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Create a Separate Vendors Only Classified Section
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gdumond1234
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 30, 2015 1:45 pm    Post subject: Create a Separate Vendors Only Classified Section Reply with quote

Hello everyone. Are you frustrated with trying to compete selling your one or two items only for your ad to get buried by these large Vendors selling dozens of inventory items?

Recently I spoke to the site administrator Everett Barnes about my frustration regarding the growing number of Vendors squeezing the individual advertiser like you and me and limiting our exposure of listing our products for sale.

The chances of our products being seen for more than a few moments on the first page is disappearing as these large Vendors are adding dozens of their products for sale throughout the day.

If you are experiencing the same frustrations this is your opportunity to make your comments so that you can be heard and hopefully will see some new improvements on this site very soon.

Here is a copy of my email to Everett and his response: Also see his response at the bottom of this page.



Hello Everett,

You may have heard this a hundred times already but I feel compelled to
bring it up again. I occasionally advertise parts I am selling in the
classified section for Porsche Parts. Like many other individuals who
think that your site offers a great opportunity to create commerce, it
is becoming increasingly more difficult and frustrating to sell products.

Why? Because there are a few large Vendors that are posting dozens of
products Daily. In fact they have taken over the bulk of the advertising
so much so that if an individual like myself post an item within minutes
it gets buried way in the back because these large vendors post dozens
of products all day long.

You may or may not be able to control this at the moment but please
think about this. If I'm frustrated many other Individuals are also
going to be frustrated and possibly give up in advertising products for
sale on your website. Additionally other forums like the
Porsche356registry.org which it's members have a choice to advertise on
its forum also like to advertise their products simultaneously on TheSamba.

I'd like to make a suggestion. Would you consider setting up advertising
guidelines for Vendors to be restricted to certain days? As an example
Vendors could advertise Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. All days would
still be open to the individual not institution advertisers. Once these
guidelines were set I believe individual advertisers like myself would
be smarter to advertise on the days the Vendors are not permitted to
advertise. This way both individuals and Vendors could share internet
commerce equally without all the frustration that is happening now.

How do you get the word out about this change on your site? A banner
could be placed in different strategic locations/pages on the site
posting these new guidelines. To make this work something would have to
be mentioned about... if the Vendors do not abide by these guidelines
then their advertisements would be flagged and could potentially be
banned from the site.

I know this may seem to be a little harsh but TheSamba is probably
turning into something different than what you originally intended it to
be used for. Just my feeling about it.

Respectfully,

*Greg Dumond*


Everett's Response:


Feel free to post what you posted below, I would be curious to see what other members say about it or any other ideas.

Another idea would be to force these people to post in a "Vendors - Porsche" area.
There are some Vendor categories on the site for VW-related parts from companies but these are for brand new repro parts, not used parts. My understanding is some of the massive Porsche parts advertisers on the site are listing mostly their huge used parts inventories.

Regards,
Everett Barnes
http://www.thesamba.com
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EverettB Premium Member
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 30, 2015 10:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes, feedback welcome.

This would be for Porsche Vendors only as there are several Porsche Vendors who have "taken over" that category.

I know a few people have used the Classifieds Ignore List to block their listings from appearing during searches:
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=298960
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gdumond1234
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 01, 2015 5:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Everett, the only thing I would add regarding... "Classifieds Ignore List to block their listings"... that may help from being a nuisance to the person shopping for products, however it does not prevent the mass marketing of products by these Vendors. Their ads will still go on flooding and diluting the opportunity for individual sellers to have their ads placed in a highly visible first position not at the back end of endless ads which force the individual sellers ads to get lost.
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EverettB Premium Member
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 01, 2015 8:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes, the block list only helps buyers, not sellers who have their single or low volume listing "lost".
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*Darren
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 03, 2015 6:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

As a samba user and a parts buyer, I'll chime in. if I should be looking for a large number of parts I am not going to look on this site. I'll go directly to a vendor's site whatever vendor(s) that may be. That even goes for single parts. Now if it happens that these sources fail as do a few friends, I'll search on here using specific key words. I think in my time on this site I've only browsed the classifieds 1 or 2 times as a time killer. Point is to me it doesn't matter how many general ads a seller has, I'll never know or see them, it doesn't matter where a part is in a section. Search in a section for a fuel pump and only so many can come up and if yours is 1st of last doesn't really matter if it's the right one for me (price, condition, etc).

I'll make this suggestion, assuming it's not already in practice, limit the number of ads a person can place and if they exceed it charge them for each ad putting the samba on a tier system: individual and business. Using this site to list your business' 100s of products for free kind of violates the spirit of this site.
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wcfvw69 Premium Member
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 03, 2015 7:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

My 2 cents-

I rarely scroll thru a classified section and go page thru page.. Yes, it can be tiresome to see hundreds of adds from a business. I would think the vast majority of people who are utilizing the classifieds are filtering for what they are looking for. If I want to buy a new part, I'll price shop the part on this site by searching for it, then comparing it against what businesses are selling it for on their site.

With the amount of users/sellers (especially businesses) now on The Samba, filtering is the only way to not spend too much time while looking for a specific part. Using the filters categories and sub categories can save a lot of time. Example, if I'm looking for a fuel pump, I'll search "fuel pump" in the find line.

I don't know if I see the value of splitting up who's selling the part (vendor/private party). If I'm seeing what's for sale in the baywindow category, it doesn't really matter "who's" selling the part to me. I just want to find the part.

Finally, I've sold a few parts on this site, some being kind of odd ball or what I would of thought "no one will buy this". I've never had a problem selling them nor felt like my add wasn't getting enough exposure.
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EverettB Premium Member
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 03, 2015 8:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks for the feedback.

It is good to know that people primarily search when they need something specific.
I do the same when I am looking for something specific.
I also browse particular parts category daily, sorted by new, to see the new ads.

More explanation:
To be super clear about the exact issue here, there are a couple Porsche vendors on the site who have listed tons of used parts ads.

It's used parts only.

It's to the point where people sometimes ask me how to block those people because they don't want to see their ads at all.

If it was new/repro parts there would not be an issue, I would make a Porsche Vendors section similar to the VW Vendors sections we already have for new and reproduction VW parts.

One example and the first one that comes to mind so you can see the kind of volume they have running (over 3000 ads):
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/search.php?username=GR+%26+Sons
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kreemoweet
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 03, 2015 8:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I can see no reasonable basis for discriminating for/against sellers, based on how many ads they run. Parts is parts, and this user wants to see
ALL of the offers. I can't believe there are very many who impulse buy because they see stuff on the first page. If there are such, that sort of behavior
does not need any encouragement whatsoever, and theSamba does not need to imitate the bad practices of modern retail outlets.

That said, I do not understand why volume advertisers are not asked to pay up according to their usage of this valuable resource called TheSamba.cm classifieds.
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wcfvw69 Premium Member
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 03, 2015 12:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

EverettB wrote:
Thanks for the feedback.

It is good to know that people primarily search when they need something specific.
I do the same when I am looking for something specific.
I also browse particular parts category daily, sorted by new, to see the new ads.

More explanation:
To be super clear about the exact issue here, there are a couple Porsche vendors on the site who have listed tons of used parts ads.

It's used parts only.

It's to the point where people sometimes ask me how to block those people because they don't want to see their ads at all.

If it was new/repro parts there would not be an issue, I would make a Porsche Vendors section similar to the VW Vendors sections we already have for new and reproduction VW parts.

One example and the first one that comes to mind so you can see the kind of volume they have running (over 3000 ads):
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/search.php?username=GR+%26+Sons


I think the key that you and I are both trying to articulate is to utilize the filters that are provided. They allow you to zero in on what category you're looking for or what specific part you're looking for.

I think a lot of newer Samba members don't use the filters or search function enough in either the forums or classifieds. After time and exposure to the site, they see how much those functions can save them time.
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Contact me at [email protected]
Follow me on instagram @sparxwerksllc

Decades of VW and VW parts restoration experience.
The Samba member since 2004.

**Now rebuilding throttle bodies for VW's and Porsche's**
**Restored German Bosch distributors for sale or I can restore yours**
**Restored German Pierburg fuel pumps for sale or I can restore yours**
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*Darren
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 03, 2015 1:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

EverettB wrote:
Thanks for the feedback.

It's used parts only.

One example and the first one that comes to mind so you can see the kind of volume they have running (over 3000 ads):
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/search.php?username=GR+%26+Sons


Made me look Rolling Eyes just plain obnoxious. Certainly not in the spirit of the samba. However, used my example of searching fuel pump and 35 hits - with 10 from obnoxious vendor interspersed among the other 25 - not a big issue. Did a search seems the vendor is using every free avenue available in lieu of having their own website.
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