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Why not just charge 50p for any item being sold for say, £50 or less (inc P&P)? That's still going to be considerably cheaper than Ebay and is hardly going to put off any potential sellers or buyers, and STW will at least benefit from the extra income generated. The only issue I see from this is that the number of "what's it worth" threads would increase on the main forum as people try to bypass the Classifieds section to avoid the 50p charge.
I certainly wouldn't want to eliminate the "wanted" ads as this has been a great way of sourcing parts/spares that haven't already been advertised.
Keep the classifieds as is and free, but sort by topic.
Then offer a seperate 'featured' page for say £5 per week. This would just consist of title, thumbnail pic and link to the advert details in the classifieds forum. This page could become the landing page after clicking 'classifieds' with a futher click to continue to the forum itself. This page would contain all the featured items.
It would be a couple of minutes work for someone from STW to add a featured listing, but be a nice little earner from those wanted to sell more valuable items like complete bikes/frames/forks. Plus it would make it a little more safer as spotty little oiks trying to scam people are unlikely to cough up to place the advert.
Obviously the chaos of the main classifieds would remain for free. The beauty of this option is you could post your ad, and then get it featured at a later date when it doesn't sell.
Bushwacked's idea seems like a good one IMO.
I think STW should charge 2unfit2ride for all ads placed
I too am slightly confused why a user is suggesting the Towers make more money out of them. And removing WTDs would neaten it out a little but also lose stacks of traffic, people putting WTDs also buy, and people selling also search WTDs.
Leave it be - why the constant need to change things that arent broken for gods sake.
I am a newbie here... i found this place by looking for ads and this place seems to hav such a high turnover...
The site is great and i can't contrib a lot to most of the bike chat as i'm not that knowledgeable and so personally would had something where thres a minimum post count, sites with that tend to increase random crap posting! or force noobs to make comments they shouldn't!
From my view the wanted ads are just as good as the for sale as i think they given people a chance to unearth items not for sale yet but maybe they could be moved once the item has been found? maybe an archive? for items that have been sold and items that are no longer, purely as personally i find old ads given an idea of prices and of feedback on sellers.
I am new but i do find the constant bumping a little annoying... Its bound to happen but when its days apart i can live with it, but theres time i have seen an ad bumper 4-5 times in a day and this means when you come to look through the ads you're seeing a mixtures of fresh ads and the same ads you saw 2 hours ago! The idea to stop it soted by recent post would be amazing and ttake away some of that hassle. I would certainly sign up to a yearly site supporter system, with maybe some sort of premium ad? My grounds wouldn't be to generate profit for ST tho i am sure tey deserve it but more to control the classifieds a little and stop the randomness of it...
And after that massive ramble... ON the search function.. does it have a time limit? i search for items for sale and i feel i'm never getting a full answer, i searched for "frame" expecting pages and pages of stuff but got maybe 20-30 results? am i missing something?
It might just be me but I don't think that the search is as obvious as on the last forum, maybe why there are more Wtds coming through.
They do appear to be a bit of an afterthought floating around on the RHS in amongst all of the ads.
Chris
Some people on here just love making life complicated.
Leave it alone, WTD ads are fine, FS ads are free on 99% of internet forums so why should one of the largest in the UK suddenly start to charge and pee people off?
No charging IMO. I suspect there's much more to a website re: traffic / hits / links / commercial ads / blah blah rather than poncing about adding 50p to some ad selling barge-like stems. If you're bothered, donate.
Besides, charge someone and you're starting to get into offering a service which brings in more rules, expectations, standards etc. I doubt the grief would be worth it.
A function to filter what shows in classifieds between "WTD", "FS" or both (as is) might be useful, sort some peoples problems and sounds easy to accomplish (to an IT illiterate).
If they are going to put some time and effort into the layout of the classifieds section then yeh, charge away. But as it stands 30 minutes after posting your ad is on page 3.
For the time being their will be no charging for ads on the forum. The donations button is the only method we intend to use in order to earn any revenue from the classifieds.
We may in the future introduce some kind of enhanced service that makes ads more prominent or the like that is either chargeable or free to say, mag subscribers or both. We just don't know yet. But for the time being donations are very much appreciated if you feel you have done particularly well out of the classifieds.
Question then now that is sorted out
who has donated and what % of the items cost is deemed reasonable
Well that question was a right show stopper 🙄
Tom dB - Administrator
There's a lot of discussion going on at the office regarding how to handle the classifieds - particularly the bumping issue. So far nothing manageable has really popped up. As soon as we're able to do the sort by post time it will be implemented, which should solve the issue. But don't hold your breath for it...
Many thanks for sorting that out, I for one really appreciate it.
I think it also shows that you guys really listen to what is said on the forum, it also makes me feel as if you all care, and we do indeed 'belong'.
Cheers.
They'd lose viewings and eventually their ads plus they'd pay tax etc.
Can they wait till I have sold my gear first?
Whats with STW being seen as some sort of charity? I'm getting bored of them pleading poverty, asking for donations etc. It's a commercial business, they get revenue from all sorts of sources, mag sales, mag advertising and the website, contrary to popular belief is a source of revenue as well in the form of ad revenue, the STW shop and the further promotion of the mag.
It's almost like Gordon Browns best spindoctor is working overtime, convincing us all they're doing a public service when they are a commercial entity just like any other.
In answer to the question, no of course I don't think they should charge!