Lets Make a new Adverts.ie

Celeron Media

Call Me Jimmy wrote: »

this ain't about money it's about our mutual passion for ads... that are free!

I don't mean to put a spanner in the works here, but you haven't used or logged into your adverts in 3 years.

Every successful app/website/business module needs to start making money at some point.

beauf

Celeron Media wrote: »

" Lets Make a new Adverts.ie". The title mostly gave it away.

Except in this case it didn't. What adverts is, and what was proposed in the first topic are entirely different.

Celeron Media

beauf wrote: »

Except in this case it didn't. What adverts is, and what was proposed in the first topic are entirely different.

Still sounds like adverts

so why not make a stand and build an actual community based site for selling unneeded items.

beauf

Celeron Media wrote: »

I don't mean to put a spanner in the works here, but you haven't used or logged into your adverts in 3 years....

There are other possibilities....

beauf

oscarBravo wrote: »

Are you saying you don't think this project could possibly be successful enough to make any money?

I'm saying you're counting the eggs before they've hatched. before you even bought the chickens. TBH I preferred the cart analogy, its the same thing though.

Celeron Media

There are other possibilities....

"Build it and they will come"

beauf

Celeron Media wrote: »

Still sounds like adverts

Thats a bit like confusing Dido with Slayer.

beauf

Celeron Media wrote: »

"Build it and they will come"

Kinda missing the point. People maybe on adverts perhaps commercially with a different profile than they have on boards.

beauf

oscarBravo wrote: »

A wise person told me years ago that if you're setting up a business for any reason other than to make a profit, your business is doomed to failure.

You may not be thinking of this as a business, but it will have expenses. If it doesn't have revenues, it will be gone within a year.

As soon as money starts changing hands, mutual passions quickly take a back seat. And if you're not thinking about these issues now, all you're doing is deferring them until they become serious problems.

Thats a fair point. But its waaayyyy too early.

irishgrover

oscarBravo wrote: »

A wise person told me years ago that if you're setting up a business for any reason other than to make a profit, your business is doomed to failure.........

I think you're missing the point. People are talking about setting up a mutually beneficial community.... The internet used to be full of them, there used to be some around here. Communities / social organisations do not exist for profit, they exist for the benefit of the individuals/community involved.
It's possible that Boards and it's sister sibling companies, that it presents not to be related to, also lost that point along the way, and ended up hooring themselves out to advertisers and "talk to" companies, in order to generate business revenue, ultimately at the expense of the visitors generating the revenue in the first place.

beauf

I'm a member of a few websites which have forums for trading items within their community.

None of them are big, but they are happy to be a small community.

IRLConor

I used to work for Boards.ie and poked a bit at the old Adverts.ie so my initial reaction (like several former employees who've already posted) is "these people have no idea what they're getting into".

Having said that, I don't see any harm in ye trying. The absolute worst that can happen is that you have fun, fail and lose some money. So long as nobody is delusional about the money side of things and doesn't spend more than they can afford to lose then there'll be no real tears.

A few tips:

• Don't expect to cover your costs with display advertising.
• For the love of $deity be careful with user credentials.
• Classified ads sites are basically photo sharing sites. Where you store your images matters. Make good choices up front. Re-organising several GB of photos without downtime can be tricky.
• Search is a lot harder than it looks.
• Build some good mod tools or the trolls will break the spirit of your mods.
• Community sites can grow very fast. If you're successful your resource costs will explode so you need to have a plan for how you'll pay for it. Again, don't count on display advertising.
• Be sure to set aside some time for helping the Gardai catch people fencing stolen goods.

Good luck!

IRLConor

irishgrover wrote: »

I think you're missing the point. People are talking about setting up a mutually beneficial community.... The internet used to be full of them, there used to be some around here. Communities / social organisations do not exist for profit, they exist for the benefit of the individuals/community involved.
It's possible that Boards and it's sister sibling companies, that it presents not to be related to, also lost that point along the way, and ended up hooring themselves out to advertisers and "talk to" companies, in order to generate business revenue, ultimately at the expense of the visitors generating the revenue in the first place.

When you grow big, you need more hardware. When you have more hardware, you need more sysadmins. When you have more sysadmins you need money to pay them with.

Boards worked for years on a combination of ads, charity and the piggy banks of the founders. Those revenue sources don't scale up as fast as a user base does. Eventually you have to focus on revenue or cap the size of the community.

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup

i'm going to bump this thread in about a month when nothing has been done and everybody's forgotten about it.

Celeron Media

beauf wrote: »

Thats a bit like confusing Dido with Slayer.

It's more like Metallica and MagaDeth.

irishgrover

IRLConor wrote: »

When you grow big, you need more hardware. When you have more hardware, you need more sysadmins. When you have more sysadmins you need money to pay them with.

Boards worked for years on a combination of ads, charity and the piggy banks of the founders. Those revenue sources don't scale up as fast as a user base does. Eventually you have to focus on revenue or cap the size of the community.

fully agree, but your response has little or nothing to do with my point.

irishgrover

georgiecasey wrote: »

i'm going to bump this thread in about a month when nothing has been done and everybody's forgotten about it.

.......the smug joys of being a hurler on the ditch

Steve

I wish you every success with this lads, a totally free community site would be a great thing

Tip #1 - Listen to what Conor said above.
Tip #2 - Find a good solicitor who will work for free - failing that, budget around 50k/year to defend all kinds of muppets suing you (provided you stay small) and to advise you on how to deal with section 8 requests etc..
Tip #3 - do NOT use photopost or vB to run it

IRLConor

irishgrover wrote: »

fully agree, but your response has little or nothing to do with my point.

You were talking about a "mutually beneficial community". That's not free and only gets more expensive as it grows. You can't separate the notion of a community and the cost of running it. Talk about turning a profit is moot, considering how hard it is to break even, never mind have a surplus to re-invest.

eqwjewoiujqorj

If a new site is going to be set up, it needs to be done very quickly, while there is interest.

Building a bespoke site would take months.

Setting up a PHPBB / VBulletin forum would do, for the time being, and would take about 48 hours to set up.

After x months, it could be migrated over to a new platform.

As others have said the most important thing is building the userbase.



Perhaps everyone could answer how many items they have to sell and would be willing to list:

I'll start:

I have approx 50 items to sell and I'd be willing to list them at good prices to get the site up and running.

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup

irishgrover wrote: »

.......the smug joys of being a hurler on the ditch

prove me wrong then. good luck with it

seamus

irishgrover wrote: »

fully agree, but your response has little or nothing to do with my point.

It directly discusses your point. A mutually beneficial community is a nice idea, but it doesn't scale in the real world. As community size and popularity increases, the underlying infrastructural and support costs increase as a single block of expense, rather than as something the community can each individually contribute to at zero cost.
Eventually that block of expense increases beyond the goodwill capabilities of any one person (or small group of people), and you need to find sustainable ways of covering those expenses.

Sparks

Lads, you do realise that this is the Development forum and not the WhingingBecauseSomePrivateCompanyIsPayingTheirBillsInAWayYouDontPersonallyLike forum, right?