IMPORTANT NEW CHANGES TO THE "Airsoft Items For Sale" Forum

There are two ways to sell your airsoft items in here; one is free and the other is paid. If you wish to sell your items here in the "Airsoft Items For Sale" Forum, you can do one of two things: #1, click here to pay to become an "Authorized Seller". (When you pay, you get immediate access to the new Authorized Seller group and can begin posting your new topic immediately, but you still need to following the other rules, just as always)....

Or #2, If you don't want to pay, then you must do a few extra things to be considered to be manually added to the "Authorized Seller" (AS) member group FOR FREE. keep in mind that there will be some delay before you are added because we have to verify that you are in compliance with the additional things you must do. If you wish to go the free method, you must also do the following things...

#1 create an account and list your items on http://www.SportsOnlyAuction.com (SOA)
#2 send me (or another administrator - not moderator) a link to your new SOA listings so that we can verify your SOA listing and move you into the new AS member group, and
#3 Once you have been moved to the ASF "Authorized Seller" (AS) member group... you can then go ahead and create a For Sale (FS) topic under the following additional conditions:

....3A) Your topic here must have a link in it to your SOA listing, and
....3B) You must use the SOA website for the actual transaction.

#4 You can also (and highly recommended that you do) link your SOA listing back here to your FS topic so that people finding it on SOA will know where to come find your ASF discussion thread about that item.

Basically, we are allowing members to post items here for free if they are willing to help us get items listed on SOA, use the SOA website, and help drive traffic to it. If you don't make good on your end of the agreement for any reason such as not linking to SOA, not using SOA for transaction completion, not using the SOA feedback system, etc, your "Authorized Seller" Status here and your topics will be removed and you will be placed in the regular member group.

In other words, ASF members who pay to sell items here do not necessarily have to do all of that and they are immediately added to the ASF Authorized Seller member group, whereas other members interested in becoming an "Authorized Sellers" and who have chosen "the free method" will have a few more hoops to jump through than the members who just pay the tiny annual or quarterly fee.

Additionally, all "Authorized Sellers" can now also...

a. open and close their own topics!
b. You now get 5 days to edit your posts whereas everyone else only gets 24 hours.

That being said though, please - if you are going to edit your original post, please edit it wisely and DO NOT WIPE IT OUT WHEN YOU ARE DONE with your sale. We would like to keep a record of the topic. We PREFER that you update your "Original Post" (OP) in a reply, but if you must edit your original to fix a MISTAKE, then do it wisely so that 6 months from now when someone else comes along and wants to review what you did, they can read a topic that makes chronological sense.

MORE ON THIS REASON...
The main reasons for the previous 24 hour limit on editing a post was so that the original post could not be altered. This was set like that to reduce scamming and to limit the ability of a dishonest seller going back and changing something that wasn't originally part of the deal. Also, by not allowing people to just go back and delete or blank out their original post, it maintained integrity for the entire Airsoft Forum here in terms of creating a library or history of content.

For example.... If you sell your item and 6 months later someone wants to check your thread but all they find is "SORRY this item SOLD" for an original post or topic title - then that would hurt the board here and not be very useful for future visitors to that topic who may want to see what it sold for, etc.

Additionally, by disallowing people to go back and change the price or quantity, or item and forcing them to update their OP with a reply - this keeps the post more understandable and user friendly as well as less confusing. it also forces the viewers to actually read the topic and replies - not just the first post.

c. Normally external links in member signatures are NOT ALLOWED, However, If you have listings on SOA or if you have created a free "Store Front" over there, you are allowed to place a clickable link to that here in your signature.
d. POST COUNT IN THIS FORUM NOW COUNTS towards regular post count. Previously posting a reply or making a new topic in this FS forum did not count towards your overall post count, but now it does for all "Authorized Sellers".

If you want to read the big hairy mess about all of this prior to us making this new rule, click here: http://www.airsoftforum.com/board/Rule-Pay...al-t151971.html

If you have additional constructive feedback to help us make the AirsoftForum.com BST Classifieds a better and safer place to Buy-Sell-Trade, please let me know.

This post has been edited by admin: Jun 15 2009, 07:09 PM

Are you seriously crying over $5??? Seriously get a friggin life its only $5 a year right now!! You waste more on coffee than that.

Quite the bit@$ing, get a life, pay the measly $5, and start selling. Holy mother of God, why are people like you even here if you cant even see past your own ego to buy a membership.

well then see ya later Riflewizard and best of wishes to you. ASB is only doing a tiny fraction of the traffic we are doing and we have to somehow come up with funds to afford this growing server.


There are 2 ways to sell here, both free and paid and if people such as yourself are not willing to do either, then stop your :censored2: and just go Riflewizard.

Are you going to deleat all the posts and start fresh? I have no problem of paying 5 bucks but I just want to know when this is set in motion. Is there a set date where this starts?

Thanks.

it's pretty much already set in motion and as I said in the original post, all existing posts in the FS forum will be grandfathered in.

keep in mind that for those that refuse to pay it, there is also a free method to be allowed to continue posting new topics in there if they are willing to do a few things to help us out here.

I actually like the way its set up right now, I think its better than the old way!

thanks Noah, what about the number of new items listed? do you think that the quantity of topics has improved or diminished? If diminished, do you think the quality of items being listed is better now?

I've been trying to make an ad on SOA for a while but the site is so slow and always fails loading (after 20 minutes, it just stops trying to load)

I don't know what is going on, but is it something that can be fixed?

I've noticed that too which is making it hard to sell things here...

Can some one make sure to tell every one to use the tags for the sales the they are actual listed in the proper categories
instead just being placed in the airsoft section and named "Airsoft parts/stuff sale"

this. been trying to get it going for 20 minutes here.

Not going to waste my time with this.

Yeah what a terrible idea this turned out to be. I wonder what the statistics look like for the selling forum before and after this change was made? I've been away from the forum for awhile and came back because I wanted to sell some things but why should I pay to sell things on here when I can do it on other places for free?

I have been gone the past few months with the Army so pardon my late coming on this topic.

In my honest opinion, I think this idea..... for lack of better terms... SUCKS.

I can understand why you would apply something like this, #1 to protect users, #2 to make money.

In my opinion, too bad, everyone knows the deal with internet shopping and how you have a chance of getting scammed. You are not held liable by any law and can not even be taken to court for just having a buy/sell section on your website, especially if you post a disclaimer just to remind users. It is a transact at your own risk type thing.... I personally enjoy seeing the wide variety of items sold by anyone and everyone, VERY rare would I see a scam before I had left. Sometimes it does happen, I have been scammed (not here) but ohh well.... it's a risk. Every day you risk your life by taking a breath, is there CO in the air? You don't know....

I hate having to either pay or wait a while (to be verified) to post my items and this discourages a lot of people from even posting that may have had a product that I may have wanted to get at a great price.

/opinion

I am going to pay the $5 so that I can continue selling and because I know the expense and maintenance of upholding a half decent website. I am NOT :censored2: about that....


Thats my opinion... sometimes I just have to put my -$.02 in the equation.


-MP

This post has been edited by Rattler: Jan 21 2010, 11:11 PM

I have a question.... If a person Donates to the site, and that donation is more than the $5 sellers fee, but it is a donation, does that person automatically get seller powers?

you can still do it for free, like I did. have you read all the rules?

Wheres the money going? How does this protect buyers/sellers any more then the old system did? how much revenue has been generated thus far? I think these are important questions that should be answered. Better yet, is this forum part of a non profit organization?

This post has been edited by Tactically Casual: Mar 3 2010, 02:00 AM