really inspirational: who knew that such a rudimentary site could be a viable business?

Craigslist, or perhaps Tarsnap, or many others providing services to people who know exactly what they're looking for.

Being flashy helps sometimes if your customers are fickle and you need to sell them on something they didn't know they wanted, but if you've got an enthusiast audience or specialized product, substance is all that is required - at least at a fundamental level.

Every junkyard website is basically just a business card with the ability to search their inventory (or the fraction of it they choose to list) on car-part iframed in.

Craigslist provides a very common, broad service to a broad demographic of people. Almost everyone will want to sell something or buy a used product once in their life.

This site provides one very specific thing to a niche market. It's the difference between opening an office supply store vs a site selling one specific type of rubberband.

You don't need a fancy site to have a viable business. You just need customers. Sounds like they have their 1,000 true fans[0].

[0]: https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/

It is not that viable to be fair.

The costs of shipping is killer.

But people are paying it.

I never said they were not. All I said was that in the long term, it will only be as viable as long as people are willing to pay that cost. If his onions are truly better than the onions you get in your local supermarket, then it will continue to be viable.

it will only be as viable as long as people are willing to pay that cost

Can you think of any example where this is not true?

The fact that it's been running for 5+ years seems to suggest otherwise, mate.

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