What happened to everyone?

[bigtim1973]

This used to be a happening thread and now I have seen several days in a row on more than one occasion where no one is posting on this thread anymore. What happenend? Is there something I missed? Are people joining other forums or what? I do not understand. It seems some of the other threads are hanging in there like tesoro and garrett. Heck even the head to head thread seems to be kind of stuck in low gear. Is it possibly because the requirements of being a charter member for selling in the classified section? What the heck? Tim

 

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[arizonaames]

The Charter membership requirements for posting items is fine for dealers but is not profitable for us lowly consumers. It is better to post on ebay with a bigger marketplace. Also, this forum and the Findmall forum have now geared their outlook and attitude to dealers that bring them quick money and do not care about the consumer or hobbiest. As a consumer I will not cater to a company that puts the consumer at the bottom of the ladder rather than at the top of the rung. I feel the same way with any business that puts their needs above those of the consumer and treats a consumer with indecency. I too notice that there are a lot less people, like myself, posting anymore on this forum and on Findmall's forum and that will translate to businesses that do advertise here that there are fewer people reading the adds that are sold. Business today has sure become short sighted....jim

 

[DigginThePast]

The new terms for the Classified section are just about a month old to the day. This Board and a few others have been slower than usual for longer than a month so I doubt the new terms have much to do with it. To me it looks to be cyclical.

Also, this forum and the Findmall forum have now geared their outlook and attitude to dealers that bring them quick money and do not care about the consumer or hobbiest. As a consumer I will not cater to a company that puts the consumer at the bottom of the ladder rather than at the top of the rung.

You are welcome to your opinion but I strongly disagree with you, at least about this site. The Charter requirement was implemented in an attempt to help protect members. Prior, one could use a free email account and a proxy to sign up. Make some posts, put up a warm and fuzzy avatar then post in the Classified section and hope to get some bites before they are found out to be a fraud. Caveat emptor? Of course, until something goes wrong. There simply was no good information to aid law enforcement in tracking these people down. Now there is.

As for ebay. You'll potentially have a bigger market there but that doesn't guarantee more dollars and if you are posting in the Classifieds on a regular basis the $20/yr is a lot less than ebay. Also, everyone needs to acquaint themselves with new tax laws and ebay. The way my accountant explained it to me......your sales price will be your profit, no deductions for cost of goods purchased etc, all profit. And you'll be paying ebay fees on shipping charges.

 

[arizonaames]

For starters, it is $60 a year and if the forum had a separate place for feedback then there would be no problems with bogus sellers. Ebay charges 8% of selling price and does have feedback. Shipping charges are the same and paypal fees are still 3% regardless of who the seller is. This is not opine but fact.

"Due to some recent shenanigans here in the classifieds...

You must now be a Charter Member to post here.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Look at it this way though - Charter Membership is only $5 a month, and you'll be supporting the very website that YOU find so useful!

If you've already posted an ad here, and you are not a Charter Member, you can still delete your own ad.

Thanks!

Marc Austin
[email protected]"

 

[DigginThePast]

For starters, it is $60 a year and if the forum had a separate place for feedback then there would be no problems with bogus sellers. Ebay charges 8% of selling price and does have feedback. Shipping charges are the same and paypal fees are still 3% regardless of who the seller is. This is not opine but fact.

"Due to some recent shenanigans here in the classifieds...

You must now be a Charter Member to post here.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Look at it this way though - Charter Membership is only $5 a month, and you'll be supporting the very website that YOU find so useful!

If you've already posted an ad here, and you are not a Charter Member, you can still delete your own ad.

Thanks!

Marc Austin
[email protected]"

No, its $5/month and $20/year. Follow the link in your profile, you'll see different options there, and you can look into it without any obligation.

As for a feedback section. I brought that up a while back and the idea got lost somewhere along the line. But, there are many threads in the Classified section that are actually feedback. So in effect, there was feedback occuring already.

A feedback section would be of zero help in the case of a member joining with the intent of fraud. As I said before, now there is a trail to follow for the authorities in the event of suspected fraudulent activity.

Now, as far as ebay goes. I'm well aware of the fees, I've done a lot of buying and selling in the past. 8% of a mere $250 sale works out to be $20. So we'll speak in some general terms here, if you sell 1 detector here versus ebay there would be no gain. Sell two detectors and you'll be up. I know what you'll say now, "But the market is bigger there". Perhaps the viewing audience is greater but you'll get an educated buyer here as far as the value goes versus the ebayer looking for a bargain. Then again it would be easier to take advantage of an uneducated buyer on ebay and get a super high price which wouldn't happen here.

Then there also is the other added benefits of a Charter Membership. The ability to search alone is worth the cost in my opinion.



Regardless of any of this. Ebay sellers do need to check into new tax laws and selling on there. Also as I mentioned, fees coming up on shipping charges. Thats just out there as friendly advice so folks don't get caught off guard.

 

[arizonaames]

I stand corrected. You are right. It is $5 a month and $20 a year for charter membership and that is not a bad deal for advertising. One does not reach the number of people one does on Ebay but the audience is more specific. However, Ebay does have a feedback section so that one can know who they are dealing with most of the time. Here, one does not know unless one goes through many threads and per chance they might find out. That would be the case regardless of charter membership. However, if one wanted to defraud, $20 is a small price to pay to do so and that will solve little other than to curtail viewers for other advertisers that advertise here outside the classified section. Stolen or fraudulent credit cards or bank cards for any purpose are easy to obtain from any bank.

Numbers of members translates into advertising dollars and forum value. Perhaps posts are cyclic but they sure have gone down this past year and, as the original poster of this thread wanted to know, there must be reasons for this.

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

Just because a couple forums are slow doesn't mean it has anything at all to do with the Classifieds requirements.........If you check the stats for TreasureNet you will see traffic has not slowed down at all on TN.....

Compared to March of last year TN averaged close to 200 more people per day this month and the first 3 months of 2011 TN has averaged 200+ more new members who actually joined each month over last years average.......According to the stats, TN is becoming more active not less...............

Of the 11 detectors I have owned, two were bought new, one came from EBay, 3 from another Detector website and 5 from TN. I trust buying from TN more then EBay...... 99.9% of the sellers here will take Paypal.

 

[DigginThePast]

Well I think we can agree that there are various specific benefits to different sites when posting goods for sale.

Certainly a stolen or fraudulent credit card could still enter the picture but the new requirement makes it much harder to defraud someone on this site, just too many steps. Join, establish a presence, start to offer things for sale, make a sale and collect the money.

As for stats. As a Charter Member Treasure_Hunter has access to those also so he has provided good info. I also had looked at them, compared current periods to the same past periods. Only in recent months (past three) new topics and posts are down somewhat, new members are up by a good number, number of viewers is up and page views are way way up. All those new members are busy reading I suppose. Probably see a big uptick in posting as newcomers to the hobby and site get out and have finds to post. We may be witnessing a "changing of the guard" with in the hobby itself, I'm not sure.

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

Well I think we can agree that there are various specific benefits to different sites when posting goods for sale.

Certainly a stolen or fraudulent credit card could still enter the picture but the new requirement makes it much harder to defraud someone on this site, just too many steps. Join, establish a presence, start to offer things for sale, make a sale and collect the money.

As for stats. As a Charter Member Treasure_Hunter has access to those also so he has provided good info. I also had looked at them, compared current periods to the same past periods. Only in recent months (past three) new topics and posts are down somewhat, new members are up by a good number, number of viewers is up and page views are way way up. All those new members are busy reading I suppose. Probably see a big uptick in posting as newcomers to the hobby and site get out and have finds to post. We may be witnessing a "changing of the guard" with in the hobby itself, I'm not sure.

Diggin is correct, not only are new members are up, number of viewers and page views are really way, way up...
The last 4 months page views have averaged 8,006,988 per month which is 3,000,000 more then average for each month the previous year before....... We are starting to see new members posting who admit they have been here for a long time and just now joining and feel comfortable posting....

TreasureNet rocks...

 

[DigginThePast]

Diggin is correct, not only are new members are up, number of viewers and page views are really way, way up...
The last 4 months page views have averaged 8,006,988 per month which is 3,000,000 more then average for each month the previous year before.......

Those numbers were staggering when I looked at them. I can see though how a cursory look by folks without more detailed info could conclude that things are slower.

Consider the heavy snow this Winter, could play a big role in the numbers also. A lot of seasoned members/hunters stuck indoors, not posting but reading here......to stay sane. All of the newcomers, many of which feel a sense of shyness about posting when first joining.

 

[Texcam]

Great thread, some very good information. Thanks to all for posting.

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

Diggin is correct, not only are new members are up, number of viewers and page views are really way, way up...
The last 4 months page views have averaged 8,006,988 per month which is 3,000,000 more then average for each month the previous year before.......

Those numbers were staggering when I looked at them. I can see though how a cursory look by folks without more detailed info could conclude that things are slower.

Consider the heavy snow this Winter, could play a big role in the numbers also. A lot of seasoned members/hunters stuck indoors, not posting but reading here......to stay sane. All of the newcomers, many of which feel a sense of shyness about posting when first joining.

Just so the non charter members will know what Diggin and I are talking about, here is just a snip of the stats page available.....On this stats snip this table can be opened to revel the stats for each column each day of each month, and the data goes back even farther, but I couldn't get it in a single snip without making it so small it would have been hard to read.......