Hi All,
As you may or may not have seen, we are looking to enhance Landscape Juice and try to develop the site in ways that would be useful to all.
The comments on our last post highlighted a need for a Noticeboard page where members are able to advertise legitimate tools to sell, requests of any kind etc.
We have been discussing the best way of going about this as we agree that it would be a great addition to the site.
Our ideas are as follow:
Create a 'Noticeboard' page where users can advertise as well as request items such as tools or labour for example.
If selling tools, to ensure that they are legitimate, we will ask for proof of purchase and certification of authenticity when going through the process of posting an advert.
We will then receive the request for advertisement and accept or decline based on the legitimacy and quality of the request.
We will need to charge for each post - this would be a one-off fee per post and only members of the site will be able to post to ensure the legitimacy of the seller.
However, the side that we are struggling to figure out is the requests. How would you, as a user who would advertise that is seeking a product, feel comfortable and have complete confidence in the person who is offering to fulfil that request? What should we do as a site to make sure that what you are then buying is reliable? We can moderate posts advertising a product for sale, but it seems to be much harder to moderate responses to requests.
We would really appreciate your feedback on this.
What is your opinion on the idea as a whole?
Would you use the 'Noticeboard'? And if you wouldn't, why?
How much would you be happy to pay per post?
We look forward to hearing from you!
Views: 187
Replies
Fleur, A for sale / wanted section is a good idea but whether it will generate enough income for yourselves to make it worthwhile is another question.
I do think you are over complicating things for yourself, supplying a purchase invoice when advertising goods for sale would be a non starter for us as all our invoices go to our accountants and assuming that the items for sale are several years old retrieving an invoice for example for a strimmer bought 6 years ago would be too much hassle, we would just put it on Gumtree which is of course free or another online foc platform, I do think that as it's limited to members that you will not get enough users to make it a viable proposition, you also need to consider the extremely small marketplace that the goods for sale will be viewed by and will therefore affect the success of the ad and therefore will inevitably encourage/discourage the advertiser to use the service again. Which leads me onto your suggestion of a charge for advertising, and I appreciate we all have to turn a profit but I do wonder when members can use much larger platforms with a greater chance of success and are FOC whether you will attract enough members who are prepared to pay say for the sake of argument £5 to make it viable for you.
As to responding to wanted ads it's up to the buyer of the goods to ensure the legitimacy and condition not you, and whatever safeguards you attempt to put in place their will always be those who will find ways around, you are not the Police or Trading Standards.
Sorry if this is all a little negative as LJN is a fantastic resource and hope that I'm proved wrong, be interisting to hear other members thoughts.
Agree I feel Peter has given a very comprehensive reply outlining the reality of used equipment and it's legitimacy also realistically kit used regularly by professionals is likely to be exhausted wether or not a sales invoice can be raised .
Items such as henchman platforms for eg should be fairly intact but they could be advertised through the all discussion forum by reputable existing members who have a profile so no need for a separate for sale notice board .
A wanted board could add benefit but the transaction done between the members at their own risk as Peter suggests
Where it could work is in advertising opportunities , job vacancy or a way of putting a member in touch with someone offering a specialist skill perhaps requiring a specialist piece of equipment required on a particular job which could add value to a project .
Where items for sale are concerned would search engines automatically draw the wider web to those advertisements attracting opportunists to attempt to exploit the resource ?
Another area perhaps would be to set up a separate resources site on LJ which can only be accessed via the member subscription ,whilst it would not change the reliability of equipment offered for sale it could generate more interest leading to more activity putting buying and selling at the forefront of members minds leading to an eventual positive outcome on the understanding of sold as seen ,even as spares or repairs .
Could it even work for suppliers to get involved with exclusive member deals or discounts .
I would certainly pay an appropriate fee for such a resource as it would be adding value as an initial go to resource .
As with most things you have to make a start and the navigation unfolds as to what is working and what is not and you can then build on the strengths .
I think a noticeboard where members can advertise used kit would be great. Maybe the benefit to LJN would be the increased interaction between members rather than charging for advertising.
Job/subcontractor opportunities would also be great
Hi Fleur, I think Peter, as always, has the sound advice. I certainly wouldn't pay to advertise to sell kit when I know I can do so for free on FB marketplace & other sites, without any charges (atm) unlike Fleabay. When I do sell kit it is normally 'buyer collects' so they can then view it themselves & always 'sold as seen'. I wouldn't knowingly sell anything that is about to fall apart but it is down to the buyer to ascertain whether they want to take a punt on that item. I have bought like this myself when setting up. It is nice if you can show a reciept, but do I really want to show somebody what I paid for an item I am selling?
The items for sale/ wanted page may work, but tbh anyone can ask on the forum as it is at the moment for anything like this.
Best wishes Neil