I was just curious…will platinum members be allowed to post offerings in the forum…or will we have to click somewhere else, like a directory, to view?
The reason I ask is that i might not be actively looking for something, but sometimes when i see something, I realize I need it and must have it!..
I can see how too much advertising in the forum might be perceived as bothersome to some…but then again, if I am reading the digest, i can just zoom past it if it looks to be of no interest…and in the new forum, i can always just not click on it…since the title should let me know what the post is about…
Leah and I are working on figuring this out right now. The basic premise is this…
Anyone can “read” Orchid for free and Ganoksin for free.
Silver members can participate in the forums (get the email digest every day, get email alerts, etc)
Gold members can do that, plus I am going to figure out a bunch of other stuff for them (special content, special access, special offers). My goal is to make gold a no-brainer for anyone.
Platinum is targeted toward people who advertise to jewelers (including other jewelers)… goods or services. Leah and I are figuring out how best to have them represented and able to advertise, while not disrupting the value of the forum.
In our FAQ section, Leah posted up a preliminary “Commercial Postings” policy. But in short, yes it’s allowed
This is a work in progress, but we will be refining both the rules and the offerings as we go along.
One thing we are mindful of… every post anyone makes is emailed out many thousands of times to many thousands of people. My goal for advertising is;
a) make it profitable for advertisers, by allowing them to be targeted
b) make it profitable for Ganoksin, since advertising is the bulk of our revenue
Seth and Leah
I love the new format. Thanks for all your work. The site is easy to navigate and is now similar to 2 other forums that I am a member of. Just upgraded to gold and will consider platinum as more details are hammered out.
Again Thanks!
Cheers
Franz
@fbroz Thank you for that! It is very sincerely appreciated.
The Platinum offerings are definitely our top priority, it’s just more work than it seems to do it once, and get it anywhere close to right. The main reason it is taking so long is because we are building an entire system so advertisers can not only “display” ads but do so in appropriate context. That requires us to have every single piece of content on the entire website categorized.
The beauty is, when we’re done, everything will be categorized and any ads you do see will be directly related to the content you are reading. A win-win for advertisers, readers, and Ganoksin. Of course, it requires a lot of work up front. Lucky us
I assume when an Orchidian has a one-time item to offer, they would just be able to post it on the forum, yes? Like when Noel was offering two copies of the Breophil book at a super-low price a while back.
The old Digest email was difficult for me on gmail because it would often be truncated due to how much space the ads took up. If you do go for listing the ads on the digest email can you make them take up less of the page?
