Paying for Classifieds

[Acid, Bitter and Sad]

I'm alright with either a membership fee or the 1% classifieds fee, though I think the former will be easier and less hassle for Faust to keep track.

No matter what's implemented for the purposes of detering certain behaviour or practices, in time, loopholes will be discovered and abused.
When I saw that some members were posting their items in Your Recent Purchases, and at the same time listing the same items in other forum's classifieds because they didn't have enough posts to start a sales thread here, i thought 'hey that's new...talk about a workaround'

Faust, I say just set what seems reasonable to you in motion, let it run a couple of months, and assess how it goes, tweak if and when necessary...

[mononon]

i think when member's start "hacking the system" like how ABS mentioned, the easiest solution is to warn them and if necessary ban them for abusing the forum.

[andrewislasorad]

With membership fees I feel like it would alienate even more people than charging a fee per listing, which has a much more direct effect.

And maybe some cleansing is due? Maybe that will give pause to people who want to sell crap on multiple forums. Maybe it will be the elite classifieds? I don't know, these are all questions at this point. It's hard to believe that a 1 percent fee would alienate many sellers.

I just fail to see what is so wrong with the classifieds as they are? This one minor incident has blown this all out of proportion. But if the point is that SZ needs more money, then I have no problem 'donating' a one time fee, I just don't want to be hassled every time I want to throw up something in the classifieds with paying a fee...I don't want to ask myself the question, 'is it worth listing on SZ'. I think it is very naive to think that people wont just sell on sufu or other online forums, why would we want that?
Why are we trying to shrink the marketplace? Offer our members less? Diversity of goods is what makes it so great.. what is so elite about having less choices?

I just fail to see what the point of the fee really is... and from what I've read thus far I don't see how it does anything to combat or prevent these 'resellers' [which I don't really see as a problem in the first place]



[sorry -iphone-ing this in as well]

[jogu]

i only really sell shit on sz even tho i know i could post it on other sites cos this is the only forum i follow and post on and pay attn to . i also sell my shit for extremely cheap , i dont actually need $ but i figure if im not wearin somethin ill sell it and make enough to buy some tacos .

like andrew said and i was thinkin this before i even read his post above " is this worth listing now ? " and i dont wanna be bothered with clicking all kinds of things to agree to some fee and entering more creditcard info etc when i dont really sell that often . i wanna keep sellin shit on here but idk bout gettin charged to do it specially if im alrdy losin $ on it

[MikeN]

There is such a wealth of information and archives of past collections and thousands of member's photos... do you know what WGSN, StyleSight, etc charges for membership to their sites? Thousands of dollars. Do you know how many of our WAYWTs end up on inspiration boards and PowerPoint documents in huge fashion companies? I say lock down the entire board. Don't let people view a thing until they pay a membership fee and are logged in. Cleanse the current member list, let everyone who has above X amount of posts stay for free, and charge everyone else.

[Chant]

/\
Mike, this is fucking radical and I quite like it. It could be as well a response to the growing in volume/decreasing in quality problem SZ is imo experiencing atm.

But it would be a revolutionary move and a new economical/philosophical model for forums, which have always been based on free membership (but I may be wrong).

[MoFiya]

a membership fee for the ability to create threads in the classifieds perhaps? this would be a lot easier to implement and would also eliminate the issue of speed posters.

Sounds reasonable, but what would the possibility then be...
"One fee for all" is kind of unfair for those who do not regulary put things for sale and in contrary, the semi-professional sellers are going to profit from that.
Setting a fee to be paid for ... say 10 threads would eliminate that problem but make it a lot more difficult to handle (editing threads etc).

Plus, I second the idea of one thread per member and one bump per week. But locking a thread to a number of items (for example five, as Who? proposed) doesn't make too much sense to me. Who doesn't love the huge quantity of Klangs epic threads?

Other than that, I am the same oppinion of Andrew. Although I wouldn't mind Mikes suggestion either.

[cjbreed]

i don't know mike. i think we might end up with the worlds smallest forum. comparisons to stylesight and wgsn aren't entirely accurate, although i see where u are coming from. sz is not the same type of operation and the only justifiable reason to start charging for membership at that level would be if sz intends to offer the same type of product, which i doubt it does. it offers similarities now, but its not the same.

personally i think its fine that waywts end up on powerpoint and inspiration boards. should people start charging to provide inspiration? is this a realm where literally nothing is free?

i am of the opinion that it ain't broke, so don't fix it. the minor issues with increased volume/decreased quality are typical growing pains and our mods wield the axe quite effectively in that regard. a minor inconvenience is better than a needless fundamental restructuring with risky and unpredictable results.

besides, will this increase or decrease the level of quality? whats to stop the "i paid my fee, i'll post whatever the fuck i want" problem. are u going to refund everyone you ban? this is a public forum. its design is inherently different than a pay service like stylesight or wgsn.

if the bottom line is that we're trying to create revenue (or profit, actually) then i hate to say it but i'd rather see the 1% classifieds fee. i voted no but it is the lesser evil of all. the fact is it just isn't that much money. however, if it is implemented i think it should somehow be based on the selling price, not the listing price. that or just a flat fee, maybe $2 per item or something or $5 per thread with a 3 item max. i don't know. something like that. at least people can still participate in the discussion of design, art, clothing, etc. with other like minded individuals around the world without having to fucking pay for it.

[Faust]

That is pretty radical, Mike - I like the idea. I don't care if membership drops - I want quality, not quantity. The quantity comes with people who lurk and take ideas from these forums. For every SZer that walks into a Rick Owens store, there are 100 lurkers who do the same. I have to think about this.

Andrew, it's not about the incident, really - I am trying to find a way to keep SZ progressing. I can't calculate how much SZ has contributed to fashion, but I would wager it's much more than people would like to acknowledge. Shit, Claus Maude alone owes me 10 grand in commission probably.

Here is the thing - I would like to devote my full time and attention to SZ, make it a full time job not only posting, bringing in interesting information, but thinking of new things to do here and so on. But for that I need to not worry about finances.

I like the idea of charging fashion professionals a membership fee - I just don't know how to differentiate between them and the laymen.

[MikeN]

i don't know mike. i think we might end up with the worlds smallest forum.

it might not grow as fast as it does now, but basically every single poster that you recognize will still be here. I'm saying go through the member list, delete people who have like 3 posts from 3 years ago, and everyone else gets grandfathered in.

comparisons to stylesight and wgsn aren't entirely accurate, although i see where u are coming from. sz is not the same type of operation and the only justifiable reason to start charging for membership at that level would be if sz intends to offer the same type of product, which i doubt it does. it offers similarities now, but its not the same.

right, it's not the same, so Faust should charge maybe 5 bucks instead of thousands of bucks.

personally i think its fine that waywts end up on powerpoint and inspiration boards. should people start charging to provide inspiration? is this a realm where literally nothing is free?

That's what all of the trend forecasting sites do. It's nothing new, and it could solve some of our problems. It's a huge huge business.

i am of the opinion that it ain't broke, so don't fix it. the minor issues with increased volume/decreased quality are typical growing pains and our mods wield the axe quite effectively in that regard. a minor inconvenience is better than a needless fundamental restructuring with risky and unpredictable results.

besides, will this increase or decrease the level of quality? whats to stop the "i paid my fee, i'll post whatever the fuck i want" problem. are u going to refund everyone you ban? this is a public forum. its design is inherently different than a pay service like stylesight or wgsn.

yes but there are still rules. if you buy an airline ticket, you can't just do whatever the hell you want on the plane because you paid for your seat. they will throw you off, throw you in jail, and you're sure as shit not getting a refund!

if the bottom line is that we're trying to create revenue (or profit, actually) then i hate to say it but i'd rather see the 1% classifieds fee. i voted no but it is the lesser evil of all. the fact is it just isn't that much money. however, if it is implemented i think it should somehow be based on the selling price, not the listing price. that or just a flat fee, maybe $2 per item or something or $5 per thread with a 3 item max. i don't know. something like that. at least people can still participate in the discussion of design, art, clothing, etc. with other like minded individuals around the world without having to fucking pay for it.

If we were to actually implement my idea, you'd have to tinker with it a little bit. Maybe one forum would stay open for public view (but not public posting) just so people know if this is even a place where they belong. And maybe there can be a system where trusted members get a couple of free invites per year or something? Just another idea.

[theaddict]

Andrew, it's not about the incident, really - I am trying to find a way to keep SZ progressing. I can't calculate how much SZ has contributed to fashion, but I would wager it's much more than people would like to acknowledge. Shit, Claus Maude alone owes me 10 grand in commission probably.


Ha they owe me too
at least a date...


I am totally cool with a small one time fee, but to add a fee to every transaction...I dunno, people already hussle with the 4% paypal fee and the shipping fees. A future sale offer would sound like: "400$, paypal fees, SZ fees and shipping fees not included"

[lowrey]

I agree about the one time fee, dji's suggestion sounds better to me than a transaction based fee just for the sake of practicality.

I think Mike's idea of making the forum private is interesting but a bit too much imo. the way I see it, it would quickly eliminate the inflow of new members. aside from existing users, who would pay for a forum which they can't see beforehand? it would also make it a lot harder to get anyone to sponsor or advertise here, I think retailers would still prefer the exposure a public forum gives them.

so I wouldn't be in favour of making viewability private, but would support limiting participation, for example invite-only in the way of styleforum etc.

[AKA*NYC]

Ha they owe me too
at least a date...

[Faust]

How about this:

1) Lock some permissions for non-members. Purge members with 0 posts.
2) For new members, 100 posts + a flat (monthly? annual?) fee for posting in classifieds.
3) Charge fashion professionals a monthly fee for accessing SZ?

Seems like the most reasonable idea thus far. I have some ideas about what to do with the extra income in order to improve SZ, particularly the news section. I want it to be a hub for fashion news that are worth reading.

[JoniF]

What is the criteria for being a "fashion professional"?