SMG student creates online market for students at BU

With the catchphrase “made for students, by students,” School of Management sophomore J. Tyler Wiest decided to test a website for Boston University students, with which they could post ads about anything from video games and tutoring lessons to textbooks.

“It’s so much easier to buy something through another student than to go through a commercial place where you are going to pay top dollar and it’s going to be a hassle,” Wiest said.

Wiest has seen his website, Campus-Post, gain thousands of views and a moderately increasing number of posts about textbooks.

The venue is safer than sites such as Craigslist, where buyers and sellers do not know with whom they’re interacting, Wiest said. Users need a BU email to create an account and post listings.

“I decided to combine that idea [of Craigslist] with a classified website for just BU by requiring the bu.edu email,” he said. “People can trust where they are getting the stuff and who they are giving it to.”

In the last month, the website has received approximately 6,000 page views from 1,400 visitors. About 140 people have registered and have posted a total of 120 ads.

Wiest created the website over winter break with his friend Ayush Sood, a sophomore studying computer science at Stanford University. They based the BU site on Sood’s website SUPost. Wiest launched the website on Jan. 15.

As a BU Information Services & Technology employee, Wiest said he had most of the programming skills he needed to begin the website.

“I figure when I graduate, I’ll get a job and then I won’t have the time to do it so why not?” he said.

Since returning to campus, Wiest has worked on marketing the site, but said he’s working with a marketing team and the BU marketing club to do a full-scale launch of the website.

Wiest set plans to expand the website to colleges in the Boston area and across the country. Wiest said he hopes BU’s Campus-Post will reach the same level as SUPost, which the creators no longer need to market.

“When you are a freshmen coming in, your FYSOP leader or someone is going to

say, ‘Yeah, this is where you can get your textbooks,’” he said.

Mahir Gulrajani, a College of Arts and Sciences freshman, said he first heard about BU Campus-Post through a friend on Facebook, and said the website seems trustworthy.

“School costs are so expensive, and some websites are extremely shady,” Gulrajani said, “so it’s nice to have a place within Boston that I can trust.”

Alayna Eberhart, a College of Communication sophomore, said she wishes she had known about the website sooner.

“With all of the different books you need for your classes, things like shipping costs and taxes really add up,” Eberhart said.

Julia Caron, a freshman in Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, recently created an account and plans to use the website next semester.

“I will definitely be using the website come next semester, especially because it’s easy to sign up,” Caron said. “Starting new classes is stressful enough, so I like the idea of not having to worry about yet another book.”