By Bruce Laregina
Need to sell a Ryerson Rams hoodie or that textbook you never used? Look no further. The newly created Ryeads.com is a classifieds website that allows anyone with a Ryerson email address to posts ads for books, employment, housing and more.
Produced by second-year Ryerson engineering student Nathan Budd, the website officially launched Aug. 24. Fairly simplistic with no login information, it only asks for a Ryerson email address before a user can post an ad. An email is then sent to that address and the ad is posted for 60 days after the email is opened. Though only Ryerson students and faculty can post ads, anyone can see the classifieds posted on the website.
The idea for the website came from a combination of Budd’s lackluster experience at his summer job and his fondness for the classifieds website at McGill University, his previous school.
“I have a fairly boring summer job and so I usually find a couple hobbies to keep myself entertained,” said Budd. “I remembered at McGill the school ran a classifieds [section] and it was really useful. My friends found used bikes there. I remember I found tickets to see the Habs.”
With no previous experience in webpage design, Budd sought out online articles and occasionally the advice of friends for assistance. The self-taught web designer began creating Ryeads.com in mid-June, using a similar template as McGill’s classifieds site.
“I thought if I could do that here it would be really cool.”
While traffic has initially been slow, Budd acknowledges the website is still a work in progress. He plans to add new features to the website this year, like allowing ads to contain images, giving users the option to display their contact information in detail and make his website a part of Ryerson’s Blackboard page for easy access.
Budd would also like “to make the website a little bit prettier.” It costs Budd under $100 a year to keep the website running, though he is not particularly concerned with the financial aspect.
“I’m not really intending for this to be a business; it would be cool if I could make money on this but that’s not really my primary goal,” said Budd.
One of his goals involves handing the site over to the university. Budd has already pitched his idea to the Ryerson Student Union, but was turned down. Budd predicts that it will take at least a year before his website is popular enough to justify the school taking it over.
“What I would prefer to happen is people start using it and then the student’s union or Ryerson feel it’s useful enough to take it off my hands,” he said.
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