Hello, and welcome to the YardHopper.com Blog. We will use this Blog as a way to communicate with our members and with our Garage Sale and Yard Sale community.
Some of the things we will discuss:
Please check back often, as we intend to make this Blog an integral part of YardHopper.com, the webs premier site for advertising and locating Garage, Yard and Estate Sales.
7
September
2006
(cont’d)… So we began racking our brains for a domain name. The hard part wasn’t necessarily coming up with a name, it was coming up with a name that had not already been taken. GarageSale and YardSale anything had already been taken, unless we wanted to name our website something ridiculous. One of my ideas (a stupid one in hindsight) was gymesale.com. This basically takes the 1st letter of each type of sale: Garage Sale, Yard Sale, Moving Sale and Estate Sale, and makes the only pronouncable word…. GYME. Yea, I know, a horrible name, fortunately Nelson didn’t like it either, but if you knew all the other crap we came up with, or the difficulty we had creating a name that was relevant to our business, you would understand. We’d both go to sleep at night racking our freakin brains trying to come up with a name. It got to the point where it was difficult to NOT be thinking of domain names. Kind of like when you have a song in your head that you hate, but can’t stop singing. We’d throw names out to eachother, hoping the other would like it so we could move on, but none were adequate. I was at the end of my rope, couldn’t think of anything original and relevant when Nelson came through! He said: “How about YardHopper.com?”. That was music to my ears. Not only because it is a great name, but also because I no longer had to try to think of names. BUT!!! we had to be sure it was available. So we went to GoDaddy.com to check, and it was available! Very exciting. So, we had the team, we had the concept and we had the name. Next hurdle??? Creat a web site. (to be cont’d)….
Technorati Tags: domain name, GarageSale, YardSale, Yard Sale, Moving Sale, Estate Sale, business, domain names, YardHopper.com
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29
August
2006
(cont’d) After racking our brains for some other idea (keeping in mind the constraints with which we were working under) we came up with a few. None of which were viable (in fact, I can’t even remember any of the other ideas). In the back of my head, I was thinking about my mid 90s idea of the Garage Sale Site. I decided to throw it out there to Nelson and see what he thought. I figured he’d react like “Garage Sales???”, but I proposed the idea to him anyway. To my surprise, he immediately thought it was a great idea. After hashing out some more details, and discussing some particulars, we agreed that this would be our business.
Now, we had to come up with a name for our business/website. This would prove to be a daunting task…
Technorati Tags: garage sale
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24
August
2006
(cont’d) …to create an Online Photo printing business. How difficult could it be? Buy a high capacity/quality color photo printer, photo paper, design a site, and you’re off. Then we began researching other online photo companies, like shutterfly.com or snapfish.com. These sites alone cost at least $200k to design. So… we went back to the drawing board.
Technorati Tags: business
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19
August
2006
YardHopper.com is the creation of 2 childhood friends. We have known eachother and been best friends since the 5th grade. We are now in our mid 30’s. Good night, time flies.
The Partnership
As with most people, as you get older, you go your separate ways. While we did go our separate ways (opposite sides of the country), we always kept in touch. In early 2005, my best friend and I began discussing starting a business venture. We had a few constraints for our business:
a. It had to be of such that we did not need to live geographically near eachother. Technology being what it is today, this should not be too difficult a task.
b. It had to be relatively inexpensive to get off the ground. Neither of us is rich, and we both have families and regular jobs.
c. I guess those were our only constraints. Moving on…
The Idea
In the mid-nineties, during the internet boom, while brainstorming for an idea that would make me my million dollars (everyone made millions on the internet in the mid-nineties… didn’t they?) I thought of a website dedicated to advertising and locating Garage and Yard Sales. Having spent many a Saturday afternoon as a kid with my mother going from Garage Sale to Yard Sale to Antique store (when I would much rather have been out playing), the Garage/Yard Sale industry was something that I became pretty familiar with.
The only problem is, in the mid-nineties, I lacked the knowlege and resources to even begin to build an interactive website. So I dropped the idea altogether, and went about my normal 9 to 5.
Back to a few years ago, as I mentioned, my best friend and I were brainstorming on a type of business that we could share. We weren’t interested in making tons of dough or getting rich as much as simply doing something together that we could experience together and be proud of.
Our 1st idea was to start an online…. (to be cont’d)
Technorati Tags: garage sale, yard sale, yardhopper, business, advertising
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