ToSouk - sell handmade items. No listing or sales fee

Hi All

My name is David Dickinson (sorry not the chap from Dickinson’s Real Deal) and I am a co-founder of www.ToSouk.com

It is great that the word about ToSouk is beginning to spread.

ToSouk is indeed completely free to list and sell your handmade, vintage or collectable products. It is completely understandable that there may be some doubters in the early days until we have earned the trust of our users so I will ask you to have faith and also point out that you have nothing to lose.

ToSouk was established as a venture between six volunteer founders of which I am extremely proud to be one. We run ToSouk not for profit but to be part of something that is greater than ourselves. This may sound awfully self righteous but it really isn't. The main 'cost' to nearly all businesses is that of time and how the time is provided i.e. staff and salaries. This is something that ToSouk, in a similar way to the likes of Wikipedia and many freeware software providers, has circumvented by providing as much of our workforce as we can on a volunteer basis. This might sound like a fairytale but you would be amazed how many people have offered their skills and services to contribute to such a simple and honest construct as our collaborative community.

The remaining 'costs', in terms of financial costs, of running a business like ToSouk, in the current ever developing world of Cloud Computing, and SaaS (software as a service) Customer Relations Management systems, etc, are ridiculously small. No expensive hardware is required as all data is stored automatically to remote servers. No expensive software is required as nearly all of the software we use is available from Google, Microsoft, and other providers for free; whilst software or services that aren't available for free are available on highly affordable SaaS subscription models. As such our monthly expenditure is really quite insignificant. Server space and numbers of software users will obviously increase when, hopefully, the number of members of ToSouk increases so that is why we have an area of the site that tries to gently remind people of this and which will hopefully prompt the odd donation; this is also why we include the small caveat in our Terms and Conditions which states that we may place advertising on the site or as an absolute worst case scenario charge minor fees for the sale of products on the site. Charging is by no means our intention; the day that ToSouk is no longer free would be a horrible day and in my opinion would be the day that we have failed.

I hope you give us a try at www.ToSouk.com

Dave D