New changes to B&S forum - Page 25  

You are absolutely correct. I am actually one of those people who study those behaviors (though not for Ebay). Essentially, Ebay wants to lower the barriers to listing. We have done that too. There is absolutely no cost associated with listing. Essentially, the only charge is if you decide that you want more visibility for your item. Ebay does the same thing. The one big, big, difference here is that Ebay makes you pay for this upfront (featured listings, etc..) On this system, you can do it at whatever time you choose, or not.

Finally, we charge no final value fees, for 2 reasons. 1) The revenue stream of an Ebay is radically different from that of Styleforum, and 2) We neither have the technical nor legal apparatus to deal with final value fees. Right now, fees are essentially for additional advertising of your listings. Taking a commission on a sale puts you into a whole other legal ballgame re. liability, something we are not going to do, nor do we intend to do,

On a completely tangential point, people do not "act optimally". If I had my way, I would sell my used socks for $1000 a sock. If Spoo had his way, he'd buy my Patek for $10. However, no one is going to buy my sock, and someone is going to pick up that Patek well before I have to drop it to $10. It's the market that drives people towards behavior that is optimal for that market.

Would you guys be interested in a "Ebay Store" type of thing that can be put into your sig, that would aggregate all of your sales, as a paid option. It came up in an internal discussion, and may be a possibility. I can see this benefiting power sellers the most, but could see others taking advantage of it as well. Again, we are throwing out ideas here, so, if you like them, PM me or post here.

For maximum visibility for these sellers, we could even aggregate all these stores onto a single page...

I would put it on B&S for $10K if there was a FS: Other section.

I keed, I keed. I try to inject it, teh levity.

Would this replace the links to the current FS listings, like in my sig? The ones for those awesome shoes on the cheap?

I would rather an easier way to consolidate all the sellers listings by cross posting in each one of the threads - not on a sidebar or in a sig. Example - if I list 10 ties in one thread, within that thread you see my other active threads. In my shoe thread, the tie threads appear within that same one.

Hilarious. Please read above and comment. It would be good for your megasales, I think.

I agree with early parts of your post completely. On this last part, I think you misunderstood me. The market creators always believe that they designed a system that lead to what they deem "optimal" behaviors and they may be correct but market participants often have their own opinions and they may be wrong. And what is more interesting, market participants' behaviors shape the market and change what is optimal and what is not.

Would you please elaborate a bit?

It could, yes. You could put it in your sig. Too tired to figure out what exactly you mean in your second sentence. You could crosspost manually as well in each thread. This would just give you additional exposure for all your listings, throughout the forum - where ever your posts went, your "store" would go. And there would be a "Styleforum stores page" that would get a lot of search engine traffic (that you can be sure of.)

It would look like an rudimentary Ebay store, showing all of your items and we could aggregate all the stores on a separate page, for maximum exposure. Not sure how else to describe this, since it's an embryonic idea.

I edited it into my Patek post above...

Wait - Im missing your point. The buyers create the market. The sellers provide the product. SF provides the platform. You are saying that SF is the market creators, but they are in fact nothing more than the party hosts who set a theme to dance to. They play rap music, rap music fans show up. They play death metal, death metal fans show up. SF has absolutely no say on what sellers sell, or prices the sell them for. All they are doing is providing a cozy corner to set up your table full of wares. The rest is up to the community - so if you feel market values are increasing, speak to your sellers, not your hosts. Does that make sense? Or am I missing your point too?

I agree with you. I have no idea what "optimal" would be. It would be an experiment (as is everything, really.)

Bolded part sold me, no matter what you mean. If it means posting different category items in one place, then Im on it like white on rice.

Quote:

 

Key word *everything* but not everyone.

 

edit: i'm liking that eBay store idea. 

So............can we get an update on this?

Lots of talk and debate thus far, but what changes have been agreed upon? Any?

Many good ideas, however the option to list multiple items (IMO) is one of the biggest things that are becoming a deal-breaker. However, this can be changed without any hard fix, software update, or even time and money investment. The Mods simply must decide to allow this to happen - that's all!

Thoughts?

All here.

Yes, SF provides a platform. You can also call it a market, just as you would call eBay, Amazon, Craigslist, etc. These markets run different systems. My point is while the market makers no doubt designed the systems to encourage "optimal" behaviors in their opinions, market participants often don't see things in the same way.

Speaking of the pay-to-bump system. I can see some sellers leave the system because many people just hate to pay anything before they have a sale. A lower listing volume then in turn allows staying sellers to raise the initial prices, which turns away buyers, on and on. This is just a speculation. I feel that traffic volume is the single most important factor to drive "optimal" behaviors, but what do I know:D

PS: I think the described changes represent a big improvement. Let's hope B&S turns around somewhat afterwards. I am still frightened by the thoughts of making small paypal payments from time to time. Are you sure there is no easy way to put in a token system?