Great idea; thanks.
I think that the effectiveness of the Marketplace adverts would be improved if people advertising put a means of directly contacting them in there.
That would open up the audience to those who don’t have an identity on EuroGA.
The problem with putting an email address there is that it likely reveals your identity and definitely attracts spam, so that’s a bad idea. If I was displaying an email address I would put it into the picture of the item for sale i.e. as a graphic, not machine readable text.
So a phone number (with country code) might work better.
EuroGA has a huge daily audience (c. 2000 regular readers every day).
I’m sure I’m not alone in being a bit of a window shopper, regardless of whether I’m actively looking for something.
I therefore tend to frequent locations with plenty to look at, and surely this increases traffic.
If it was viable, could small low price items be advertised for free under £200 or whatever?
Gps data cards. Portable Gps units. Usable unwanted avionics?
Thus attracting a few more items to the actual inventory and making the section more interesting.
Obviously you don’t want too much ‘junk’ but I’m sure that can be easily moderated. Perhaps the ad is vetted before it’s published.
Airborne_Again wrote:
I wouldn’t say that, but for me at least it is an issue that you don’t get a notification when a new ad appears.
Fully agree this idea, and a few others mentioned before.
- members of EuroGA should have a way to ask for notifications (ideally with wildcards, example * TSIO *,
- ads better be searchable by anybody using Googlo and co. (not limited to members)
- cost matter, if possible make ads free, make advertisers pay when the item is sold or taken off site
- provide a good set of pre-defined tags for any ad, this helps searches etc.
Perhaps the ad is vetted before it’s published
There is no prior moderation as such but the advert doesn’t appear until the advertiser has done the paypal payment, and that keeps spammers out.
Also, to advertise (or post, or PM) you have to be an approved user of the forum. This is a recent change which was done in 2019. Before that, anybody could sign up and spam all over the place. With 20-30% of signups being malicious, this is an essential measure even though it causes me extra work, and a fair % of people who would have posted something cannot be bothered to return when they get the “approved” email say an hour later. Those who use fake etc email addresses won’t get that email anyway…
ads better be searchable by anybody using Googlo and co. (not limited to members)
That is already the case. Google has the same access to the site as any non logged in user.
Peter, just an idea.
What if people who donate on a specific scale on EuroGA get free marketplace adds for personal adds? For instance, whoever donates more than a specific sum per year gets the marketplace for free for private sales.
Mooneyspace e.g. has the system that when you are a donor, you get the google adds removed for a year. Other forums do similar stuff, e.g if you contribute you get something in return.
In Flightforum we have the private adds for free and commercial adds are paid, as well as a number of banners. Banners are usually not very intrusive and unlike google adds they do no depend on clicks either.
Definitely an interesting idea about the free Marketplace ads for people who donated above a certain level. I will see if adding a “no fee” checkbox is cheap enough.
In Flightforum we have the private adds for free and commercial adds are paid, as well as a number of banners. Banners are usually not very intrusive and unlike google adds they do no depend on clicks either.
The reason I have never wanted advertisements here on EuroGA is because the GA vendor scene has a significant number of dodgy firms, and if one of these places an advert (which is virtually certain; the worst companies spend the most on advertising) then you get this kind of issue (that particular one was actually triggered by a well known Cirrus dealer selling somebody an SR22 with a defunct ILS receiver) which is really hard to resolve unless whoever runs the forum runs it just as a money making exercise. And that is getting harder every year because the “one-liner throwers” who make up most of social media, and click most on the adverts, are disappearing to Twitter/FB/Reddit, etc. This poster had an interesting line; if the participating mod gets sued, that is “ok” because a mod is a legitimate military target 
Some ad income does not depend on clicks (and I get contacted regularly with requests for such) but any even half competent owner still monitors where hits to their shop site come from, and isn’t going to place the ad again if the numbers are too small.
