Noteplates.com For Sale — Selling and Purchasing Notes Made Simple

Welcome to the official Auction Page of Noteplates.com. This page will be used for interested buyers to learn about the Noteplates service, ask questions, placing your bids in the comment section, and to contact me directly with private offers to buy.

Ok let’s jump right in!

BACKGROUND INFORMATION >>

Noteplates.com was originally launched in mid-February 2005 under the name Cashcampus.com. I spent exactly $10,715.00 in design and development of the site (not including marketing material and miscellaneous items) Over $12,000 total.

I spent countless hours researching, innovating, and building this site specifically to make the lives of college students much easier. And, of course, as a way to make some cash and become a successful internet entrepreneur.

The original idea of the service was to become the first site that allowed students to be able to sell and purchase study material and class notes to other students in need of the information. Every time another student purchased your uploaded material, you would get paid.

Through the months of February – May 2005 the service expanded to roughly 5 colleges such as New York University (NYU), Columbia, Pace University, Roger Williams, and University of Albany.

The service had roughly 200 members and close to 300 notes/study material/papers uploaded by members.

During the last month of the Spring semester of 2005 the site started to earn money from the transaction of notes and papers on the site. Students were usually pricing their notes and papers anywhere from 5 – 10 dollars and I was taking a 15% commission from each transaction.

During the last 4 weeks of the semester, I began to make a few dollars per day in commission after members were paid via paypal payment system. I was able to get some press coverage from universities and the site started to grow.

However, I decided to take the site down during the summer of 2005 because my business focus changed and didn’t want to get into the “paper selling business.” Since then, the site has been offline and sleeping on my hard drive.

Just this past month, I decided to re-brand the site with the new name of “Noteplates” and invest a few hundred dollars to hire a programmer to squash any bugs that we happened to find and a designer to upgrade the design with a more simplistic approach. Unfortunately, I no longer have the database files with the original notes/papers/members from when launched.

My thinking was: Why should this neat service be sitting around when some motivated entrepreneur can move forward and turn Noteplates into a thriving community of buyers and sellers!

I strongly believe that this service can grow into something HUGE with the right entrepreneur behind it. Students need notes. Students need papers. Students need study material. And they are willing to pay for it! Actually, they are gladly willing to pay. And let’s not forget, students need cash!

The bottom line is that students are lazy and a service that allows them to purchase the notes that they missed is going to be of great value to them.

SITE TECHNOLOGY & FEATURES >>

Notesplates was built with the following technology:

• XHTML
• CSS
• PHP
• MySQL
• Java Script

Database >>

You can easily view all listed notes/papers. Items can be sorted by price and date. You may also wish to run an advanced search by entering specific price, university, course #, description, title, subject, and by username.

Hottest Deals Section >>

This section will display the lowest priced items cross-referenced with the highest user rating from each member. After each purchase, users can give a feedback rating of a grade (A – F) for each member.

Tell A Friend >>

All users of site can easily tell their friends about Noteplates and send a customized note telling them to visit their page of notes/papers on the site. I found that many students began to use this service because it helped promote their note/paper selling business to their friends and classmates.

Account Center >>

Uploading Section:

Users can easily upload notes/papers into their accounts. The process takes about 20 seconds or less.

Users can edit and “stop selling” their notes and papers:

Sales Section:

Users can keep track of all their sales.

Purchases Section:

Users can keep track and manage all of the notes and papers that they purchased from other students.

Misc Section:

Users can update their photos, personal information, seller information, and password.

Profile Section:

Each user has a profile section with their photo and user information:

Community Section >>

This section consists of the following:

1. Testimonial page where uses can leave feedback
2. Terms of Service
3. Affiliate Program (original)
4. Privacy Policy
5. System Status
6. Legal Notice
7. Announcements
8. Tell A Friend

** Just an idea: You may want to install a blog and/or forum in this section once your purchase the site. It would make a great addition to the service and help build the community.

In fact, if there was a message board, students could even request certain notes or papers that they may need. It would connect the student in Florida who loves to write history study guides with the student in New York who is in need of history notes on the Civil War.

The possibilities for this section are endless.

Admin Section >>

1. Add universities
2. Update FAQ section
3. Add academic levels
4. Upadate/Add admin email addresses

Payment System >>

You will be 100% responsible for implementing your own payment system. I was using paypal’s mass payment system at the time. Currently, there is no active payment system on the site.

I suggest that you sign up with a credit card processing company and install a php script on the site that will allow students to purchase notes and send the money directly to the authors. You can, of course, deduct some sort of transaction fee and make cash from every single note/paper sold.

It’s a win-win: the student gets the information they need, the authoring students make some cash, and you (the site owner) make some of the sale.

Picture this situation:

If the site has 1000 transactions in a day with an average transaction price of $5.00, you’ll make $750.00 that day if you charge a 15% transaction fee.

OR…

You may think about making the service 100% free and implementing a sponsorhip/ad-based business model. I’m sure that if you incorporate Google ads on the preview pages of the notes/papers that you would generate some strong click-throughs if implemented nicely.

Disclaimer >> (read carefully)

I am selling the site “As Is” – what you see it what you get. So please feel free to demo the site, play around with it, upload notes/paper, and get a feel for it. There will be absolutely “no refunds” after site is sold to buyer, so only serious buyers should place a bid.

THE FUTURE OF NOTEPLATES >>

Noteplates has a TON of potential and would be a great company for any entrepreneur interested in the college sector. With some creative marketing, motivation, and hunger to succeed, you can go a long way with this service and revolutionize the way students buy and sell notes online. This has “NEVER” been done on a national scale and you can be the first to do it!

MARKETING IDEAS >>

• facebook is an excellent starting point to market Noteplates. The demographics are perfect. You can even offer any facebook member who signs up a free account.
• Flyers and Posters could be very effective. This is exactly how I got the initial members to sign-up when service first launched.
• Nowadays, it would be smart to setup a Noteplates Blog which would help to get the buzz going in the blogoshpere. Last time I checked, there were 59 Million blogs on the internet.
• The method I used was to focus on one school at a time and then move onto the next. This method helps ensure that you build a critical mass at each school.
• And if you have the funds, you can launch a Nation Wide Campaign and get the service going very rapidly. If you are able to get investment, even better.

Bidding >>

You can make a bid / ask a question in the comment section with your name and price (make sure to include email address when filling out comment section).

You may also send me a private bid here: david@cashcampus.com

Good luck!

Commission »

I am willing to offer a commission if you recommend someone who ends up purchasing the site.

SITEPOINT AUCTION »

[Site is now being auctioned on sitepoint, here]

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