If I can code everything myself, how much money would i need to start it? How would I advertise it? How do I find people to become vendors? And how long can I run it before it becomes really dangerous for me?
You're right if it is his first project but to be fair the guy never said that's the case. I'm an experienced software developer who could definitely write the code for a marketplace but I wouldn't know the answer to those questions either.
Maybe I would add to OP: I think you would initially announce your market on here, if it meets the requirements. And you could offer verified vendors from other platforms the chance to join with no vendor bond to be paid until you have a good number of vendors and customers.
As for how long you can safely run it - I don't think there is such a time at all. It's always gonna be dangerous, you'd have to be very familiar with server admin to ensure your market would be stable and robust as well as having no link back to you if the servers were found. Your opsec would need to be impeccable from the start, as if your market gets big you'll become a major target for LE.
I think the challenge would be becoming good at both coding and server admin, if you're planning on creating and setting up the whole thing yourself. Most people are better at one than the other. As an example, I'm good at coding but not very experienced in running servers beyond basic ones. I've toyed with the idea of creating a market for some time now and maybe I will, but it would be a personal project for fun and to learn from, I don't expect to run it unless I teamed up with someone who's good at managing servers and network config.
The money to start it would obviously include your server costs but also you'd want to pay bug bounties and people to pentest your market, I think that would be the major startup cost. You could pay to advertise on tforum, too.
Maybe I would add to OP: I think you would initially announce your market on here, if it meets the requirements. And you could offer verified vendors from other platforms the chance to join with no vendor bond to be paid until you have a good number of vendors and customers.
As for how long you can safely run it - I don't think there is such a time at all. It's always gonna be dangerous, you'd have to be very familiar with server admin to ensure your market would be stable and robust as well as having no link back to you if the servers were found. Your opsec would need to be impeccable from the start, as if your market gets big you'll become a major target for LE.
I think the challenge would be becoming good at both coding and server admin, if you're planning on creating and setting up the whole thing yourself. Most people are better at one than the other. As an example, I'm good at coding but not very experienced in running servers beyond basic ones. I've toyed with the idea of creating a market for some time now and maybe I will, but it would be a personal project for fun and to learn from, I don't expect to run it unless I teamed up with someone who's good at managing servers and network config.
The money to start it would obviously include your server costs but also you'd want to pay bug bounties and people to pentest your market, I think that would be the major startup cost. You could pay to advertise on tforum, too.
Coding is only one part of this. You need to be sure you understand the web vulnerabilities that exist and are able to code in a clean way to mitigate all of them. One hack and all faith in you is lost and even worse could mean law enforcement is closer to getting you.
You need to understand the full stack. Can you administer a linux system? Do you know how to secure it (selinux, file permissions, user management, firewall), do you know how to check system logs for issues?
You can be a perfect marketplace administrator but with the capability of international law enforcement there are many attacks that are not known that will be used against you.
If you think you are smart enough in all of this. Money is not much, at the start. Most of your money probably is on infrastructure to make your marketplace fast, and resist ddos attacks. To start a server for your reverse proxy, and a server for your origin server. Maybe an additional one for load balancing. You can also setup a seperate server for your database but this is not as necessary until later. Advertise on tforum, build up your trust. Reach out to vendors, offer the quality ones a waiver for vendor fee to get them active in your community.
How long before it becomes dangerous for you? It starts dangerous and does not stop. Law enforcement care more about the big ones but if you are bad at what you do they are very happy to take down little guys to make a statement. Be ready to lose it all at any time.
You need to understand the full stack. Can you administer a linux system? Do you know how to secure it (selinux, file permissions, user management, firewall), do you know how to check system logs for issues?
You can be a perfect marketplace administrator but with the capability of international law enforcement there are many attacks that are not known that will be used against you.
If you think you are smart enough in all of this. Money is not much, at the start. Most of your money probably is on infrastructure to make your marketplace fast, and resist ddos attacks. To start a server for your reverse proxy, and a server for your origin server. Maybe an additional one for load balancing. You can also setup a seperate server for your database but this is not as necessary until later. Advertise on tforum, build up your trust. Reach out to vendors, offer the quality ones a waiver for vendor fee to get them active in your community.
How long before it becomes dangerous for you? It starts dangerous and does not stop. Law enforcement care more about the big ones but if you are bad at what you do they are very happy to take down little guys to make a statement. Be ready to lose it all at any time.