Can you give us any update as to when? I would like to see this site survive but too few post in a week doesn’t look well. No traffic = no $$
The basics of how one gains access to classifieds is implemented and working, you can read the current policy here and gain information on how that is done.
The Policy agreement will automatically assign you the specific group that will allow access to the sections as they become live.
Honestly speaking life is getting in the way of me opening stuff up, I can’t find much time to work on what’s left and there really isn’t much left to be done, just some loose ends here and there on the site.
I will be opening up the Misc. Classifieds first as a test run to see how that goes and once things are ironed out I will open up the Arms/Ammo section at a later date.
As it stands I can keep the site up for a while. If people don’t want to interact with it so be it, I’d like the page to be something more than just a classifieds board but if that is the demand, I can certainly try and adjust.
I want the forum to be an alternative to our subreddit, since those grips will be tightening down over time on what content Reddit allows, they went public, so they have to bend the knee to the mighty dollars of the shareholders and advertisers, its inevitable. We had a scare a few weeks back when the subreddit literally vanished for an hour, ended up being an issue with Reddit but I see the possibility of that happening permanently.
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I check here every night, there are no new posts. It seems no one is interested. I had hoped it was going to attract people from CTGunTalk posting.
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I will address your comment in a reply because a comment can only be 600 characters, and they aren’t really meant for side conversations:
Im not sure who Joel is, but thanks for the words. My initial design for classifieds was to put it behind a paywall since that would at least filter out some bad actors, ultimately I decided not to do that because one might argue at that point I am providing a service and demand stuff (guarantees, warrantees etc.), I don’t really want to deal with that to be honest.
I went with the free classifieds approach, if people want to support the site there will be an optional membership that will offer some benefits, primarily ad-free experience, exclusive members-only categories and I am working on functionality that will bump and distinguish supporters classifieds posts to the top, since those users would be a step above the random free user in terms of verification (having to provide a valid form of payment and info, etc), this is a bit more involved and will take some time to iron out but overall that’s the mid-term goals.
I want to be able to do this without needing to offer services or having to sell stuff, if it turns out I need to do that, Im okay with pivoting to some extent, whatever it may be.
It boils down to what people want out of the site, I would wager a guess that since Reddit and some Facebook groups are the main places for conversations and are pretty convenient most of conversations will happen there. As of right now, we have a need for a place to trade, so I will try to provide that, to best of my ability. If people stay to have conversations, im all for that too!
Hopefully the increased traffic a classifieds section would bring would result in an increase in posts. Maybe have a minimum # of posts for users before “unlocking” the sell section.
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When you get it running, you will see traffic increase for sure. A lot of people that were on CTGT are not on reddit and have no idea about this new forum. At the beginning, Nuke went to all the local gun stores and told them about the site, advertising, etc. A lot of owners like me told their customers about the site. I also think posting in some of the local FB gun pages will help traffic as well. There are quite a few training, trading, and “other” CT gun related pages.
First set of classifieds is now open more details here: Classifieds update!