• In case most of you have not noticed, I made changes to the donation amounts as well as the durations for all of the paid membership levels. Things are winding down here, and this seems to be the most prudent way to deal with the "end of life" period of this site.

    Contributor level members - $10 per 30 days
    Sponsors - Eliminated
    Benefactor level members - $25 per 30 days
    Endowment level members - $50 per 30 days

    Account Upgrades Page
  • Responding to email notices you receive.
    **************************************************
    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

Classified bump abuse..opinions

Hah! I hear you Dennis. But heck, I'll bet there have been 1,000 or more people who have been to this site in that time period. There have already been nearly 5,000 people here all day.

As for the multi-colored highlighting, no, that was not implemented that way. I suspect it would GREATLY complicate the programming behind that option.
 
I like the idea of an extra charge for highlighted and pinned ads in the classifieds, and I would definitely use them. However, I agree that the yellow makes them look too much like the announcements in each forum that, once read, tend to be glossed over in my mind when I see them again.

Can they be pinned with a different color as Dennis suggested? I think that would make it much better.
 
heres my view as a highlighted ad user....

why i think they are a good option to use i to think they get looked over to get to the ads below them .I was checking the views on my ads in the caging section of classifieds .Although the $5 isnt alot i think if the ads could be implemented as a different color or ??? something it would bring them to more of a stand out then blending in with the Notice ads of the forums . Maybe its just no one is looking for the products i sell *shrug* lol but in the views of the highlighted ads i havent seen the "viewing" of them increase any higher then the non highlighted ads i have posted so at the present i feel that for me to spend another $5 for ads that get no more notice then the ads below them for free is kinda self defeating and i dont mean any offense but thats just my opinion

I cant remember which forum it was but i saw one here today that has a seperated box above the forums themself.Would it be possible to make a sub box that would place above the main classifieds section for the highlighted ads? and im not sure but can this setup have more then one Bground color?so the seperated section as a different color to make it stand out ? that way it would be a more self defined ad section to seperate it from the others and that way you wouldnt need to highlight per say the ads in the mass population.??? just some thoughts

A example :
************HIGLIGHTED CLASSIFIED SECTION*************

Joe blow ad -- _________________________________

John Doe Ad-- _________________________________

Jane Doe Ad-- _________________________________

possibly have this block a different color ?


then the normal classifieds as they are now and have the highlighted yellow notices in thissection ?
 
If all of these highlight suggestions would be a technical challenge or just not possible. Making the ad normal looking and pinning it at the top would make it the top of the classified section and not be overlooked by anyone even if they normally skip all announcements and notices. The $5 would be worth knowing it is one of the first ads that are seen consistantly and there would be no need to bump at all. The bumpers might even give in and pay because they would be discusted that no matter how often the bump, they just can't get the satisfaction of getting as close to the top of the ads as they would like.
 
The seperation idea that Alan suggested might not be a bad idea either, with or without highlighting. That way there would be some notice that those ads are special and they would not blend with the announcements.
 
I believe what Alan is referring to is in the Discussion Forums. I added subforums there that are separated out from the regular forum. You can see what I mean by taking a look at the Leopard Gecko discussion forum. I'm not sure that will do what people want, however, as the threads in that subforum are not displayed until you actually click on that subforum link.

Now I can certainly set something up like that where each classified section had a subsection for specials and featured ads, but would that really be useful? If viewers had to actually click on that subsection link to see those ads, do you think they would do that?

I guess one thing about this discussion that disturbs me is seeing people admit that they just completely ignore the announcements and notices I've been posting. Nice to know I've been wasting my time with them......
 
I don't think that the seperate subsection would be good. I was thinking he ment that there would be a seperator in the classifieds itself. Something like the announcements and then a seperate box or even a thick line then the highlighted ad then another thick line or end of the special box and then the regular classified ads.

Just looking for something that would be easy for you to implament, manipulate and maintain but still draw attention to them.

It is not that the announcements and notices are completly ignored, they just get less attention because they are read once and unless there is something new there, you kind of automatically look below them for the new stuff. I read the signature areas and thier use announcement a few days ago so I am noticing them as they change or are added to.
 
Rich

Im not sure the "majority" are skipping them but i can say i do try to notice them as i go into the sections .Im not sure what couldbe done to make a *new* notice stand out to all.Would it be possible to implement a "glowing" text in your notices you make ? again not sure how flexible the forum is that you use .

And the link you posted is the setup i was thinking of as a sun section and now that i looked at it i would say thats a 50/50 split on what majority of people would click on it . But from looking at the subsection in the gecko forum i would say atleast in that section there does seem to be a majority of people clicking it .

My refference to the current ads that are highlighted were based on some recent ads that i posted that were not highlighted ads. i noticed in my one example that had been up almost a month it had 91 views over a month which i averaged out to about 3 views a day . where as a more recent ad i placed had gained 34 views in less then 48 hrs. now in defense ofthat i deliberatly placed that add title as a free cage to see how many people would view the add simply due to the wording of it as FREE CAGE lol and my suspicion was right the views doubled that of a highlighted add but once the ad was viewed it was worder to pay shipping of the price of $set amount which covered the cage & shipping alone . the term FREE is always a attention grabber im not super educated in wording advertisments but i have been told i word them well so all i can do i guess is continue to work on ways to grab attention but keep them changing as the same wording will as has proved in the past become boring and loose the interest of the viewing public. I have also placed ads here where i offer discounts to verifiable members of the site as a whole just to test the water so to speak to see how many sales are gained by offering members a deal that they cant get on a other site we know of . Now i know that cant be a totally fair assement in sales stand point but when offering the same product in two location and this one being $20less then the same item offered on another site the ad here doesnt produce a sell but yet the same add placed elsewhere has sold for a HIGHER RATE! LOL
 
OPPS hitthe wrong button ....

Back to my above below post..

I havent given up with using the classifieds here but i will admit it does atleast to me become some what frustrating to me when i offer the deals to members here that are not offered on another advertising venue where i pay to use .sometimes i feel like its alost cause to put the time in and the effort to offer deals to members here on items i sell . im working on ways all the time to make adds i place here inviting to users to make it worth the while to purchase here vs on the other site , and i realize that what i offer isnt a needed everyday item so i take that into thought also .. i dunno frustration sets in at times what do you do but grin and bareit lol
 
Maybe if you move the Highlighted ads now being offered notice above the actual highlighted ads might be enough to get more attention on the highlighted ads and they might not look so much like a notice. You could even make the highlighted ads notice an announcement in the classified section and unhighlight it so the highlighted ads are the only thing highlighted in the classifieds. Just more thoughts...
 
I discussed this issue with my programmer and he verified what I had thought about a separated section for featured ads. It would be a very difficult hack to do. So I took an easier route and asked him to make the hi-lighting of the featured ads more flexible. I can now make the background color any color I want to.

I'm not sure how to handle the option of sticky and hi-lighted, sticky and not hi-lighted, or not sticky, hi-lighted. I can see where any one of the three options might be useful. A hi-lighted ad that just floats within the regular threads would stand out like a sore thumb to most people. And some have expressed interest in a non hi-lighted ad just stickied at the top of the forum.

So I don't know maybe I should just one flat fee and let you all chose what you want it to be. I would like to charge less than $5 per month for this, but with me getting into my busy season, it is all I would need to have this take off like wildfire and I would have to spend nearly every minute of my day managing it. This is a fully manual process so I have to change every ad for this option, plus mark my calendar when it expires or just try to scan every classified forum every day to try to catch the ones that have expired.

If this proves to be popular and brings in enough money, I would then strongly consider asking my programmer to completely automate this process. If I could get that to happen, I would be MORE than happy to lower the price substantially. But I need to see that it is worthwhile doing FIRST.

Anyway, I changed the background color on Alan's ads in the caging classified section to something that will stand out quite a bit. I'm sure everyone is going to have their own ideas about the best color for a hi-light, so I'm not sure how I will handle this either. If I automate it, I would have some sort of selection list that a user could pick from, I guess. But for now, I guess I'll just have to field suggestions about what is best. One color for all, or just pick different ones at random? Of course, there could be overkill with the colors, which would completely defeat the purpose.

Anyway, let me know what you think. Sorry I couldn't do the separate section, but I figured that would be a tough nut to crack.
 
I personally feel that the different colored background in the classifieds has helped the ads stand out much more than they did before. It is definatly an improvement. The floating highlighted ads do stand out like a sore thumb while on the first page. Good Job.
 
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