Great feedback! Yes, definitely a reputation system would work and help users.
For the shipment problem (the fact that shipping just one comic may not make sense), a solution could be to allow users to specify in their preferences the minimum amount of comics they want to ship. For example, I may choose 5 comics and then the system will match me with another user only when this other users would like to receive 5 of my comics...so that I can ship all these comics to just one user.
I was thinking about being the "middle man" basically because shipping comic books has the problems you exposed.
For example:
- if I have 10 comics to swap, it may be that I will have to swap them with different users and having multiple shipments would not make sense
- comics can get damaged if not packed carefully. While this website would target comic book fans (who know how to properly take care of comics, shipment, etc.), the "middle man" would help in assuring that these comics are in good status.
I was looking at paperbackswap.com, it's a beautiful example of swapping system. Users post their books. When someone requests a book from them, they ship the book and receive 1 credit. With that credit, they can get a book from another user.
Immigration rules are very complex and the best think you can do is ask for advice to an immigration lawyer or to a serious immigration service provider online.
This is very interesting. I think that the more failure you had in the past, the more likely you will have success in the future. I also had some previous side-projects experiences which did not work but I learnt so many things from these projects!
We really need these kind of applications on the Mac. I love Tweetie and I love the way you can create a tweet using a global shortcut. It makes me forget that I have Tweetie open and as soon as I realize I have something to say - boom (as Steve Jobs would say) - I have the window for a new tweet open on my desktop!