Cheapskates, sale flooders and others...

[Aaron Clifford]

I just had a count up, out of the 86 threads I made in offers invited. I've made a sale in 60 of them (either via email or other contact). That's just over two posts a week in the invited section, I'd say that was a fair amount of posts do you agree?

I agree with Edwin's principal about the quantity of domains posted, but as i said before this is just a forum...There so difficult to govern in regards of paying for posts or even agreeing a fair amount of posts per day/week/month.

 

[Edwin]

I just had a count up, out of the 86 threads I made in offers invited. I've made a sale in 60 of them (either via email or other contact). That's just over two posts a week in the invited section, I'd say that was a fair amount of posts do you agree?

That's fantastic - it's great that the sales threads are working out so well for you. Shows that you're offering value.

 

[fish]

Edwin brings to light a valid issue without blatantly pointing the finger.

1) who apart from Edwin says it is an issue?
2) and therefore a faceless/nameless witch hunt

 

[boxfish]

1) who apart from Edwin says it is an issue?
2) and therefore a faceless/nameless witch hunt

http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/forum-news-feedback/88809-sites-sale.html

It has been mentioned before and Admin seems to agree

 

[figleaf007]

Well I've been on here for about 5 years and I never knew there was such thing as an exclusive membership! Do you have to get invited? What are the benefits? How much is it? Perhaps if this was promoted more, more people would be moved to sign up and thngs could be managed a little easier......?

Edit: Okay, just saw the membership upgrade tab on the site, but that is because for the first time ever, I was looking for it. I have never noticed it before, but that is because I have never felt the need for it because

a. I wasn't aware of it and b. I wasn't aware of anything on the site I could not do without it

 

[foz]

Well I've been on here for about 5 years and I never knew there was such thing as an exclusive membership! Do you have to get invited? What are the benefits? How much is it? Perhaps if this was promoted more, more people would be moved to sign up and thngs could be managed a little easier......?

Membership Upgrade button.

http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/cmps_index.php?pageid=membership

 

[Banana]

Forums are notoriously difficult to monetise.

I think Acorn has superb potential to monetise.

I'm looking forward to the 'services offered' section (I'm always on the look out for logo designers!).

Maybe a 'paid for' directory of members affiliate sites (If I'm after a cheap phone for example, I might aswell click on a members site and use their affiliate links .... and I would have signed up to an online bookie a few months ago to bet on the Grand National).

And thinking about it, I would probably pay a couple of squid to have a domain name appraised. I've wasted £7 so far ... why not make it £9!

Sorry if my domain names offered are a bit naff. I'm still learning! I lose interest in developing really quickly ... I have the attention span of a goldfish .... plus I get high from time to time on Night Nurse and Olbas Oil

 

[aZooZa]

I think Acorn has superb potential to monetise.

Definitely! Couldn't agree more.

 

[Sussexite]

Multiple sales good multiple bumps bad

There's nothing wrong with having a large number of domains offered for sale even if a high proportion of them are low value. Some of these sell and the opportunity for members to buy them is therefore valuable.

It's the repeated bumping and "BIN reduced" "Last call on this one" nonsense that is the real time waster.

If people stuck the domain name in the title and restricted their bumping (in all its forms) to just once, then there would be less clutter on Acorn (which is otherwise excellent in all regards).

 

[Edwin]

There's nothing wrong with having a large number of domains offered for sale even if a high proportion of them are low value. Some of these sell and the opportunity for members to buy them is therefore valuable.

It's the repeated bumping and "BIN reduced" "Last call on this one" nonsense that is the real time waster.

I wonder if there's a plugin/mod for vBulletin that would stop new posts "bumping" threads back up to the top, but only for selected forums (because you want to keep the default behaviour for discussion threads).

Combine a change like that with a more prominent "Subscribe to this thread" alert/button/option and those who cared could easily keep an eye on a particular thread while it would gradually "drift away" for everyone else.

 

[MCNM]

Reason being why i have stalled in upgrading was that i was going to leave Acorn, this was due to a small few members who seemed to like hiding behind a keyboard posting useless bitching comments on threads that they would never say to people in person!

I never posted anything as i saw them as potential customers to sell domains too and didn't want to get involved now i just ignore it as I've got more important stuff to worry about in life and my business.

I have to say that if it wasn't for Acorn i wouldn't be where i am today and have learned so much over the past few years so have to say as massive thanks to Admin, Paul, Dale, Simon, Frank, Mat, Caz, Anthony, Darren, Howie, Aaron, Jeff, Edwin, Graeme, Ty, Barry, Rob, Rob F, Tom, Justin, Chris, Stephen, Peter, Scott, Karl, Alex and anyone else who i have missed off who we have had dealings with over the past few years as if it wasn't for you guys i would just be pissing in the wind with Banks and Insurance companies trying to get deals through So Thank you.

 

[Sound]

Can't speak for anyone else, but we've stopped buying on the aftermarket (I've talked about the "incremental change" problem already on other threads).

Edwin if you have stopped buying domains why may I ask are you so concerned about the sales threads on the forum simply ignore them or only look at the domains in the premium section of the site.

 

[Ashton]

Sold domain to fund exclusive

<----

 

[websaway]

The discussion about why the character of the sales section seems to have changed recently got me thinking, so I did a little bit of digging using the "Search" tool.

What I found confirmed my "gut instinct", but it was only when I saw the actual numbers in black and white that it truly dawned on me.

10 of the top sales posters* posted a total of 1,425 sales threads in the last year! That's an average of 3.9 sales threads/day across that small group of 10 people (though of course those are NEW threads - many were bumped many times so the total number of such threads the rest of us saw every day in the "new posts" section was >> 3.9/day)
*I won't say "the 10 top" because I may have missed a few people in my quick skim, but they're certainly amongst the busiest sales thread starters.

2 posters each posted over 200 sales threads in the last year - and neither has upgraded to EXCLUSIVE level.

Of the other 8 top posters, only 3 have upgraded to EXCLUSIVE. Remember, the lowest sales thread count in the top 10 is 74 sales threads within the last 12 months (I didn't search further back)!

For comparison, the 10 posters in question started just 403 non-sales threads (22% of their threads).

Hate to say it, but I will! If you've posted 40, 50, 100, more sales threads in the last year, then either
A) you keep posting the same junk - STOP IT, we're sick of seeing it!
B) you're selling enough to pay to upgrade to EXCLUSIVE - DO IT, there's no excuse!

I see two objectives to your thread, though to me the two don't correlate.
one is to get members to upgrade and the other is to stop junk being posted in the sale threads.
The second one can be overcome in my oppinion simply by more quality sales threads being posted, subsequently the junk becomes less obvious.

So Edwin a question.
If every member on the forum upgraded today, what would be the positive effects.

 

[cc976a]

I'm definitely spending more time reading threads like this than the bumped sales threads!

On the global names section you can't bump your own post for 1 week. Could try extending that to the UK forums (excluding auction posts)?

On here anyone with quality names have portfolios, available cash and happy to wait for the £x,xxx or £xx,xxx end user (rather than post and get low reseller value here).

....then it leaves everything else, the brandables, quick flips, products with less than 1k searches etc... the sub £50 market, which is dying out. People realise it's no longer about putting up minisites and getting Google traffic from adsense or aff commissions paying off reg and hosting fees. Google has seen to that. This means domains have to be of more commercial value before people are dipping their hands in to their pockets - and these are harder to come by.

Do people bumping threads bother me - no.

Did I know there was an exclusive membership option in the 4 years I have been here - no.

Do I know the benefits of this membership - no.


I hope Admin does get a return for doing this, it has helped many of us on here - just think there perhaps needs to be a different way. Surely must be site sponsors or advertisers out there eagerly looking for leads and sales from people like us??

 

[Darren]

How about ONLY "AD Exclusive" users can create sales threads whilst normal users can ONLY respond to threads.

You could even create a new user group "AD Seller" whom are only allowed to create new threads in the sales section.

Darren.

 

[GreyWing]

I hope Admin does get a return for doing this, it has helped many of us on here - just think there perhaps needs to be a different way. Surely must be site sponsors or advertisers out there eagerly looking for leads and sales from people like us??

Dam right, let Sedo sponsor it. With the way they market things we'll never notice another post again.

 

[domainseller200]

People realise it's no longer about putting up minisites and getting Google traffic from adsense or aff commissions paying off reg and hosting fees. Google has seen to that. This means domains have to be of more commercial value before people are dipping their hands in to their pockets - and these are harder to come by.

Amen

 

[figleaf007]

So back to being an exclusive member, does much business get done in the exclusive section? Do people want as big an audience as possible for their sales, so that everything ends up in the normal threads anyway?

 

[Brassneck]

Amen

Why?