Topic: Ways to Get More Traffic to BitcoinTalk.Org for all Casascius/Collectibles Sales (Read 369 times)

I agree with you HK, there is certainly some things we could all be doing to help bring new collectors/sellers/retailers in and to get the word out that this sub board exists.  I started collecting about a year/year and a half before ever coming here or learning of this place.  I pretty much just got stuff off ebay (thanks Mantis).  I found pictures of stuff like Casascius coins and Kialara bars, but didn't know how to get one outside of ebay.  I emailed Mike Caldwell when I found his items, he replied he no longer makes coins but to check ebay (no mention of btalk oddly).  It wasn't until Kialara told me about this place that I became aware of it.

We could all do a better job of welcoming newbies, and trying to make things easier for them as well.  Shout out to MinerJones, Chronicsky, and Zepher (RIP) for helping me out a ton in my early days.  If it weren't for them I would have left. I found this place very confusing, and not always very welcoming.  It doesn't help that the forum isn't very user friendly, so we need to try and combat that.  I think a pinned thread with a title like "Newbies- click here to learn how to Navigate the collectibles space/ best practices" would be helpful.  Then provide a list of escrows, proper ways to bid, how to search for old listings, etc.  When I first came here I was completely lost. I knew it would be a ton of work to really learn all this stuff and therefore I wasn't super active early on.  

Personally I am always promoting "www.physicalbitcoin.com".  I leave this link on youtube, instagram, reddit, twitter, facebook, Imgur, or any random article chat box.  I think anything we could do to promote the sub would be awesome, like an adwords campaign.

I've also seen the same on r/bitcoin -- people are mostly unaware of this Collectibles section here. I agree that buying and selling Casascius, or other crypto-related collectibles, is quite hard. But I guess it's hard to buy/sell physical gold/silver as well, not to mention other kinds of collectibles. I guess specific marketplaces and services will be in the center of "big audience semi-insiders" trading, outsiders trading at Ebay.. and most hardcore insiders trading OTC. Just like it happens with MTG cards currently.

A lot of people in this very forum aren't aware of this sub forum. And on r/bitcoin when Casascius coins come up the owners have never, ever heard of it either.

Even then I can see why it would be a turn off to most. I doubt anyone's ever used an escrow for anything before and the average know little owner will be looking for dollars anyway.

Rather than ads why not request an add to this page https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Casascius_physical_bitcoins  or even Mike Caldwell's site itself?

OpenBazaar (OB2) does this and the system is very smooth. I'm not sure what the onboarding system is for new escrows though.

It wouldn't be that hard to point to the forum from OB2, and to OB2 from the forum.

IMO the collectible forum will never rank high on search. It is hard to game Google's search algorithms not worth the effort. This is a close knit community who, due to scams, is rightly somewhat suspicious of newbies. It is not exactly an inviting community, perhaps we could work on that. That said I feel much more comfortable buying and selling here than on eBay and I like it like that. Serious buyers and sellers will find this board, it may just take some time.

Hi All,
Thanks for all your feedback. I agree with most everything said here. I still however believe the best way for us to boost traffic here would be to dominate the search results for when anyone types in physical bitcoins, collectibles of all sorts related to crypto etc....Is there a service out there perhaps fiver(I'm not familiar with it) but I believe it's a place where you can pay people to do small jobs for a fee? Can anyone elaborate on this? If this is the case the we could hire several of these guys to just write up a bunch of different crypto collectibles websites then of course have them all link to each other for relevance as that's how Google ranks pages. Once we had a dozen or so of these sites hosted and with each person doing their own writing style it would provide for a nice variety and each would be unique as different people would word things differently etc...So we build several sites and then run an Adwords campaign and limit it to not be too costly. Again I'd have to imagine this is so niche the cost of an Adwords campaign wouldn't be costly at all and we'd be able to snag anyone looking for collectibles of any kind would definitely be compelled to come here and hopefully join. If we see an influx of new users we can then explain to them we have a great group of escrows who can help them feel more comfortable etc...I'd even be happy to fund this project outta my own pockets because I don't think it would be too costly to have 10 or so web pages made up and have them link to each other. Then maybe after that we turn on an Adwords campaign etc...Anyone here familiar with sites that I could outsource this work to? Maybe it's more costly than I'm realizing and if so we'll get as much done as I can financially speaking and hopefully this yields us some new people. This can and should only grow with more and more BTC awareness. Once the pages are up they'd cost literally nothing in terms of maintenance. Am I missing anything?

iBHK8

I first got to know about the collectibles section around 1.5 years back when I was browsing through all the sections of this forum. Though I didn't have much money to spend for buying collectibles at that time, I have started buying collectibles from here for over less than a year. The experience was flawless and I am very comfortable with purchasing here rather than going to eBay or other sites in general. I am not sure on how much trades I have done in collectibles through this forum (maybe less than 10), but almost all the trades really ended up in a very good way.

I don't use eBay much nor I don't have an account there, but I know a little on how eBay market works through a friend. I am pretty sure, this forum collectible-trading is much better for buying crypto-related stuffs rather than buying through eBay. I am also sure that majority of the recent crypto-collectors present here have known about this forum only through a deep search for sales/auctions and not anything more. I agree with minerjones idea, but we can also try to bring new collectors here by mentioning this forum in the eBay sales topic as well. If this initiative was taken seriously by many of the eBay collectible sellers, we might see new collectors joining this forum in the upcoming days.

A simple scenario we can take is that, Kialara auctioned only 2 of their recent Hydra suites in eBay and the rest of them here. Hence, if we are mentioning this forum as a gateway for majority of the auctions to the eBay buyers by creating a topic there, that might bring them here. Just my thought.

It would be cool if there was some way to implement a multi-sig escrow system to give newcomers a more secure feeling.

If you aren't already a member here it can be a little intimidating trying to buy something off this forum.  Especially if you are interested in crypto, but still transact primarily through fiat and use custodial wallets like CB.  The idea of escrow is also pretty foreign to most and scams are a plenty.  So not only do you have to trust the seller, but also sending your money to an escrow that you have never dealt with either.  eBay is a much safer and user friendly UI, at least for buyers.  For sellers it's another matter entirely, but the topic is how to encourage more buyers to come and shop here.  Just not sure this will ever be the best option for newcomers unless a better experience can be created for buyers.

J

I've been trying to drive more people here via the Crypto Art scene as my recent auctions to benefit FreeRoss can highlight.

Many people have since discovered the variety of goods available here and are now buying things they didn't even know existed before their visit to the forum.
Little victories here and there

And I regularly post a coin or artwork that is for sale on this section into the various chat group on Telegram or WhatsApp that I am a member of.
Find the cool stuff, the stuff that leaps off the page at you etc and link people to it here.

Remind people that THIS Forum was started by Satoshi and is the Home of Bitcoin and especially collectables.

Viz

A lot of people aren’t comfortable purchasing in the forum environment. It doesn’t seem like there’s an abundance of Casascius coins for sale at the moment either. Any new traffic to this section is always good though. I love seeing new innovations in the crypto collectibles community and hope to support new creative uses for the blockchain integrated in future products here.

The higher BTC go up the smaller the audience gets I think.

SEO. Link popularity is probably the biggest factor in the secret formula google use. To get above ebay if they have a hit not easy. To be on the first page should be OK. If you Buy/Sell an item worth 1-25 BTC at current rate you will probably look at more than first hit.

New people will come next bull run.

Ughhhhh I had a long well thought out reply typed out and by the time I posted it I had been booted and needed to re-login. I'm steaming right now... *^*^%&%%**&^*FFFFFFKK 
Anyway I was basically saying I totally hear ya in the sense that most don't know we exist and that eBay will always be the place for people to think to go to but if we could dominate the search results and basically root out all the non relevant links and say have it to where on the first page of Google's results it's 6 or 7 of our links and then 2 or 3 eBay links and maybe 1 random coin telegraph news link it would undoubtably lead to many more people coming here and just seeing what's what. That's what happened to me. I ran a search for a Cas coin and because I am a web savvy guy I ignored all the nonsense and found this place then lurked for a bit then of course became a member. I just feel if we could boost our SEO both organically and via Adwords we would undoubtedly grow this community and hopefully get lots of new buyers and sellers over time. But with Google returning the links it just did for me a bit ago not many new people will ever find us. So I'm just trying to see how we can perhaps remind any old timers who maybe forgot about us but also nab plenty of new people who will become interested as BTC grows in popularity over the years to come. We need to try and make this the go to site for any and all crypto collectibles. So again I'm just brainstorming and I know you have a ton of knowledge in this arena I'm just trying to see if we can collectively make this much larger!


iBHK8

I never go on eBay, or rarely ever do..

But is there a forum or some other 'community' associated with eBay/other collectors?

Hi All,
I ran a quick search for "Casascius coins for sale" in Google just now and the top site/link results in this order was eBay, eBay again, AliExpress, Coin Telegraph, Casascius.com, Coinfirm.org, forum.shiresociety.com, and then finally a BitcoinTalk.org site link then more not so relevant sites much of it was duplicates and then 1 more of our site here. Although I'd have thought many people would automatically default to this site due to this place having such a deep history and is well known for many early and some recent sales between Casascius and other collectibles we need to figure out a better way to boost this site's profile whether it be organic SEO or even a small paid Adwords campaign(I don't see any Adwords campaigns because I use a adblocker but many people still don't use them and still see the Adwords campaigns). I'd be down to pitch in and crowd fund a small amount for us to run a Adwords campaign along with perhaps hiring some people who are decent to good at SEO in order to boost this site's rankings(it shouldn't be too expensive considering how niche this is) so anyone who ever runs a search just sees this site so perhaps we can get much more traffic of people with any and all types of collectibles to come here before going to useless sites like the ones listed above in hopes we could be the go to site for much more to all WTB, WTS, and WTT activity etc... Keep in mind I'm in Seoul right now so the Google results may vary for you out there depending on where you're at but just including this info incase it's relevant etc...Would love to get any and all feedback from you all as most of you have much more experience with this site and just the collectibles market in general. So I'm just brainstorming but would love any and all feedback. LMK your thoughts!

iBHK8