I built a catalog QA tool that charges per qualified row

I built a thing. It's called Merchant Outcome, and it does one thing: it sanity-checks product catalogs for e-commerce.

The problem I'm solving

You run a small store on Amazon / Shopify / eBay. You have a CSV of 200 SKUs. You need to upload it. But what if:

• 30% of your titles are over the character limit?
• 12 rows are missing brand and Shopify will reject them?
• 8 rows have typos in category so they won't surface in Nav?

You'd spend 4 hours cross-referencing a rulebook. Or you'd pay a freelancer $50/hr to do it. Or you'd ship and get rejected.

What Merchant Outcome does

Upload a CSV or XLSX. 30 seconds later, you get:

• Qualified rows — pass all rules, ready for import
• Needs review — has a finding a human should look at
• Failed rows — will be rejected by the platform, with the specific reason

You can export:

• Import-ready CSV (qualified rows only)
• Needs-fix CSV (annotated with the specific rule violation)

Pricing (weird but honest)

You pay per qualified row.

• Starter $9 = 50 credits → ~50 rows
• Batch $19 = 250 credits
• Large $49 = 1,000 credits
• Failed rows auto-refund. You only pay for rows that pass.
• 5-row synthetic demo is free, no signup.

This means: if you upload 100 rows and only 60 are clean, you only pay 60 cents worth of credits. The "pay for what you keep" model.

Why did I name the credits that way?

Well, because we're intentionally not a subscription. I didn't want to be "another SaaS that charges $29/mo forever once you forget to cancel". You consume what you use.

What we DON'T do

• We don't generate product descriptions. Source-first means the input decides the output.
• We don't do Shopify OAuth yet. We're a CSV in → CSV out tool.
• We don't store your catalog. Input is deleted after processing.

Tech stack

• Node 22 backend, no model needed (rule-based first pass)
• Postgres for tenant state
• Stripe Checkout for live payment
• Hosted on a shared server in mainland-adjacent HK (yes, this is a "I'm being honest about cost structure" choice)

Would I pay for it?

It depends. If you have:

• 500 SKUs exported from your supplier: yes, this saves hours
• A brand-new store with 10 SKUs you wrote by hand: no, your data is already fine
• 10,000 SKUs from a CMS: yes, but the cost probably exceeds the value ($180 at 0.18/row. Maybe an internal script makes more sense. Built-in scaling limit as a disclosure.)

Try it

Free 5-row synthetic demo at merchant.ainetcafe.com.

No signup for the demo.

Feedback?

Drop a comment. I'm especially curious about:

1. What rules do you actually need to enforce?
2. What's the input format you struggle with most (CSV, XLSX, JSON)?
3. Does "pay per qualified row" make sense, or is it too weird?

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(Yes, this is a self-promo post. I built this thing. I want to know if it's useful.)

After posting checklist

• [ ] Record URL + Post time in d3-campaign/master-tracking-sheet.md
• [ ] Reply to every comment in 8h
• [ ] Update funnel every 24h by cron

Estimated conversion

• 5,000 - 20,000 reads over a week (DEV.to hangs low but steady)
• 2-5% click-through to merchant site → 100-1,000 clicks
• 5% of clicks do a free sample run → 5-50 demo runs
• 5-10% of demos convert to upload → 1-5 uploads
• 20-40% of uploads convert to paid → 1-2 paid → $9-$18