The Internet Never Had a Real Marketplace, So I Built One

I’ve been building a digital marketplace for the past few months and finally wrote a full breakdown on my blog about why I built it and the problems I kept running into. I’m sharing it here because a lot of indie hackers deal with the same issues around payments, trust, and discovery.

The short version is that most platforms that call themselves “marketplaces” don’t actually function like one. They make you bring your own traffic, they take a big cut, and they don’t protect sellers. It always felt strange to me that the internet never created a real bazaar-style market where simply showing up gives you visibility.

So I built BuyAndSell.market around that idea. A place where creators get visibility because they already bring attention, and regular sellers still get exposure because the platform doesn’t hide them behind algorithms. It’s meant to feel like a real market, not a checkout link.
The biggest decision was using Stripe as the backbone. I wrote about this in detail in the blog post, but the main reason is safety. Stripe holds people accountable. If someone tries to scam or abuse the system, Stripe catches it. Without Stripe the platform wouldn’t work. Every pattern I’ve seen in digital selling shows that safety is the number one failure point. I wanted to build something where creators and sellers actually feel protected.
The blog post goes deeper into the reasoning, the problems I saw, and how I’m trying to solve them. Not trying to pitch anything here. Just sharing the thought process and hoping it helps someone else who’s building in this space.

Full breakdown here:
https://buyandsell.market/blog/why-i-built-buyandsell-market