Hey everyone, I’m a maker and the solo developer behind Neutrone.com. It’s a 100% free platform that I developed to increase online visibility for makers and digital artisans. Each maker can create and manage a dedicated Maker page, which is fully optimized for search engines like Google. This means potential customers can find a maker based on the categories of specialization, the products created, the materials used, the regions served, etc.
It’s completely free and, although it’s still in beta, it’s fairly usable. I genuinely hope it can help to facilitate connections and collaborations between makers and customers (locally and internationally), opening doors to exciting new conversations and ventures.
In the website I also regularly share weekly product ideas and guides such as a simple income statement template to evaluate the profitability of a new project (i.e., product launch).
Great to meet you all! Let me know if you have any suggestion!
That’s an interesting service and while I agree with many of the goals listed in the manifesto I’ve also grown wary of services that don’t have a visible way to keep the lights on.
These are the questions that worry me: Where does the money come from? Are you selling on the data? How do you fund moderators to handle the inevitable spam? Is the plan to capture a bunch of listings by offering it for free and then introduce a “pro” upgrade for additional services?
That said, it would be lovely to have a trustworthy location-oriented search engine for local makers’ services. It’s definitely a problem I’d like to see someone solve.
While I see “100% free,” I also see indications that this may be a commercial enterprise for you, including an offer of “Concierge Service”.
To the point behind @trevorflowers’s questions, we do ask that members of Maker Forums disclose when they have a financial interest in what they post. If this is in part intended to make money for you, we’d ask that you disclose that. In fact, that’s part of our terms of service. So… We ask and require it. (Our site regulars do this, for example, if they post amazon affiliate links. The fact that this is a side hustle for them doesn’t change this; they still disclose it.) We also ask (and… require) that the bulk of posts here on Maker Forums be general interest non-commercial posts.
Maker Forums itself is provided indefinitely and intentionally for free by some of us providing the necessary funds as a passion project, with no plans to ask people to pay for membership or display advertising. But also that means that we don’t want to shoulder costs for others’ advertising.
If this is in no way a commercial project, feel free to clarify!
The site was published/pushed to a few other forums on the same 2d to 3d period. When I was making a product having a completely unique design I probably spent a week looking for forums of users who would have insights into the value of the product and got blasted for being a SPAMmer. Yes I wanted to get the word out that I was making something new but I really wanted to hear what people thought besides the work I did locally with only a couple of dozen friends and acquaintances. I responded to all replies but I can see how things have changed in the last 20 years and these guys feel like all they need to do it spread breadcrumbs and the users will come.
Good plan to pull the post if they OP does not respond.
Hi Trevor, thanks for the feedback :). To address your concerns:
It’s a side project born out of my hobbies and passion. I started working on it during my quarantine, back when we were all in lockdown due to Covid. From the beginning, I streamlined the entire development process to ensure sustainability in terms of costs over time. Honestly, nowadays hosting is so cheap that it costs me less than my coffees at Starbucks.
I don’t sell data, nor do I have any intentions to do so. As a GNU/Linux user, I take privacy and data collection very seriously.
Currently, I have no plans for a Pro upgrade, as you mentioned. I would like to first assess if the tool is useful to the community with its current set of functions.
Hi there, I can confirm that it’s not a commercial project. As for the term “Concierge Service,” I chose it because I find it self-explanatory and fancy. In reality, it’s also a free option that I added simply because I noticed that some Makers struggle with “copywriting,” and I can assist them in writing the content for their service. I hope this helps to clarify.
Hi everyone, apologies for the delayed response. I didn’t intend to spam. And it’s like what Dougl said: I wanted to let other Makers be aware of what I am trying to build for the community. On the reason why I tend to reply late: it’s just that I am currently managing the platform as a solo developer, hence multitasking can be frantic at times.
Hey, thanks for answering my questions. I’m happy to see a solo creator focused on local search.
One more question: Are you planning to retire listings as small workships go out of business? Local search tools seem to become useless because a couple of years after launch a lot of the search results are for people who moved on to a different business.
Hi Trevor, that’s a fair point which I didn’t consider before. On the spot, I am thinking I could add a function that I can regularly run every x months to check whether any of the contacts provided is still active (website, social media), or even check time passed since last login. In case of negative response, that could trigger an email request to confirm whether the business is still on. But I haven’t coded it yet. I might need to add it to the to-do list.
I genuinely hope it can help to facilitate connections and collaborations between makers and customers (locally and internationally), opening doors to exciting new conversations and ventures.
(Our site regulars do this, for example, if they post amazon affiliate links. The fact that this is a side hustle for them doesn’t change this; they still disclose it.) We also ask (and… require) that the bulk of posts here on Maker Forums be general interest non-commercial posts.
