Missing Link: How quirky marketplaces still survive
There are plenty of shopping platforms on the Internet. Some of them are not for everyone - perhaps for the best.
Interested in an asphalt milling machine? No problem, but the price is only available on request at specialized marketplaces.
(Image: Machinery Line, Screenshot und Bearbeitung: heise online)
If there is one piece of wisdom that has accompanied the author on the Internet since the mid-1990s, it is this: One of the best things is to end up where you didn't want to go, to find what you weren't looking for in the first place. At a time when search engines have all too often become banal search engines, it is a luxury to simply let your intuition run free. One wrong turn on the internet and you're surfing a wave that you don't know where it will take you. For example, when you're looking for second-hand items.
This time, Missing Link takes you on a journey to the long tail of marketplaces: Because the costs of running a website, a social media presence or hosting a few bytes are very low to begin with, an offer can be found online for almost any interest. In addition to what interests many, the front and high part of the demand curve, there is a long tail of special interests that can only be served digitally. When Chris Anderson put forward this theory of the long tail 20 years ago, only a small proportion of today's users were online (excluding heise readers, of course). And accordingly, there are many more marketplaces today - even beyond the notoriously disreputable Bitcoin Darknet haunts - where many goods are traded that are only useful to a few, but serve these special interests well.
Becoming an islander - competition rises with the sea level
Let's start our journey with the classic online marketplace for idiosyncratic life plans: Vladi Private Islands. Hamburg-based Farhad Vladi made Internet history early on: the idea of selling islands over the Internet was too good to remain unknown. Almost a quarter of a century ago, in 2000, die New York Times recommended: "Fat wallet and a craving for privacy? Buy your own island!". Farhad Vladi has long had competition - Sotheby's International Realty, for example, also markets islands halfway around the world. It goes without saying that the competition from Christie's has also included similar items in its program - such as a beautiful little island off the coast of Venice. However, all providers and proud owners of private islands share one problem: If sea levels rise more sharply, the joy of the investment could be short-lived and doomed.
Sometimes, however, things can be found there that have been seized. Pinball machines or tin soldiers, for example, or things for which import duty was simply not paid, such as pallets of Paw Patrol toys. And, of course, discarded phones, cameras and drones. Perennial favorites such as high-proof liquor, usually confiscated by customs, can also be found there with great regularity. The fly in the ointment: the majority of the offers are only intended for collectors. All in all: a real treasure trove.
Becoming a farmer - never easier than today
Why not lend a hand, put the computer aside and do something for nature yourself? And do it for a living? Love passes - hectares exist, and an organic farm with 2,500 hectares of arable land would be a great thing. If there wasn't a small catch: the farm is located in western Ukraine. Just one of many offers that can be found on the Dutch provider Interfarms. Anyone who dreams of growing wine in France, sheep, goats or dairy cows on the Estonian-Russian border or strawberries in Australia will most likely find what they are looking for here. For self-realization close to home, one or two pig farmers in the Lower German Plain also offer their goods and chattels in exchange for cash.
And if you still need a few animals for this, you can search for organic livestock on organicxlivestock- from the gray horned Heidschnucke to the Orpington duck and Hubbard JA757, the offer is diverse.
Becoming an adopter
Perhaps life as a farmer is simply not the right thing for you. Animals, fields, fields, all that is often physically challenging. However, to be able to afford the islands mentioned above, you still need some small change. How about becoming an entrepreneur yourself and not having to start from scratch? Nexxt-Change.org could be the solution - a platform for business offers in the literal sense. Because companies are offered - for takeover or for participation. Often for reasons of age, and in almost all sectors.
Small and medium-sized companies are on display here and on similar platforms – and the dramas surrounding life's work behind them can often only be guessed at from the descriptions. From the Fleischeslust restaurant in the Ostalbkreis district to IT system houses in eastern Saxony and specialist software manufacturers on the edge of the Sauerland region: Not all sectors are doing well. The economically surviving generation of founders of the e-commerce wave, who did not get lost on the stock market in the Neuer Markt, are nevertheless on their way to retirement and are apparently busy looking for successors. Just like the one or other entrepreneur who wants to part with a moderately successful start-up.
