For a while now I've been thinking about creating a new site, one for astro imagers to buy and sell their data. It occurs to me that there's many reasons why us imagers might buy someone else's data:
- We can't physically access a target of interest due to our location
- We want to add to own our data to make something cleaner/deeper
- We don't have the necessary equipment for optimal results (e.g. only a dSLR and we want narrowband)
On the flip side of it, being able to sell your data at a price you nominate seems like a good way for us imagers to finally get back a little pocket money to go towards the never-ending stream of
must have equipment and software.
To keep this running and to justify the the effort, the idea is that for each sale we'll take a cut, and I'd like to be up front about that as there's usually a lot of backlash when a site starts off with a free model and goes paid. This is going to cost a lot of money to run if it's successful, and require a lot of effort.
I've teamed up with another developer and we hope to deliver a minimum viable product in the coming few months. We'll be looking for beta testers as we get closer to the date and if you're interested in being one, please drop me a PM or reply here.
All feedback is very welcome, so if you have some thoughts on it, feel free to let us know.