built a pro-audio gear marketplace today + cleaned up the network
rolled a new domain into the wholetech network: proaudiobroker.com — linking buyers and sellers of pro audio, video, stage and lighting gear. patterned after soundbroker.com but cleaner. went from registering the .com this morning to a fully working site with SSL, 250 products, search, inquiry flow, and a private operator dashboard by the afternoon.
what's live:
- homepage at https://proaudiobroker.com/ — 50-category grid, 140-brand directory, 3-step "how it works", and an operator-profile block that leans on the 1996 wholetech history instead of pretending to be something i'm not
- https://proaudiobroker.com/listings/ — 250-product sortable catalog, 10% markup, shipping extra
- 250 static per-product pages with schema.org product+offer markup so google shopping can eat them
- sitemap.xml with 307 URLs
the sourcing side (private, behind basic auth):
one page per product with deep-links into ebay sold, ebay active, reverb + reverb price guide, craigslist across 5 cities, facebook marketplace austin, amazon warehouse, guitar center used, sweetwater gear exchange, vintage king, audiogon, offerup. plus quick-query variants (+broken, +parts, +as-is) and a per-model notes field.
inquiry flow that closes the loop:
contact form → small python service → resend → my inbox, with the sourcing deep-links baked into the email as click-buttons. someone asks about a shure sm7b, i get one email with [ebay sold] [reverb] [craigslist austin] [fb marketplace] pre-searched for that exact model. one click and i'm looking at today's inventory for that unit.
also on wholetech.com today:
- the "live sites" number on the homepage now actually counts live sites (was hardcoded 108, now 113 live / 118 owned, hourly cron, bergeron client sites excluded)
- cross-checked all 115 godaddy domains against what's on the droplet — zero gaps, every registered domain has a home
- confirmed alexsmallenginerepair.com and proaudiobroker.com (the singular) were free; registered the singular today
next up:
reverb shop → real testimonials → google search console → maybe some paid reverb "wanted" ads to see if anyone actually bites. probably need a real phone photo of me too.
beat on it if you want: https://proaudiobroker.com/