Buying / selling on the MRH site
As folks have said, there is already a way to buy / sell on the MRH site: become an advertiser.
Remember, the way MRH makes money is by connecting those with hobby goods/services to sell to those who want to buy. That means "classified" ads on here could not be free.
The staff has discussed this idea several times and the take-away is always the same:
- We would have to charge more than most modelers would be willing to pay to make it worth it
- If we priced it low enough to be attractive to modelers, then it becomes a big time sink dealing with "issues"
- If we priced it free (like Craig's list), now there is a way for anybody to sell to our audience for nothing -- how long will it be before advertisers find this loophole?
Long story short, the concept undermines our whole "make our money through connecting buyers with sellers" philosophy. So the answer always comes up NO.
And for selling to be of benefit to the seller, a larger audience is always better. You can't do much better than eBay when it comes to audience size. About 10% of our readership frequents these forums, so you're looking at some 8,000 or so for your "selling audience".
I will say this -- we offer 50% off on ads to non-profits. I'll extend the same offer to modelers - text ad: $19 one-time magazine placement. That's the best we can do. It will only be worth it when you have lots of stuff to sell, and the ad would go in the marketplace for one issue. One magazine ad will be very hit-or-miss -- if you want really good visibility, then you should plan on three months worth of ads, and a 3x text ad at 50% off will be: $51.
P.S. With the new MRH Groups site, however, we're only loosely affiliated with any groups that care to set up over there, so if anyone wanted to start a "Yard sale" group, then that's a way. But realize, the audience size would only be how many members you could recruit. The groups do not have automatic access to the audience on this site, so you'll be starting from scratch.
Once you sign up on the MRH groups site, you can create a new "Yard sale" subgroup if you want - you become the owner and it will be your job to promote it and drum up members, just like for a new Yahoo Group. That said, we can move existing Yahoo Groups over to the MRH groups site, if they're interested. We are fine with owners of an MRH groups site subgroup promoting it on here, however!
