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How can we help TractorPoint
A agree about the dealers ads if you assume a traditional static add... "come see XXX tractor for your best deal" but there is much dynamic info that a dealer could/should communicate to his local audience that wouls be of value. Tractor supply is a good example.
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How can we help TractorPoint
My belief is that evetually the decision to charge for participation will diminish the quality and breadth of content with only the regulars exchanging pleasantaries. An example is this and a similar thread where most of posts have been from the regulars.
Nineteen dollars is a small amount, but the promise of the web is not having to pay this, particularly in the face of ads that are prominent on the site that people did not mind.
Voluntary contributions are nice, and do reflect a recognition of benfits from a resource like this, but mandated subscription is not neccesary.
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Maybe I was mis-understood in making my point, I was NOT trying to imply that the dealers would be advertisers. That is too tough a nut to crack, as you mentioned.
The dealers, or manufacturers, COULD however, give away a free membership in TractorPoint as a sales hook, no different than a baseball cup or coffee mug, just a whole lot more useful.
It couldn't cause a rift between dealers, or make things difficult on the manufacturer or distributor to EDUCATE a customer, nobody would lose a sale over it.
With societys readiness to litigate it might even be a little insurance for all involved to say they did everything they could to teach responsible use of the unit.
IMHO, resale of equipment is what us farmer-types call a "silly circle", you become part of the cut-throat "I can sell it for $2 less" mentality where you spend $5 in time and effort to earn $4 in commission...
Do something well and most people will notice it, do something poorly and EVERYBODY will notice it...
Besides, selling anything is a numbers game, if you get one sale for every ten thousand visitors that is OK, provided you GET ten thousand vistors... or spend money advertising the site to get visitors....Oooopps, theres that circle again.....
Best of luck.
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I'm not sure the charge for premium membership is related to any perceived reduction in the number of posts by non-regulars. There are lots of premium members who rarely post. In fact, I've noticed that the number of posts by new members have been picking up quite a bit over the last month or so.
Most folks on this board don't want it to be or become a clubby forum for insiders - everyone is welcome and their posts are necessary for TractorPoint to thrive. I haven't been here for more than a few months but I felt welcome when I joined. And for the record, TractorPoint has been worth every penny of the membership fee and then some.
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I sort of like the idea of a free 30-day premium member trial. People get used to the advantages and are more likely to pay the really trivial fee. I checked out a former high traffic site whose traffic crashed but didn't complete the free registration because I just wanted to know what was going on. Besides, I'm happy here.
I agree with comments elsewhere that any organization new of otherwise has to balance the us and them stuff. If the us's get to full of themselves then they aren't very attractive to potential new menders. Every group of us's eventually get sick of themselves. I said I think we do a decent job of that here. All groups depend on new menbers for their viability.
Mass production and merchandising reduces almost any organization but the internationals to doing custom work. Cripes even medical care has become MacTreatment. My 80-year-old father in law came away from a doc appointment with an info handout that talked about athletics. Essentially custom work is what we do here. Anybody can ask a specific question and get personal responses. They do have to wade through some banter etc. among regulars because that's what keeps the regulars going. That idea probably can't be made into a fund-raiser but there are a few mechanics etc. trying to sell expert advice on line.
Net advertising doesn't work except for a very few large directory and shopping sites and it probably never did. Site hits don't translate into sales so nobody's going to pay much for a banner. There are pay per banner hit operations I haven't gone for any of them for my own commercial site. We like all small organizations survive by custom work. It's good to figure out what's the product and what's the business. Mostly the product is us.
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I broke my response into two chapters. I'm right in the middle of doing some of the fund-raoising idea mentioned.
I'm editing a batch of 20's - 40's pics to make a calendar for our public library board. I don't imagine the idea will raise much money even given my free labour. It's still custom work and the product is old pics for people with connections to our township. That's a really small market and high production costs can't be avoided. We're competing with some really good calendars businesses hand out for free. Our quality has to be comparable and the price low because even with the local connection we're competing with high quality for free. Holding down production costs is tough to do with small print runs, and I won't be doing the printing free or otherwise.
It's the same issue for T-shirts and caps (I've given up on my dealer cap. No matter what I do the bill ends up riding on my glasses frame. It's free but the low quality makes it too expensive to actually wear). I'm making T-shirts mostly for my wife's books but they're for gifts and promotion rather than sale. People will wear them because I've edited digital camera images into something approaching art. There is an appeal because there's never going be more than a few and you can't buy one. That's what art is about and why the originals have value and copies don't. Plenty of small organizations have been burnt trying to fund raise with T-shirt and hats that just have logos on them. Who care's about a logo for a small organization except its members? I've offered an image to our local snowmobile club I made for my nephew who likes tractors (it's their groomer). Somebody might wear such a thing but the club was one of those that got burnt with T-shirt ideas. The web link below goes to a small version of what it might take to sell beyond members. I doubt my image really is commercial but it's an improvement over a logo.
Packaging content seems an appealing idea. I wonder how the world's greatest repository etc. book did? My wife is her own publisher. She's making costs maybe. Amateur writers don't move a lot of books and it costs a lot to print a few. I've seen some pretty good expert systems on CD and maybe that's a better package for content. Still costs a lot though.
Don't know! Maybe there are a few ideas to the site in all this, but it's a tough subject.
Link:
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The best way for the members to help is to be a good member. We all need to remember that one mans dream might be our night mare! Lets help him the best we can, maybe he doesn't want to be there either! Maybe they are not aware of the differences of equipment or maybe for there location there is not an option. The members need to be helpful,after all theres two reasons to be here either looking for help, or offering it. If people get what they wanted while here, they will be back and thats what Dennis needs. If we see someways to help him lets send him an e-mail to tell him. I do think we need to get back to why we come here and not worry about one in a million.
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Yep, Art that's about the best recommendation I've heard. I thought it was worth me going on at length about some of the ideas raised here because I'm actually doing them. It's mostly to illustrate how hard it is for small organizations to actually raise significant money and how easy it is to loose money and waste a bunch of time as well.
Comments about tractors and related subjects are what we contribute best. Beyond that, helping new comers to both tractors and computers feel at ease is a good second.
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Murf - I agree with the concept of selling dealers on memberships to the Tractor Point. I have talked with any dealer I have visited in the last few years, most do not think there customers are computer literate. Old school vs new school. This is probably not the case but?
Tom and Art - I hate to see a posters question go unanswered and I have seen a few slip by as the rolling window does not pick up the obsure question that few are capable of answering. If it is in a hot topic it can easily be covered up by the next post. Maybe we could have another window with new posts only so we can be more helpful.
I think were are missing a potential source of revinue in the classifieds For example there are 50 listings from this year in JD. If we charged to post on this listing and made sure it only ran for the period paided for. There would be a additional source. If I run an add in the local paper the it cost me to sell equipment. A comparible charge? Additional for Pic?
I discussed with Dennis the idea of having data sheets on tractors on the web. Currently we look to this or that site to find data in various forms. If we had data in a consistant form that the user/buyer could print out and compare the data on his new or used equipment buys. This would possibly be in strip form that the user could overlay each data strip to compare the new and used tractors of interest. JD has something but it only covers new tractors and probably would require more time. This would attract additional users and could possibly be used to attract sellers as the seller could link to the specs on the tractor.
I would think this could also be a good dealer attractor as he often doesnot have all the data on a used tractor. Like other links we could also make this a feature that requires membership after a number of uses or to print data?
Just my thoughts Peters
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Hey will you guys stop posting such long messages... I can't read them
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