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HayMap App | Buy & Sell Hay from your iPhone

12K views 42 replies 15 participants last post by  KS John 
#1 ·
Hey guys-

We've launched the HayMap app and it is in the US Apple App store now (Canada & Australia April 2016)... Android Version Coming soon March-April 2016.

Using your iPhone or Android device (Coming Soon) you are able to locate hay for sale near you and view details such as photos, quantity available, price, hours of operation, read customer reviews and more.

OR

List Hay to be picked up directly from the field the day you're baling or sell your hay that is already baled and stacked in storage.

Apple App Store link:


You can reach us anytime at support@haymap.com with any feedback or ideas.

Thanks!

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#5 ·
Cute.

Most of my customers don't even have landlines though and never have.
Most farmers in Africa have never had landlines and never will but they were able to take advantage of the mobile phone infrastructure and now almost every farmer there buys their seed, fertilizer and chemicals using a mobile phone and get paid for their crops at harvest with their mobile phone. I figured they would be the last ones on earth doing such things. Turns out no one ever laid a landline infrastructure because of the high cost but cell towers were put up all across the land for a fraction of the cost.
 
#7 · (Edited by Moderator)
Looks great, what is the price for installing the app?
The app is free to download. It is free to List hay for sale. We collect a 3% fee, (Minimum $1.00, Max. $100) per listing when your hay sells through the app. Example: (1) $50 Round Bale would cost you $1.50 to sale. This helps cover the cost of running and updating the HayMap platform. We'll have a web-based version and Android version soon. Along with a Pro version coming out shortly for large producers and we can offer lower rates (2%) along with Hay Sales Market Reports, Production Reports and more features for those Pro members.
 
#9 ·
Most farmers in Africa have never had landlines and never will but they were able to take advantage of the mobile phone infrastructure and now almost every farmer there buys their seed, fertilizer and chemicals using a mobile phone and get paid for their crops at harvest with their mobile phone. I figured they would be the last ones on earth doing such things. Turns out no one ever laid a landline infrastructure because of the high cost but cell towers were put up all across the land for a fraction of the cost.
If the amish don't have landlines, cellphones won't fly either.
 
#10 ·
If the amish don't have landlines, cellphones won't fly either.
You're more familiar with the way they do business but from what I understand they definitely aren't into technology. I think they aren't as ancient as some believe but they definitely keep it to a minimum. I bought a machine called the bale destroyer marketed through Messicks but if I'm not mistaken I believe it's made by some Amish folks.
 
#12 ·
I signed up on their app. The only hay available is all the tractor supply stores, who would want to buy their overpriced hay?
Exactly. Their quality is low and price is high but we had to have some initial options for people looking for hay. Opening the app to see no hay at all is a poor experience. Us producers can offer a way better product at a lot better price. A lot of folks just don't know where we are and how much hay we have for sale, etc. It will take some time to get hay for sale from us individual producers but we have a whole lot of interest. We've got about 2,000 different farms and ranches signed up and have been out about 10 days.
 
#13 ·
Personally, I would rather just pay for the App outright than to have to pay a percentage.

I put way to much time and energy into my hay to have to pay a broker, or in this case a percentage. If my margins where better and perhaps if I was a large producer it might make sense.

I am often turning new customers away and If I do have a surplus come spring Craig's List is not only free but widely used as the go to place to find Hay.

I mean no offence at your product, Just telling it as it is for my uses and area.
 
#14 · (Edited by Moderator)
Personally, I would rather just pay for the App outright than to have to pay a percentage.
I put way to much time and energy into my hay to have to pay a broker, or in this case a percentage. If my margins where better and perhaps if I was a large producer it might make sense.

I am often turning new customers away and If I do have a surplus come spring Craig's List is not only free but widely used as the go to place to find Hay.
I mean no offence at your product, Just telling it as it is for my uses and area.
I understand your view. The only thing about Craigslist is that there are more scammers than legitimate sellers and literally everyone says they have the best hay and you get there and realize you just wasted a trip looking at goat hay when you were expecting horse hay. As far as the % goes we are going to drive that down as far as we can. The reason we need to charge a fee is to make sure the buyer is actually serious about buying your hay and not a competitor in the area reserving your hay just to get you off the map. (To show you as being sold out). We can possibly switch to say a flat rate fee of $5 bucks for example but if a customer is just wanting to pickup 5 or so square bales it would cost you $1.00/bale which there's no way anyone including me would pay that. But if say we charged 3% for 5 bales @$7 that would be $1.05 out of your pocket or .21 cents per bale at that price. That 3% is at the top end too. We want to get down to 2% or even 1% it just has to be enough that the buyer feels obligated to actually pickup the hay from you that he/she said they would. Our main goal is to build a network of reputations so you can know who to and who not to deal with. In long distance shipping of alfalfa for example from California, Arizona to Florida or Canada to Forida or Texas or any long distance shipments it's hard to know who you're dealing with and most sellers want money wired up front which I don't blame them but from a buyers perspective would you be willing to take a chance wiring 5-7,000 bucks to someone you don't know or have done minimal business with?
 
#15 ·
I understand your view. The only thing about Craigslist is that there are more scammers than legitimate sellers and literally everyone says they have the best hay and you get there and realize you just wasted a trip looking at goat hay when you were expecting horse hay. As far as the % goes we are going to drive that down as far as we can. The only reason we need to charge a fee of some sort is to make sure the buyer is actually serious about buying your hay and not a competitor in the area reserving your hay just to get you off the map as in being sold out. We can possibly switch to say a flat rate fee of $5 bucks for example but if a customer is just wanting to pickup 5 or so square bales it would cost you $1.00/bale which there's no way anyone including me would pay. But if say we charged 3% for 5 bales @$7 that would be $1.05 out of your pocket or .21 cents per bale at that price. That 3% is at the top end too. We want to get down to 2% or even 1% it just has to be enough that the buyer feels obligated to actually pickup the hay from you that he/she said they would. Our main goal is to build a network of reputations so you can know who to and who not to deal with. In long distance shipping of alfalfa for example from California, Arizona to Florida or Canada to Forida or Texas or any long distance shipments it's hard to know who you're dealing with and most sellers want money wired up front which I don't blame them but from a buyers perspective would you be willing to take a chance wiring 5-7,000 bucks to someone you don't know or have done minimal business with?
I'm not sure where to start with your justifications. Foremost, I don't want to get into a pissing match here. However, There are scammers everywhere. I'm not sure how you really intend to level the playing field. Some one will certainly figure out away to exploit the the system. You are contradicting your self by saying why you are charging these fees. Look above at this thread and your response to me. Lets be honest here, you see and opportunity to make money, and that's OK this is America. In your last statement about building a network of reputable sellers. Are you saying that you are going to insure and have money back guarantees? Or are you saying that because you are charging a percentage to keep people honest? If my local "competitor" wants to come buy my unsold hay, for the going rate that I'm selling it on the street for, then Great! In fact we all know each other around these parts and I'm the first to go to a neighbor and let them know I need to supplement my harvest to help satisfy my hard earned customers. I'm really confused.

Again don't get me wrong, However I do know a bit about business, I not only Farm but also own and run several successful business not associated with farming. Including sales, installation, rentals, national production and E-commerce. With that said, I guess I naturally have a distaste for middlemen.

To go back to my original post here. I would be much more inclined to use your product if it had a one time fee, I would even stand for some advertising on the side bar. Much like HT, that I have used for many years for free with the acceptation of the advertising.

Good luck to you.
 
#16 · (Edited by Moderator)
I'm not sure where to start with your justifications. Foremost, I don't want to get into a pissing match here. However, There are scammers everywhere. I'm not sure how you really intend to level the playing field. Some one will certainly figure out away to exploit the the system. You are contradicting your self by saying why you are charging these fees. Look above at this thread and your response to me. Lets be honest here, you see and opportunity to make money, and that's OK this is America. In your last statement about building a network of reputable sellers. Are you saying that you are going to insure and have money back guarantees? Or are you saying that because you are charging a percentage to keep people honest? If my local "competitor" wants to come buy my unsold hay, for the going rate that I'm selling it on the street for, then Great! In fact we all know each other around these parts and I'm the first to go to a neighbor and let them know I need to supplement my harvest to help satisfy my hard earned customers. I'm really confused.
Again don't get me wrong, However I do know a bit about business, I not only Farm but also own and run several successful business not associated with farming. Including sales, installation, rentals, national production and E-commerce. With that said, I guess I naturally have a distaste for middlemen.
To go back to my original post here. I would be much more inclined to use your product if it had a one time fee, I would even stand for some advertising on the side bar. Much like HT, that I have used for many years for free with the acceptation of the advertising.

Good luck to you.
Not trying to argue at all either. This is good input and I encourage anyone that reads this to chime in. First, the one time fee to use it wouldn't sustain building a platform of this nature unless we charged $20 or $30 bucks to download the app which, this is an assumption but no one wants to pay that kind of money for something if they don't know it will benefit them or not. We could easily do an advertising based setup and have ads all over the place but honestly no one likes ads that pop up. HayTalk does have their ads decently placed on the sidebar and such but they will redirect you to download different products when using the mobile site as I am now and it's a poor user experience. Our goal isn't to make a bunch of money but rather connect an industry based on past transactions and reviews buyers and sellers have left for each other and create a long term unified marketing channel. We ourselves bale 80-100K square bales for the horse hay market in our area and just recognize a huge problem with growers and custom balers trying to sell their hay or find hay in drought situations. What it comes down to is the more people that are on this the further we can drive costs down. I may sound contradictory in our pricing but we have different options that we can immediately pursue and we're looking for one that works for everyone which may ultimately be a subscription based fee structure of a 9.99/month or lower depending on the size of the userbase. That being said this might not be for everyone such as dairies that grow their own hay/haylage, etc. or folks that have deals with their neighbor they've been buying hay from for years.
As a sidenote: We have considered the possibility of different types of insurance but the sellers would have to be vetted and provide more detailed info about their operation. Again that would probably be more for the larger volume producers.
And we're not trying to be a middleman but rather a platform provider. I myself have a dislike for middlemen so that's not our goal here.
 
#17 ·
around here we have people that I call hayjockeys they take care of the long distance transactions yes they are middle men but they have mouths to feed. What's to say you I tell you the guy bought 2 bales when he actually bought 2000 I would pay a $20 up front fee but not what you are trying . There are a lot of dishonest people in the world I wish you the best.
 
#18 ·
I think there is some merit in the app....like others I'm a little concerned with the percentages, but I would gladly pay a salesman to sell hay for me.....if he could sell hay.....I have no problem with that.
Where I think the problem will arise is with the money transactions, ie. How do we get paid, how do you get paid....that's kinda worrisome, don't need worrisome....
For the record, i would pay $30 or a small percentage, the $ just have to come to me, and I'll send a check, PayPal etc...the other way won't ever work for me. But I like the idea, there seems to be a problem with hooking up hay producers and hay buyers......the middleman is generally the feed store and I sell to them.....so I have to be a bit careful on locales at times, don't want to "bite the hand" so to speak
 
#19 · (Edited by Moderator)
Like farmer brown & somedevildawg said there are hay jockeys/brokers, whatever you want to call them. They are either charging you a % to sell your hay or buying it from you at a discounted rate. Either way it's a lot more than 3% they're making. The thing about the app is which may not be clear is the buyers pay the 3% to the app. You setup what payment methods you accept whether it's cash, check, credit card or whatever. When that buyer arrives at your barn or field he/she pays you directly. We don't handle any of your money. We do have the PayPal feature we are about to release which you would just enter your PayPal email address and if you both have a PayPal account they can just send the money directly to you. This gives you the opportunity to accept credit cards without having to have a credit card terminal or one of those things you plug in your phone or any of that. They just send you money right to your PayPal account so you would have to setup with them if you did want to accept credit cards but that is done instantly and you don't have to worry about a check bouncing. Most people spend a lot more on a credit card than they normally would. Especially if someone is waiting on a paycheck that's why they go to the feed store and buy hay there because they can just swipe it on the card. One of the cooler features we'll see start to play out when growing season kicks off is the ability to line up people to pickup out of the field the day you're baling. Example: If you normally small square 2,000 and roll up the rest (100 rolls) because you don't have either the barn space or the buyers, then you could potentially square another 2,000 or so and sell it out of the field, bringing in a WHOLE LOT more money than if you were to just roll it and sell it as rounds. There's many things we can do with this and it's not for everybody but there's a lot of people that have hay to sell and can't find buyers.
Sidenote: The brokers/hay jockeys are going to be looking all over this app for hay to buy and resale would be my guess.
Also thanks for the input!
 
#20 ·
Guys, if you want to give the the app a try, simply add the 3% to your targeted price and give it a try.

I think an app like this is great for the industry. It shows a modern advancement in marketing and might be more user-friendly for customers who are on the go. On the downside, it slightly takes away the personal communication face-to-face prior to any hay sale for the customer to find out more on the hay, more so than talking on the phone or using email.

I may give it a trial on a little hay and see how it goes. Best of luck Haymap guys on the success of the app.
 
#22 · (Edited by Moderator)
Guys, if you want to give the the app a try, simply add the 3% to your targeted price and give it a try.
I think an app like this is great for the industry. It shows a modern advancement in marketing and might be more user-friendly for customers who are on the go. On the downside, it slightly takes away the personal communication face-to-face prior to any hay sale for the customer to find out more on the hay, more so than talking on the phone or using email.

I may give it a trial on a little hay and see how it goes. Best of luck Haymap guys on the success of the app.
After you pay the deposit and "Reserve" the hay you're wanting to buy you have their full contact details. Phone, Email, Text. You will communicate directly with the buyer from that point on.
 
#24 ·
But I'm not listing any hay yet, just creating an account. I put in my mobile number, push continue, then it asks for a confirmation code but I never get sent a confirmation code via text....
 
#25 ·
But I'm not listing any hay yet, just creating an account. I put in my mobile number, push continue, then it asks for a confirmation code but I never get sent a confirmation code via text....
You can trying tapping the resend button or entering your mobile number again but as long as it's entered correctly you will receive the text instantly.
 
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