Feedback from a Potential Promotional Agent

[chrison600]

Hi all,

I wanted to share with you some feedback (paraphrased) that I received after contacting someone about potentially promoting my site.

I presented this person with the opportunity to receive a percentage of the listings fees his promotion generated. My plan was to assign him a Registration Code and a means of distributing that Code at various motorcycle races (logo stickers with the Code and instructions on the back). Users that registered using his code and placed listings would be logged and he would receive a percentage of the listing fees.

His feedback was generally negative, but I was glad to receive any kind of feedback at all:

1) People [individuals] aren't going to pay to sell things when there are so many free options out there [forums].
2) eBay has too much of a dominating presence [in my market] for those few individuals, or businesses, that will elect to pay to sell.
3) The abundance of high membership forums with free classifieds that have an established feeling of "community" will minimize the attraction to another site, even if its intent is to centralize and reduce the overhead of selling items. It will be difficult to develop a similar sense of community around the buying and selling of 'things'. Communities revolve around a common interest, not selling stuff.

I knew I was going out on a limb to try and recruit a promotional agent this early in the game. I mostly did it as a learning experience.

After some inner searching, here are a few of my thoughts:

> I think the feedback I received reflects, to some degree, what we are all trying to combat, with our own creativity and through this forum.
> I feel that I need a bulk of listings to establish my site as legitimate and attract promotional partners, but I'm having difficulty attracting listings because of my lack of promotional partners. I haven't yet tried all avenues, however.
> In order to attract listings, I need a value proposition that is stonger than that of competitive offerings. I don't think free listings is the long-term answer. I think the feedback I received was right on regarding this topic, another classifieds site is not enough. The key is additional technology (Please pay attention Admin):
>> I need the ability to broadcast item listings to a variety of forums.
>> I need the ability to integrate eBay listings with my site - in both directions.
>> I need the ability to close transactions within my site.
>> I need the ability to manage transaction feedback.
>> I need the ability to design price plans to attract users to an infant site, yet not sacrifice too much revenue.
>> I need the ability to tightly integrate an affiliate module that allows me to track and reward more than just click throughs or registrations. It needs to monitor listing activity and reward for total listing billings above X dollars in X period of time.
>> I would like the ability to integrate other forum content, a forum hub of sorts.

Selling items brings with it some unique and challenging issues. The proliferation of the Internet and the segmented communities it cultivates demand a very creative approach from those desiring to profit from those communities. Building another community is not the solution.

Of course, I will read this post tomorrow with a much different mindset and may have different feelings.

I don't think all responsibility rests on technology. I still feel that there is a lot left for me to do as far as marketing.

[mjm1905]

I did the same thing but I call them something different. I have four people operating in the same capacity as you mentioned. None of them generated anything as of yet. I am leaning more towards the online promotional stream.

I wouldn't let one persons input get you to worried. That was one hell of a proposition you made the person.

[carpman]

Interesting post though it just confims much of what we suspected anyway, attracting users away from free forums based classifieds or established online classifieds is going to be hard.

These business forums have provoked some new thoughts and are worthwhile, i still have core idea for promoting my site when it goes live and it goes like this:

Initial google keyword campaign (paid for)
Banner ads on the current main community sites (paid for)
Ads in the printed mags associated with targetted audience (paid for)
Free ad period, still thinking about perminant free ads
Joining the main TOP 100 lists for targetted audience
Promotion via my existing sites
Seach engine optimisation and submission
Reciprical links campaign
Affilliate campaign along with syndication


The initial idea of campaign is create an awareness of my site, with the selling point being that using my site gives the users something they can't get at other onliine selling oportunities.

I have used google keyword ads and they are good way to get that initial response and kick start your site in the search engine war.

Banner ads. I have been watching others use this means and does get users attention and creates an awareness of your site. Is good when placed on right sites as gives targetted audience.

Ads in printed medium, again have been following a few new ventures and how it has helped them, some mags allow you to sponsor there free classified section. Should be noted that these free section are getting smaller as users appear to be using online services.

Still think a free ad period is must.

Top 100 sites. Have found this good at getting highly targetted audience.

Promotion via existing sites. I have general user website that need very little imput from me and gets over 10,000 users per month. This site was a bit of a cyber squat, registered an alternative domain of popular site, i also offer free email from this site with nearly 10,000 users. Although i earn a small amount from affilliate sale the main use of this site is put links to my new sites, having an existing site link to your new site helps with exposure and search engine placement, the more users your existing site get better.

I also recently started a gallery based site for target audience, www.bigcarp.net, this is currently getting 1000 users a month with nearly 100% of them visiting more then twice a month. Having this site works for me in two ways, i can target desired users links on it to my new site helps with search engine exposure. Another site in the works will be offering free email using the hundreds of domains i have that are directly associated with target audience, each email being sent having advertising tag line attached. The main site i hope to use to promote site will be a community based site, this of course will take time to develop and will not have selling forum, users instead being encouraged to sell on GC. These users will get special reduced rate, the key to get them to do this will be the ability to display lastest ads on my community via RSS feed or similar.


Search engine submission and optimisation, this takes a lot of time and work, research is the key. Many of the above are aimed at helping with this.

Reciprical linking, this is must for the above. The more sites you can getting linking to you the better. Recommend wsnlinks for this.


I see affilliate links as being a key long term solution, again as with my community site there must be the ability to syndicate ads to affilliate sites.


Most of the suggested features that chrison600 put forward are good and a must to successful promotion.