Fred Miranda's Big Decision (now the evolution of Dgrin)

bauerman

Fred Miranda has decided to turn his buy and sell board into a money making venture......you now have to be a photo upload subscriber on his site to post items for sale. $45 per year. You can still view the board and PM sellers - but you cannot sell anything.

I could see buy and sell boards on other forums, such as this one, picking up some steam in the wake of this decision over on FM.

DoctorIt

bauerman wrote:

Fred Miranda has decided to turn his buy and sell board into a money making venture......

I saw this coming a few weeks ago when their flea market mod "retired". I'll say, I didn't envy his job, at all. If we pick up that much steam, I'll have to recruit help, lots of it, to keep up the level of maintenance I do now.

Andy

DoctorIt wrote:

I saw this coming a few weeks ago when their flea market mod "retired". I'll say, I didn't envy his job, at all. If we pick up that much steam, I'll have to recruit help, lots of it, to keep up the level of maintenance I do now.

Bring it on.

I'll say this now, and you all can take it to the bank:

We'll never charge for our Flea Market. And we'll never place ads on our pages either. Never

CookieS

Well you do a good Job and thankyou !!

silica

Andy wrote:

you all can take it to the bank:

You've been watching too many old Steven Seagal movies.
(Major line from "Hard to Kill")

davev

I've read through 17 pages of junk about this in the B/S forum over there.
Somehow the paying members think this is going to help them. All it's going to do is send regular "checkers" of that board somewhere else. Less people looking, less people looking at your ad.

It was a good resource for buying and selling, but I think the good Doctor better hang on to his hat, cause folks are going to leave there to find a new home.

rosselliot

Andy wrote:

Bring it on.

I'll say this now, and you all can take it to the bank:

We'll never charge for our Flea Market. Never

Thanks, Andy. Smugmug + Dgrin = Bliss....can it get any better?

- RE

System

The traffic there is pretty insane but this can't be good for them given the other options that exist. It'll be interesting to see what the fallout is.

bauerman

I have bought and sold my last three cameras over there, but no more. I'm not going to pay $45 for another photo host (when I already have one, as I would assume most people do) just to sell cameras.

There are many other B/S boards out there (including this one) that will now get my traffic. Sounds like the "paying members" over on FM wanted a more exclusive club - and my bet is that they are going to get one, fast.

gus

That whole board over there is the best advertising other boards can get.

rebelxtnewbie

bauerman wrote:

Fred Miranda has decided to turn his buy and sell board into a money making venture......you now have to be a photo upload subscriber on his site to post items for sale. $45 per year. You can still view the board and PM sellers - but you cannot sell anything.

I could see buy and sell boards on other forums, such as this one, picking up some steam in the wake of this decision over on FM.

I don't really think it's a money making venture. That's their most view board but lately there has been a lot of complaints about the board. It was too much for one moderator to handle. One problem was bogus sellers. I guess you should be aware when buying online, but I think that FM & DGrin were designed to be a little safer then EBAY. Heck, yesterday I noticed a seller trying to sell a 70-200 f/4 IS that he claims he bought June of last year!!

That being said, I like both site and will still frequent both. Too bad my proxy at work wont let me access this site.

Andy

davev wrote:

I've read through 17 pages of junk about this in the B/S forum over there.
Somehow the paying members think this is going to help them. All it's going to do is send regular "checkers" of that board somewhere else. Less people looking, less people looking at your ad.

It was a good resource for buying and selling, but I think the good Doctor better hang on to his hat, cause folks are going to leave there to find a new home.

I love Fred, and have lots of respect for that board, too, have been a regular there for years. But it KILLS me that it's so so so slow.

bauerman

Andy beat me to my next point - he want's $45 dollars per year to author for sale posts in his B/S forum and his forum overall is at a snails pace right now. I have rarely seen a site that responds so slowly. I am on a broadband connection (1.5 Mps) and it is like I'm back in my old Hayes compatible 300 baud days on there sometimes.

Large fees and poor performance don't spell success.

gpphotos

i guess i can see their point of view...it wouldn't bother me too much really if only smugmug customers could use the flea market...considering that the only people i'd buy from would probably already be smugmug customers as well as having been here a loooong time with lots of feedback.

it would probably cut our traffic down a bit though...the amount of FS threads would drop a bit.

cabbey

DoctorIt wrote:

I saw this coming a few weeks ago when their flea market mod "retired". I'll say, I didn't envy his job, at all. If we pick up that much steam, I'll have to recruit help, lots of it, to keep up the level of maintenance I do now.

Given the community around here, I'm sure you'd get the help if you asked.

And I'll take this as a chance to say "Thank you". Something we probably don't do often enough.

bauerman

gpphotos wrote:

i guess i can see their point of view...it wouldn't bother me too much really if only smugmug customers could use the flea market...considering that the only people i'd buy from would probably already be smugmug customers as well as having been here a loooong time with lots of feedback.

This seems to be a carbon copy of Fred's new point of view. If you limited the Flea Market here to only Smugmuggers - you would be needlessly elmininating a lot of very honest and trustworthy people. Not sure why you would want to limit your potential market like that. Smugmug does not have the market cornered on honest forum goers by any stretch of the imagination.

Andy

bauerman wrote:

This seems to be a carbon copy of Fred's new point of view. If you limited the Flea Market here to only Smugmuggers - you would be needlessly elmininating a lot of very honest and trustworthy people. Not sure why you would want to limit your potential market like that. Smugmug does not have the market cornered on honest forum goers by any stretch of the imagination.

And we won't ever do that. Dgrin and the Flea Market, is open to anyone on the internets.

HeldDown

I think I'm with the mob on this one - I've spent a lot of time and money with the B&S board on FM, but there's no way in god's green earth I'm going to pay $45 just to be able to list. I foresee a LOT less deals popping up on FM, and a LOT more "Mint, Sharp, Magic, Perfect" L glass being sold for approximately 99.7% of new price - without a UPC, of course.

Well, at least we have DGrin

gpphotos

dont get me wrong...i wouldnt pay 45 bucks just to see the forum...but if they are already subscribed, then why would they care? esp. if they have had a ton of problems with scammers and whatnot. i mean, if docIT were to "retire" because of problems with posters and he just got fed up with it, wouldn't you other mod types evaluate why and try to fix the problems? if their mod left because of those types of problems, maybe making the forum private was a way to clean house. it very well may not work and they could easily make it public again...

bsvirginian

Lately I've found myself on FM less. Maybe because I've found a new home here and a lot of the image I see on FM I also see here.
Also, I thought the slowness was coming from my end and I really had to sneak up to FM. Glad to hear it's not just me. BS

rosselliot

bauerman wrote:

Andy beat me to my next point - he want's $45 dollars per year to author for sale posts in his B/S forum and his forum overall is at a snails pace right now. I have rarely seen a site that responds so slowly. I am on a broadband connection (1.5 Mps) and it is like I'm back in my old Hayes compatible 300 baud days on there sometimes.

Large fees and poor performance don't spell success.

I tried to go there last night...and couldn't stand it! I'm on cable internet as well, and it's rediculous that it takes that long! I know it's not my end of the line, it's OBVIOUSLY his server. quite rediculous really...

- RE

DoctorIt

gpphotos wrote:

i mean, if docIT were to "retire" because of problems with posters and he just got fed up with it, wouldn't you other mod types evaluate why and try to fix the problems?

Dear Andy,
My corporate car isn't up to snuff these days. Please send a new one.

Sincerely,
Doc

Andy

DoctorIt wrote:

Dear Andy,
My corporate car isn't up to snuff these days. Please send a new one.

Sincerely,
Doc

JimM

DoctorIt wrote:

Dear Andy,
My corporate car isn't up to snuff these days. Please send a new one.

Sincerely,
Doc

The mods get company cars.... what a gig! (though most would probably prefer company L's)

I can see both sides of the FM equation. Glad Dgrin and SM are here!

DoctorIt

L's shmells, you should see the company yacht...

Andy

DoctorIt wrote:

L's shmells, you should see the company yacht...

Don't forget the company jet...

claudermilk

I know the community over there agonized over that question a few months ago. IMHO it's a case of victims of their own success. I think a post lasts 5 minutes on the front page in the B&S forum there--unbelievable volume. I'll be keeping an eye on it since I occasionally buy stuff there--always a good transaction--and suspect Fred is doing what he thinks best to try and control the chaos. I seriously doubt it's simply a money-grabbing exercise.

Whatever happens to the FM B&S, I'll still be hanging out there as it's still a good community (though dgrin reminds me of FM of 4 years ago).

Rhuarc

If it was a simple case of too much volume in the B&S forum then why not split the forum up into different categories? (lenses, bodies, accessories, bundles) But whatever the reason, it's nice to know DGrin is here for us!

SpeshulEd

The B/S board is the only one I checked over there. I wasn't a fan of the message board and the fact that you could only view ten posts at a time. I like the ability to change the amount of posts per page, like this site - Less clicking and more reading.

If this leads to more traffic in the Flea Market here, then

I'll never leave smugmug or Dgrin, unfortunately though, I can't keep up with this site. I've been just too busy as of late, but its still nice to peek my head in on occasion and see that its still as nice as ever.

photobug

Andy wrote:

I'll say this now, and you all can take it to the bank:
We'll never charge for our Flea Market. Never

Andy, you da man!

Although in the past FM was a larger marketplace than DGrin, I've avoided FM because of its now-archaic bulletin-board software. The DGrin vBulletin software is sooooooo much better. I hated at FM having to manually type symbols for, say, bold and italic, when on DGrin I can just type control-i/control-b inline, get nearly WYSIWYG viewing, and away I go.

I've also avoided FM because they charged to host any kind of images in postings (even tiny avatars!). Unless someone is really abusing the privilege, haven't they heard how cheap "bits" are nowadays?

And then there's the "friendliness" issue, which can't be quantified but is quite palpable. It may be subtle, but I think Andy, Don, Erik, and the rest of the DGrin team have gone out of their way to nurture that atmosphere. DGrin, despite its growth, continues to feel like a neighborhood photographers' coffee shop.

I really, really hope that we can keep Dgrin as "friendly" and as absolutely trustworthy as it has been ... it might become a challenge to retain that flavor with a huge flood of new folks, but I hope that just means more good Flea Market traffic and additional helpful and scintillating exchanges in the other forums. DGrin has grown a lot over the years and managed to retain those qualities so far -- hopefully that be predictive of future growth, as well.

DoctorIt

photobug wrote:

DGrin, despite its growth, continues to feel like a neighborhood photographers' coffee shop.

stuff like that is good to hear. Thanks