Welcome to the Marketplace forum, where SDMB subscribers may promote commercial and other ventures they’re involved in. The following rules apply:
Only subscribers can start threads. This includes Members, Charter Members, SDMB staff and members of the Straight Dope Science Advisory Board. Anyone (including guests) can post a reply. Subscribers may edit their own posts (and ONLY their own posts) at any time. Unlimited editing is intended mainly for the benefit of the OP, whose offerings may change; please keep your use of this feature to a minimum.
Posts must be relevant to the OP. Don’t promote your product or service in a thread started by someone else.
Marketplace is intended to provide you with a forum for promoting your own ventures. Don’t use it to promote somebody else’s business. For example, an affiliate page in which you merely provide links to other commercial sites for a commission is not in the spirit of what we’re trying to do here.
The person starting the thread may post images that are relevant to the item or service being offered. You may only post pictures if you are the OP (that is, in your own threads). Please use this feature judiciously. We may review this policy later.
Members may post links to their Marketplace threads in their signatures.
The forum is subject to standard SDMB rules. The following additional rules apply:
No ads for things that are illegal in the U.S., ethically dubious, or, in our opinion, likely to cause the Straight Dope to come into disrepute. Examples: get-rich-quick schemes, quack cures, products offering impossible benefits.
No ads for drugs or medical treatments, legal or not.
No ads for adult services, pornography, or dating/matchmaking services.
We reserve the right to remove any ad or to prohibit additional types of ads at any time.
Please don’t “bump” your own thread more than once (i.e., post solely to move it to the top of the thread display list). We reserve the right to limit the number of Marketplace threads a member may start within a given period of time.
To all SDMB users: This is a free service offered to members. We don’t vouch for advertisers or what they offer. PARTICIPATE AT YOUR OWN RISK. If a transaction leads to problems, we advise that you make this known privately to the other party in the first instance. Comments about transactions in the seller’s Marketplace thread are also permissible. Please keep complaints factual and refrain from personal attacks. We will not adjudicate disputes between members concerning Marketplace transactions; however, see below.
To Marketplace advertisers: By advertising in Marketplace you agree to abide by the highest standards of business practices and ethics. If we have reason to think you engage in questionable business practices, we may revoke your right to participate in Marketplace or take other action.
This is an experiment and may be discontinued at any time.
Ed, I like this new forum, but is it possible to move it down the list of forums? For me, GQ and GD are the heart of the SDMB and should be forever twinned in location, location, location!
Maybe not right away, since you want to catch people’s attention with a new venture, but at some point?
Aw man! Adding another forum bumped “MPSIMS” off my popup menu! Now I have to move my hand and press down with my finger to scroll to it. Curse you Ed Zotti!
No really, please move this to the bottom of the “traditional” Straight Dope forums. Pretty please. Thanks
Northern Piper and UncleRojelio, that’s a good idea. We’ll put it down near the bottom of the “main” list. Give us a few minutes - I can’t make that kind of global change, so Ed Zotti will have to do it.
Is this limited to offering things for sale? Or can we start a thread expressing an interest in buying something and asking if anyone has one they’re willing to sell?
Yes, go for it, IF the rules of the auction are laid out in the OP and it’s crystal clear that we poor underpaid Marketplace moderators have nothing to do with the process. We’re not certifying buyers, facilitating payment, enforcing end times, validating bids, performing currency conversions, calculating shipping, or anything else; just providing a place to do it.
I think the answer to this will be no, but I’ll ask. I have an online “storefront” that I’ve run a number of years. It’s on my server, my coding, etc. It’s basically a place to browse, search, and compare products from a number of different merchants. It’s my business, I file a schedule C and all that, but I can see where you might consider it to be promoting other people’s businesses. I can also see where you wouldn’t want to open the door to affiliate sales in general, but this is more than that. Sort of like a shopping mall where the merchants and products change over time and you can browse and compare.
If you want to check it out I can send the URL in a PM to Ed or whoever is appropriate.
The rule is intended to prevent some kind-hearted soul from posting a lot of threads on behalf of his buddies who are too cheap to pony up for an SDMB subscription. What you describe sounds different. It’s a store, right? I presume you mark up the prices your vendors charge you, you make money, you file a schedule C. If so, this is a perfectly legitimate business and you’re welcome to promote it here. If this isn’t what you’re doing, please clarify so we can better fix on the situation.
I get data feeds from the merchants and show their products, prices, etc. on my website. You can browse and search the various merchants and products all on my website. When you see something that interests you, you click for more info and are then taken to the merchant’s website where you place the order with them. I then receive a commission for the sale. I do not mark up the prices.
So it’s basically affiliate sales but I’m not sending people directly from here to someone else’s website. There’s a presentation and some functionality. What I could do is showcase particular items in Marketplace threads and send people to the appropriate page on my store. Of course they’d then be free to buy anything else that interested them while there.
Without having given it a ton of thought I don’t think we have a problem with affiliate sales in principle. You’re a middleman, you make commissions, it’s a business. Sounds OK to me. If you were repping for a bunch of anvil manufacturers showing the latest in anvil technology I’d be OK with your posting about that, too. Bear in mind that we just started doing this and aren’t sure what all the pitfalls are, so tell you what. Email the URL to Gary, Rico, and me. If you don’t hear back from anybody by tomorrow morning, go ahead and post. Possibly we may later decide this wasn’t such a hot idea and say the post has to come down, but you won’t get into trouble, unless of course you’re fronting for a gang of Mexican drug dealers or something.
