Eggbid Issues

[Nifty-Chicken]

Lots of really great discussion and ideas. A few comments:

Our goal with anything we add is to make the community better and stronger. Sometimes we do things like offer GFM's, sell clothing, etc. as a way to offset the costs of programmers, servers, designers, etc. We work hard to make sure that the costs and the resources are balanced so one isn't out of proportion to the other.

Take our word for it that if we set up an auction / classifieds system we would be inundated with questions and problems. If you all had a clue about the hundreds of "How do I post to the forum" or "How do I upload an image" questions we get via PM and through our support email box you'd be floored! Multiply the volume and complexity of those questions by at least 10 and that's what we'd get with an auction / classifieds script.

We want to offer as many services for free as we can, but take a look at eggbid and other sites and you'll see that if they fail to have a good system and support structure in place that things are on a path to problems and possible failure. If / when we ever do this we'd:

1) Have it hosted / tied into this current domain / website. This allows us to take advantage of the current high ranking of BYC.com and also would make it much easier to tie into the current userDB which is VERY important

2) This isn't a promise of how things would be, but I'd push very hard to make the main features of the system free and then have add on features that would be fee based (bold, featured, pictures, whatever). The only time I'd give in to a full fee based system to post is if the programming to develop and add the system to the current user database and the work required to support the new system was high enough that the balance between costs and resources was out of whack.

So, keep the discussion going. I'm definitely subscribing to this thread.

BTW, would a "classifieds" system suffice or would it need to be auction and or "buy it now" type of system?

 

[onthespot]

Quote:
All of the above. Right now you could raise $ by making GF a requisite to post in the sell section. I'm sure you could write script that would make that an automatic function, again no "work" would be involved. Believe me, if someone was motivated to sell, they would buy a golden feather and get to selling. This IS a tremendous targeted market and I really DO appreciate contributing as well as benefitting from the info, as well as the sales.

 

[chickenwhisperer123]

Quote:
All of the above. Right now you could raise $ by making GF a requisite to post in the sell section. I'm sure you could write script that would make that an automatic function, again no "work" would be involved. Believe me, if someone was motivated to sell, they would buy a golden feather and get to selling. This IS a tremendous targeted market and I really DO appreciate contributing as well as benefitting from the info, as well as the sales.

You would lose most of your possible buyers if you made a GFM a requirement to even post in the section. Or do you mean you just need a GF to sell?

Sorry, I think I may be tired...
Jason

 

[DuckLady]

Quote:
I have to agree here. We are inundated with reports from the Buy Sell Trade areas now. Things in the wrong place, bumping, too much chatter and off topic posts which detract from the purpose of the BST, which is to buy and sell. Period. With auction software, it would be more automatic and would need monitoring, yes, but not the lists of reports we get daily that need to have each and everyone looked at and dealt with manually..

BYC doesn't have to work any harder because someone sells eggs than they already do. If they banned sales, it wouldn't lighten their work load.

See above.

Moving the BST to an auction type area would hugely lighten the work load of the staff. Of course, it will pick up someplace else. Just the nature of things. Some forums need constant monitoring and BST is one of them.


I think it needs to be remembered that this is merely a brainstorming session and we should not get worked up either way.

There are a lot of great ideas here and the staff wil take all comments and ideas into account as we do when something new comes up.

Like Nifty says, the good of the community is the main focus of all we do.​

 

[halo]

I very much like the idea of requiring anyone to use either the Buy Sell Trade forums to be a GFM. It is a privilege to be able to sell on these forums to such a huge audience, and requiring a GF membership to the website to use the BST forum seems very practical and also offers additional incentive to become a GF member.

Uh oh....looks like I need to find $25 somewhere....

I also like the idea, if not creating an auction, then using the forum as a classified section, with a single entry allowed and no postings afterwards. The only issue I see with that is that ending auctions or sales end up way on the bottom, when they should be at the top. Allowing bumping isnt the way to handle that, either. I know absolutely nothing, and I mean NOTHING, about coding a website, but I wonder if there wouldn't be a way to make a posting on this particular forum where you would describe your auction or sale and then fill in a box with the actual ending time. Then have it so the forum could be sorted by that time, that a moderator could periodically sort the column with just a click. Im sure none of this is making any sense; Im thinking how the Excel program works.

Im thinking as I'm typing, and now I see that with an auction posting, you'd have to allow additional postings to allow for bids. I have no idea how to handle that; it wouldn't be fair to have each bid bump the post to the top, and if the post were open, the chat would start; people can't help themselves. Is there any way to code it so that bids to a post wouldnt bump the post?


*edited for spelling and punctuation

 

[Quail_Antwerp]

Why not have a featured sellers section? This could be for GFM sellers only. If members don't have a GFM, then they could use the other BST section? The featured sellers section could allow each GFM to have their own thread listing their eggs for sale.

Maybe have members put in the subject line the date that the eggs will be available, and when the egg availability changes they can edit the first post and subject line? This wouldn't bump it.

Buyers wouldn't have to scroll through pages of chatter this way, they can just read the sellers first post...and instead of posting questions on the thread to the seller, PM the seller and then the seller could copy/paste questions and answers pertinent to the eggs/shipping/etc in the original post.

I dunno. Just my suggestions because I avoid auction sites like the plague?

You would lose most of your possible buyers if you made a GFM a requirement to even post in the section. Or do you mean you just need a GF to sell?

I am pretty sure they just mean sellers should need GFM to sell.

ETA: for sellers who don't follow the rules, maybe instill some stricter consequences?? Like, you get a warning for bumping, but if you continue to bump, then your selling rights will be restricted for a certain time (lets say a week for example). After that week, you're on a probationay selling period until you show you can follow the rules???

I dunno, again just a suggestion from someone who hates auction sites.​