As a student at Cal Poly, there have been a couple of different ways that students have been able to sell their books to one another besides the usual of getting ripped off by selling back to the campus book store. One: ScrewTheBookStore.com and Two: Uloop.com.
I originally used screwthebookstore. Why? because there were enough students on it buying and selling. There was already a community there. How did they get this community? They were one of the first online sites up that offered this service. Similar to myspace, word of mouth soon becomes the selling point when there is not much else out there.
Since then, a new service has come onto the scene called Uloop. I like Uloop much more and they have recently won me over. I made this transition just recently due to the fact that screwthebookstore was not working. The site was incredibly slow ( not to mention the design is horendous), and I had to a) sell my books back to campus and get ripped, or b) find another service out there. Uloop does a lot right. For one, they make signups easy. All you need is a .edu email address, which is great because allthough the audience is large, it is still niche. The design is great. My good friend James Edmondson who is one of the best graphic designers I know, if not the best at the young ripe of of just 21, introduced me to the css grid concept which he used with PolyCareers.com. Uloop also uses the grid, which keeps things simple and intuitive. 37 Signals Jason Fried is a huge advocate of this and created a bit of controversy when he stated that the Drudge Report is one of the best designed sites on the web. Lastly, Uloops works. I am easily able to post items for sale and search for items I need. The community has definitely grown since I last checked it out, making it a great compository for content.
April 09, 2009, 9:44am Comments
