Topic: Standard forum sales rules/etiquette (Read 385 times)

I agree, there are a few boards that would benefit from a review of what is pinned and what's lacking. The forum keeps growing and people are changing how they use areas, or expected behaviors within them. Either way until then, I just try to promote/spread things I find useful.

Some of the posts here would make  good unofficial subforum rules stickies in their respective areas...

So I finally got around to putting together a template for a Broker style thread. [Template] for Brokers or Market type sellers - Not a sale thread
It looks a little confusing at first but instead of actually making a bunch of posts I separated them with a double "horizontal rule" and just linked within the OP. I think it gets the general idea across.

Thanks, hopefully this might be actually easier for you to manage and allows for a more streamlined area for your customers to go to.  I hope your sales go great we all benefit when this become more efficient.  Appreciate the open mind about the topic.

Thanks for your detailed response. I’ll try this out for a few weeks and see how it goes.

I see the discussion has carried on here. I had suggested previously to Scott about creating a Services thread as well to maintain for their general business, I'm glad to see it created. It's a good way for them to handle the generic questions and keep the 4Sale/WTB threads on-topic for the offerings. It could also act like a hub once they establish a name for themselves or promote it, linking it to all other offerings. You are definitely still entitled to create sales threads as well.

Glad to see the consensus being that threads be combined. I'm not sure that there is a need for a separate board though. There are only so many Algo's that have Asics, at the moment, the rest falls under GPU or CPU mining. My idea gave them 1 or 2 sales threads for offerings. The listing would be the OP, and the first 4+ replies to serve as grouping arrangement by Algo, linking each of them in the OP. These would be a revolving door of updates as needed for additions, sold, price or quantity changes. There is also the ability to post certain threads in the Altcoin mining section to further spread the word and threads around.

This would take more initial work and effort from Scott, but once crosslinked would be very easy to maintain and update.

Personally I find it weird now that I don't have to scroll to page 3 in the hardware section to read all new offerings. I just got used to it when I started, and up until recently the page hardly cycled completely every day. So unless we see a large number of Brokers enter the forum I think we can all play nice. There's just always going to be a learning curve as a new business enters.

Scott if you ever want feedback or just someone to bounce ideas off feel free to reach out. Good luck as always.

Phil I agree, we need the large and small sales in here we just have to figure a way to play nice, it's not overly bad right now but if a couple more brokers come in, this board cant be legitimately used for onesies and twosies

the key issue is
page 1 has 40 threads.
page 2 has 40 threads.

 A broker sub-section  with 4-5 active threads per broker

allows for 8-10 brokers on that page 1 seems like a good method.

I do not want to lose brokers on this website as I am still expanding and having access to them helps me.

Having started mining with 1 gpu in 2012 I don't want to force the little guy out.

So if mods want only 1 section here  then  brokers should have 2-3 threads.

If we are at 5 brokers that is 15 threads for them on page one

and 25 threads for little and middle sized  guys.

That might be good to have a broker sub.  The problem with one post per offer is that you and maybe one or 2 other brokers will always be on page 1.  That's fine for a buyer to see everything but for every other seller, they post a wts thread and being pushed to page 2 almost in the same day does not work.  The hardware section will dry up eventually with people wanting to sell individual pieces and it will become useless for everyone. 

I'm not mad you or anyone else have a bunch of gear to sell I just want to make sure the sub doesn't become a personal sales area for a select few people.

It would be both buyers and sellers, but mostly WTS ads.

=) I'll keep an eye out on it and offer suggestions.

1st suggestion as you are doing both buying and selling, have the first post be one and the second be the other.

Edit* also that thread can technically also be in the goods/hardware section. As you are both offering selling and offering the service of linking buyers and sellers.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/my-name-is-scott-offord-im-a-broker-of-asic-mining-equipment-new-used-5138999

It was actually March 30th, when you edit a post it keeps it's original creation date / time.

My offer was serious by the way, if you don't like my terms feel free to negotiate something different.

Notice he stopped posting in October. Why is that? Because it's time consuming and messy most likely.

I could agree with this that brokers can have their own sections with a special rule
1 new thread per day, 1 bump per thread per day. This means you can only create one new thread  every day and you cannot bump your threads to the top multiple times per day. It just generates spam. I had to go threw multiple pages just to find a thread yet found at least 15 of your threads per page.

Take a look at the layout of this thread.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/kaboom-wts-updated-daily-5042442

It's divided into groups of Sha256 new / used, other asics, gpu's, pdu's etc. Now in those groups it's a bit hard to see what each thing is but it's still nicer than rummaging through multiple pages to find what I want.

When a new offer is put up the OP is updated with the offer and a bump / post is made at the end of the thread saying what was added. If no new offers are available just give your 1 thread a nice bump at the start of the day to get it up if it falls low on the page.

As a buyer I want to be able to easily find things, not rummage multiple pages reading tons of titles.

Make your thread nice and pretty, easy for a buyer to find and not just a ton of I copy pasted this and want to make a quick buck. Treat it like a business, I see on your site you have an image of a spreadsheet that lists all of this information in 1 nice easy to read format, that can easily be put here in one thread. Would you like me to make a thread of all your posts, make it easily readable and buyer friendly? I'll charge a low fee of 15% of any sales it generates

It's great to hear that you guys like to browser by broker name, but that's not have many people browse. Please, I can EASILY ship 1000 miners from Asia to USA for cheap and still deliver on budget as though it were purchased within USA. So, having three threads separated by Region doesn't really solve much.

Separating by Algorithm would make more sense to me. Or separating by new or used miners, or separating my brand or miner type would be nice too. Doing that within a single or within three topics is still not going to be a very nice solution.

Could we start a Mining Equipment Brokers sub forum?

That way, the little guys can have their Computer Hardware forum and the big guys can have their own forum.

Personally I think it can be done with 1, I've been on these forums in one way or another since 2012/2013. The title can have all your offerings

SHA256, GPU's etc. it gives people incentive to check on what you have for sale and builds yourself a name (a good one).

Divide your thread up by zones and types of miners it isn't that hard to use forum / bbcodes.

SHA256
NorthAmerica

OfferID:
Description:
Price:
Location:
Other Stuff:

EU

OfferID:
Description:
Price:
Location:
Other Stuff:


GPU
NorthAmerica

OfferID:
Description:
Price:
Location:
Other Stuff:
Next offer etc. etc.

Also going along the lines of management. It's much easier to keep track and update one thread than multiple.

Scott is correct in that this forum is not setup like telegram.

But  fully altering the forum may be too hard or expensive to do.

yankeeswin is correct  in that I read all of scotts posts and I read all of kaboom's posts

I am still working on expansion  so I look at the broker posts.

If scott structured

europe
asia
americas

I would look at his america posts each and every day.

It would reduce his traffic to 3 posts that mostly stay on pages 1 and 2.

Having kaboom        with 20 posts on page 1
Having scott            with 20 posts on page 1
Having noordminers with 20 posts on page 1

does not work.

5 brokers with only 3 posts  = 15 posts  leaves I think 25 spaces for page one.

The three thread idea is not too hard.
I personally like to read scott and kaboom as they have a lot of gear to sell. I do not want them only on telegram.

So, you want three threads? not one thread?

I'm not looking for a ton of views to my post. I'm looking for relevant views.

In my use case, I'd need at least separate threads for each Algorithm or separate threads for each model.

It's rare that buyers will surf only one particular user's threads for the latest deals. They want a specific brand or model and a certain quantity. They don't care who posts it.

Your experience might be different than mine. I know people think having one post per offer is spamming, but it's just s different use case than other people have.