Suggestion: Beyond Users Business'

[R-Audi]

Without actually starting a thread and having it nuked, thought it may be a good idea to have a thread or section where Beyond users can state their personal business as long as they are willing to provide some sort of discount for Beyond members.
Not to take away from paying sponsors, but not everyone can afford the rates. Figure they could be allowed to make one post informing of their business and what discount they would offer and thats it. No daily spamming or answering questions. If given the chance i would rather support someone the I 'know' and I dont think I am the only one who would feel this way.

Thoughts?

[turbotrip]

+1

[swak]

+2!

.. I'd actually be willing to throw a bit of money at this proposition too (menial amount though - $200 or so).
$2500 is way too much

[Kloubek]

Personally, I'd be surprised if they went for this. The whole idea of the sponsors paying the rates they do are for exclusivity on the site. If we were to be running a business that competed in any way, they could claim some sort of breech based on the fact the original agreement is no longer accurate.

With this said, I personally think it would be a great idea for both members and business owners alike.

[spikerS]

Originally posted by Kloubek
Personally, I'd be surprised if they went for this. The whole idea of the sponsors paying the rates they do are for exclusivity on the site. If we were to be running a business that competed in any way, they could claim some sort of breech based on the fact the original agreement is no longer accurate.

With this said, I personally think it would be a great idea for both members and business owners alike.

Agreed! I know that if I was a beyond sponsor, and I bought a package, and then next month, they created a thread for everyone to advertise in for free, or even cheap, I would be pissed and felt like I got ripped off.

Having said that, I do like the idea, but it just won't happen.

Hell, I have even gotten grief over my truck rental for the cost of gas and a meal, mind you, not from Rage or Kenny.

[ercchry]

dont we already have a beyond members career thread?

[R-Audi]

I figure as long as its limited (one post only no follow ups, no answering questions etc.) sponsors should be ok with it. Might be too much work policing, but it would be a good benefit for members.

[Mibz]

Perhaps a better way of doing it would be a lower priced "sponsorship" tier where you don't get a banner or your own forum but the ability to reply to relevant threads with your own contact info.

I imagine it would be very difficult to browse through a single thread of "I do this and this and this", rather than just being able to make your own thread and having the professionals come to you. Though maybe I'm overestimating how many people here run their own business.

[swak]

... Not just for those running businesses, but for those working on commissions etc I'm sure would buy in too...

[Doozer]

All you'd really need is a search function for the "Occupation" category of user bios.

That field is already there. If people wanted to participate, they'd put their business (or company name) there, and a user could just do a search.

Might be helpful for people looking for career advice too. If they're thinking of taking a job at Company A, they could do a search and see if any users work there, get their opinions, etc.

There's where I'd see value, and it wouldn't take away from paying sponsors (especially since that field's already there, and can already be viewed, just not easily).

[swak]

Or how about a thread that encourages viewage of user "occupations" listed in profile with a compulsory "pm me for mad dealz" haha

[Dalking]

I'm suprised you've yet to have points docked and/or been banned already for merely suggesting this :)

[gamman]

I like it too, and agree, can't afford the big league ad pricing, yet!!

[JAYMEZ]

These threads cause to many problems and people have been banned trying to make deals on beyond without sponsorship ... Sponsorships help our forum keep running . :thumbsup:

[blitz]

All this would accomplish would be to piss off the existing sponsors.

[heavyfuel]

Bad idea IMHO. People pay good money to advertise, nobody should get a free ride.

[R-Audi]

If you have looked into the advertising rates, they are quite high for many small business. Like I mentioned, this wouldnt be a free for all, rather something like a limit of one post (or maybe submission to a list/spreadsheet..controlled by one person) that would list the user/company and what discount they offer. (With discount being a necessity to be listed) Occupation alone doesnt do much if the person is in no position to offer discounts... and then that person wouldnt be able to post.

Current advertisers have the ability to answer questions, have logos in certain sections and post whatever contact info. If you made precise rules, I cant see how the current sponsors could be that upset. If anything this offers more benefit to the users.

[Dalking]

Originally posted by R-Audi
If you have looked into the advertising rates, they are quite high for many small business. Like I mentioned, this wouldnt be a free for all, rather something like a limit of one post (or maybe submission to a list/spreadsheet..controlled by one person) that would list the user/company and what discount they offer. (With discount being a necessity to be listed) Occupation alone doesnt do much if the person is in no position to offer discounts... and then that person wouldnt be able to post.

Current advertisers have the ability to answer questions, have logos in certain sections and post whatever contact info. If you made precise rules, I cant see how the current sponsors could be that upset. If anything this offers more benefit to the users. It's about money. How does the money trickle up to the site owners, it doesn't because these "small businesses" aren't paying anything. That's why real businesses have to pay hundreds of dollars a month to advertise here. That's pure profit to the owners of the site. Figure out a way that the site owners can get money from this idea and then you might have a little more help setting it up

[spikerS]

well, and then there is this point.

How many of the bigger sponsors would switch things up and get a cheaper package if this became available?

Would have to sell a lot of these smaller packages to make up for losing 2 or 3 of the current sponsors if they moved down to a cheaper tier...

[R-Audi]

Originally posted by Dalking
It's about money. How does the money trickle up to the site owners, it doesn't because these "small businesses" aren't paying anything. That's why real businesses have to pay hundreds of dollars a month to advertise here. That's pure profit to the owners of the site. Figure out a way that the site owners can get money from this idea and then you might have a little more help setting it up

Looks like you are new around here, so I'll repeat what has been said here many times. The owners of Beyond aren't in this for the money.. nor is there much if any made from the site. They all have full time jobs, and from time to time actually have to pay out of pocket to keep Beyond online.

I cant see many if ANY sponsors opting out to simply have their name listed with whatever discount they can provide as opposed to having their companies name on top of a section and being able to openly advertise or answer questions. Thats a huge difference. Active vs. passive marketing.

[swak]

Originally posted by R-Audi


Looks like you are new around here, so I'll repeat what has been said here many times. The owners of Beyond aren't in this for the money.. nor is there much if any made from the site. They all have full time jobs, and from time to time actually have to pay out of pocket to keep Beyond online.

I cant see many if ANY sponsors opting out to simply have their name listed with whatever discount they can provide as opposed to having their companies name on top of a section and being able to openly advertise or answer questions. Thats a huge difference. Active vs. passive marketing.

You make a good point.

If anything, the owners could benefit too from possible announced discounts :love:

[kenny]

This is a no go for various reasons, some of which have been mentioned already. Our primary goal with our advertising program is to maintain a high level of value for our sponsors. Several sponsors have exclusivity clauses in their deals, and others we enforce a limit by turning away potential advertisers to ensure our existing sponsors and their campaigns are successful on beyond. Allowing users to advertise for free (even in a limited visibility thread) would undermine all of our existing sponsors who play a big part in keeping the site up and running.

If we offered a more limited package, we run the risk of providing a bad experience to paid advertisers who may think that advertising on beyond is not effective because they opted for the cheapest package.

For those that don't know, a couple years ago we made a huge investment in our server setup. Some beyonders worked with us directly and indirectly and know the huge upfront cost of our new server setup and the resulting jump in our monthly hosting/bandwidth fees. Without going into any details, we require more than 1 annual advertiser each month to cover our monthly costs and we currently are well short of that. However, we're fortunately enough to be part of a separate ad network that helps cover our monthly costs while also providing enough revenue for us to spend on sponsoring car shows, prize giveaways, user/moderator events, and more recently auto show coverage.

[D'z Nutz]

Originally posted by kenny
You gotta pay to play, bitch.

[OU812]

SOmething like CP's CP Power Ring would be a good idea.

One thing that comes to mind is AndyL, sure lots know what he does but a single post could be useful, for those needing a particulat service.

ANything that relates to Beyond's target demogrpahic,, ie automotive is ano go.

Protect guys like Jordan and the TD guy so no realtors or mortgae brokers.

I think it's a win/win

[R-Audi]

From recent days, other companies that come to mind where a full sponsorship package wouldnt make much sense are: (without listing names/companies)

-Pet Store
-Kids Store

Yet it would be extremely beneficial to members if these companies were given the ability to provide a discount to members if they so wanted to. I know Im not the only person on here that looks for deals, maybe its worth approaching the major sponsors? Maybe its just in sections where there are no competing paying sponsors?

Is Bob/Jordan/whomever going to care about someone that mentions a discount at a Pet Store? Or Kids store?

[ercchry]

why not have a "beyond card"


..like the old coke card. pay a couple bucks to get on the card. charge members a couple bucks. have a list of companies that it works at :dunno:

[Type_S1]

Originally posted by ercchry
why not have a "beyond card"


..like the old coke card. pay a couple bucks to get on the card. charge members a couple bucks. have a list of companies that it works at :dunno:

Great idea. No direct advertising on beyond other than a page stating the discount. Get members to pay for a card, business to pay a annual fee, make sure it does not compete against any premier sponsors and your good.

The main sponsors seem to be in the selling business where you need a lot of face to face dealings and time to make a decision. The card sponsors could be retail stores that just want to bring in beyond business at a discount.

[AndyL]

Hey keep me outta this ;) (I had my discussions about this with rage/Kenny long ago) I'm allover a less expensive option.

I understand why they choose to run things the way they do... but last fiscal year, still didn't come close to paying for the sponsorship based on revenue from beyonders/<beyond via google-fu>

I was gonna deal with that other ad network at play on beyond, but it felt underhanded, so dropped the idea... :dunno:

[speedog]

K, this is a Q for the beyond mods/owners.

Seeing as I totally support and respect the forum rules and sponsorship guidelines/etiquette, would it be out of line to post useful info in a thread for other beyond members?

As an example, I could post info up what is available in the market for, let's say, a grain-free/meat-free hard or soft dog treat - something that certainly is in demand by a select group of dog owners. I wouldn't ever promote our shop nor mention it and I wouldn't respond to PM's - just putting the info up as a helpful guide to pet owners and possibly the product(s) I might be mentioning wouldn't even be available in our shop. As an example, we only carry one full line of bully sticks, but I do recognize there are other brands out and would actively promote some of the other Canadian made brands as we try to support Canadian made as much as possible.

The reason I ask is that there are certainly beyond members out there in non-auto related businesses or that aren't forum sponsors who just might happen to provide some industry insight as to what's available in their markets and that IMHO, can't necessarily be a bad thing. At the same time, I think it would be prudent that anyone who might be allowed to take on such an endeavor should not be promoting their business is any form - that is strictly the realm of those paid-up forum sponsors and no one else.

Noting the aforementioned, I have to comment that our business has not been 100% confirm that any advertising dollars we've spent over the past 5+ years have brought a single customer into our business. Instead, we have found that word of mouth, referrals from customers and neighboring businesses, Kijiji, Facebook and especially Twitter to be our best forms of promotion and we know that all of these venues have brought new customers into our shop. Paid advertising tends to be quite expensive in most forms and balancing that cost against what profits one might realize new customers who heard about us from that paid advertising hasn't proved to be very fruitful for us or many of the small businesses that we know.

Anyhow, some direction from the beyond owners/mods would be appreciated as my short time here on beyond seems to have shown that there could be a whole new type of thread(s) created just to get info out to other members. I know that in our industry that we become aware of changes/new products a lot quicker then the average consumer and sharing some of that could only benefit pet owners in the end.

[heavyfuel]

Originally posted by speedog
K, this is a Q for the beyond mods/owners.

Kijiji, Facebook and especially Twitter to be our best forms of promotion

I pay for ads on Kijiji and I'm lucky to even get back my $17.99/week... You must have more buying power than Wal Mart to be able to win with Kijiji lol

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr150/2500calgary/Kijiji_zps7f188662.jpg

[speedog]

Just using the free ads on Kijiji and even then, not that much. Kijiji has for sure noticed and has called to get me to do the paid stuff - haven't bit so far and probably won't. Will be setting up on-line elsewhere to test the on-line commerce waters with the intent of making sales outside of the Calgary region.

In the end, Twitter has still has proven to have the best medium to get new customers into our shop - good thing that we camped on our Twitter username some 5+ years ago as getting an easy to remember username is quite difficult now.

[heavyfuel]

In my line of work, social media is the least effective. Nothing comes to mind that I could possibly tweet about, that would speak to customers requiring us. Plus I don't fully understand how Twitter really does anything but annoy lol and Kijiji'ers will call 35 ads to get the most rock bottomest price out there, and I sure as shit don't pride myself on being the bottom of the barrel. I have lost faith in advertising altogether so I just take what I can get. I spoke to Rage2 about advertising on here, the rates are actually really good for the exposure as confirmed by my marketing specialist gf but I'm still no re-assured enough to spend that kind of money anywhere on advertising.

[sillysod]

I've mentioned this before for Industrial type guys. There are a lot of us here that work in factories, warehouses, offices etc that actually have some purchasing power and would be happy to help other members out.

Example:

Let's say someone sells forklift trucks here. Well Beyond isn't full of guys buying brand new forklifts, but there are guys here that work at warehouses and maybe able to help another member out. I have my own business and I know that many industrial purchases I make I could easily do with a Beyonder, but I have no idea who does what.

That being said, this idea was dismissed even with the condition that the products discussed in the thread are not products "consumers" would purchase (things like: semi truck parts wholesaler, bobcat snow removal service, commercial coffee service... etc.).

So I hate to say it R-Audi but this will never happen.

[LOLzilla]

I like this idea. Having something for the trade folks to advertise their services would be nice without the need of a banner.

If beyond is having issues raising necessary funding to keep the lights on something is not working right. It has been brought up again and again that a premium membership would be a good way to raise cash with a lot of the OG's agreeing. Perhaps it would be time to revisit the idea.

[Tik-Tok]

Originally posted by kenny


If we offered a more limited package, we run the risk of providing a bad experience to paid advertisers who may think that advertising on beyond is not effective because they opted for the cheapest package.


Phhht, whatever, I'm doing it anyways.

FT: AME services. I can fix whatever you require on your private Boeing 727, 737 NG, or 757. PM me for service trade possibilities. :thumbsup:


:rofl:

[AndyL]

Originally posted by Tik-Tok


Phhht, whatever, I'm doing it anyways.

FT: AME services. I can fix whatever you require on your private Boeing 727, 737 NG, or 757. PM me for service trade possibilities. :thumbsup:


:rofl:
wtf u suck, your not up to speed to fix batteries on my 787?

[Mibz]

Originally posted by Tik-Tok


Phhht, whatever, I'm doing it anyways.

FT: AME services. I can fix whatever you require on your private Boeing 727, 737 NG, or 757. PM me for service trade possibilities. :thumbsup:


:rofl: Are you experienced with wing-tip shoes?

[Tik-Tok]

Originally posted by Mibz
Are you experienced with wing-tip shoes?

If it's powered by a Rolls Royce RB211-535E, sure I can help you :D

[sillysod]

^^ we actually have a private plane lol... :rofl:

[gamman]

I work in commercial real estate and one of the advantages of having a large portfolio is so that you have space to incubate companies to grow.
Ie: lease what they require today, and low fees to expand.

In retail exclusive deals cost a premium. If there is demand for 3-4 buggy whip makers, then the premium should be higher than 1 buggy whip demand.

As the owner and developer of a new and unique product, it would be great to be able to afford sponsor advertising, but that won't happen for years. However, the product fits with the demographic.etcetc.