Now you are ready to build your peer-to-peer marketplace. But the question remains, do you build it yourself? The cost of creating a marketplace from scratch, and on your own, can have a whopping price tag of $500,000.

Go on, you can pick your jaw up off the ground.

This price tag has likely shocked, if not turned off, a number of potential entrepreneurs. Thomas Edison put it this way: “Many of life’s failures are people who had not realized how close they were to success when they gave up.”

Building a company from scratch will no doubt have associated costs that can be overwhelming. The good news is that there are ventures to help you develop your business and focus on the most important factor of your success: your customers. Near Me has invested over $1,000,000 in developing our platform to provide the underlying technology needed for any peer-to-peer marketplace to succeed.

Not convinced? Consider the additional costs that you will incur if building your platform on your own:

• Customization and testing – If your site is self-hosted, who will complete all the customization and testing to ensure that it is working properly? Do you have the funds and, more importantly, the time to invest in this?

• Functionality test – Do you have a third party (not your developer!) that will work through your website as if it is being used for the first time? Have you allocated the resources for this rigorous process of testing and evaluation?

• Updates – Who will implement updates to your server, website, software and other enhancements that may come up? Do you have someone assigned to monitor the efficacy of any customizations made to the website?

• Mobile – If you are going to develop a mobile site (and you should be!), you will need to hire some specific staff to manage development, technical talent and QA testing. Do you have this budgeted?

• Opportunity cost – In any business decision, you must weigh the opportunity cost of developing/building the company. The opportunity cost represents the lost income, time, etc. of what you could be doing if you weren’t spending time building your peer-to-peer marketplace. You must consider your opportunity cost when weighing the costs and benefits of building your marketplace from scratch. Is the cost of building this yourself worth the time you are giving up to focus on other things, such as customer acquisition?

Is the time you are considering on spending to build your marketplace worth it in the end?

Especially if you consider the customers you may not have the time to focus on. If you think the cost outweighs the benefits, then our platform may be the right solution for your marketplace.

Our platform will manage the IT side of your business and provide you with a website to meet your business needs. This way, you can focus on developing customer relationships and a marketing strategy that will stand the test of time.