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It's taken us long enough, am I right?
So, I was originally going to build something more complicated, but I kept running into one problem: what do the members of Office Outlaw actually want out of a Trading Post?
I tried asking the community and got some ideas, but ultimately we decided that the best way to build up a Trading Post was to start with an entirely new foundation unique to our forum.
This means that our systems will start off rudimentary, but as we learn what works and what doesn't, we can invest more of our time and resources into streamlining it.
To start this off, here are the changes that will be made to the submission process.
Changes To The Submission Process
As you can see, Trading Post 1.5 is us working with a new foundation for the Trading Post. Our goal is to work it up into Trading Post 2.0 over time as we receive more submissions. This will allow us to build a unique Trading Post based on the community's modern-day expectations.
There are some ideas we're looking into for Trading Post 1.6. As a teaser, we'll share some of those with all of you below.
When Will It Come Out?
It's ready to go. In fact, you can already see that the changes are live in the Trading Post. We're just looking over a few minor details and want to make sure we have the time to review these listing submissions.
We're expecting to open the pre-approvals section to submissions between mid-later February. Essentially, we'll launch it over the next couple of weeks.
So, I was originally going to build something more complicated, but I kept running into one problem: what do the members of Office Outlaw actually want out of a Trading Post?
I tried asking the community and got some ideas, but ultimately we decided that the best way to build up a Trading Post was to start with an entirely new foundation unique to our forum.
This means that our systems will start off rudimentary, but as we learn what works and what doesn't, we can invest more of our time and resources into streamlining it.
To start this off, here are the changes that will be made to the submission process.
Changes To The Submission Process
- This is something I've been teasing for a little while, but service listing reviews will only require you to submit a portfolio and not a top-level package. I've mentioned before that I don't like the top-level package review system because it just feels like a way for a marketplace to get free stuff. There are also many cases where a rejected service cannot simply just be "given back", which costs the seller money. That's why I wanted to develop a better review process for sellers.
- Related to the above point, Sapphire Eligible members can now submit a listing for pre-approval. We've done it this way so that nobody wastes their time or money upgrading to Sapphire only to find out that they can't post a listing.
- We will not be writing individualised reviews. These take far too long to do and come across as paid endorsements, which we're trying to avoid. Instead, a short descriptor based on the service listings prefix will be found at the top of each listing. You can see an example of this here.
- Since reviews will be easier to conduct based on portfolios and we won't need to spend time writing individual reviews, we will also lower the listing price from $50 to $20 across the board. This will be changed from a one-time listing fee to an annual fee.
- The renewal fee will also be $20.
- As a side note, I know some have expressed concern about low listings fees before. I want the standard to be able to get Sapphire and post a listing to be high rather than use cost as a deterrent for low quality sellers. It’s been a year so far, and the higher standards for getting Sapphire have put off low effort spammers from this forum, so we have that information to go on.
- Whilst we work on further developing the Trading Post, service listings will need to be paid for manually.
- As previously mentioned, the annual fee means that listings will expire after 1 year.
- Expired listings will be moved to the Archived Service Listings section.
- Archived Listings have three prefixes: Closed Listings (Red), NLA (Yellow), and Expired (Grey).
- Closed listings cannot be renewed.
- NLA and Expired listings can be renewed. There's currently no planned time limit on this so long as it's the same service it was when it was posted.
- Archived Listings have three prefixes: Closed Listings (Red), NLA (Yellow), and Expired (Grey).
- The Service Listings and Archived Listings section have been converted into a Classifieds view. In the forum list, it now shows the first attached image instead of the user's avatar. This gives more of a marketplace feel. Sales listings without attached images will show a "No Preview" image instead.
- Now that you will be able to have a featured attachment image on the forum view of the Service Listings page, you should know about the file size upload limits.
- Attached images across the forum are limited to 256KB as we currently don't have a massive amount of space on our server. If you want larger images in your sales listing, you can embed them at your own risk.
- Image attachment dimensions are limited to 5,000x5,000 pixels.
- Because we're going with the portfolio reviews, we won't be able to test every service right away. If we are unable to test your trading post submission, then we will have to reject your service and let you know. If this happens, you will be able to submit it at a later date. We may contact you to let you know once we are able to test it.
As you can see, Trading Post 1.5 is us working with a new foundation for the Trading Post. Our goal is to work it up into Trading Post 2.0 over time as we receive more submissions. This will allow us to build a unique Trading Post based on the community's modern-day expectations.
There are some ideas we're looking into for Trading Post 1.6. As a teaser, we'll share some of those with all of you below.
- Giving sellers the ability to highlight posts in their own thread. This means you can highlight your own reviews. We're still working this one out.
- Posting replies to posts. This is similar to what you see on Reddit. We're actually looking into this feature for the entire forum to modernise it, but no guarantees on this as I've not managed to get it to work based on the tests I've done so far.
- Automatic payments in crypto and fiat for listings.
- Automatic sales listing bumping prevention measures.
- A more streamlined submission experience.
When Will It Come Out?
It's ready to go. In fact, you can already see that the changes are live in the Trading Post. We're just looking over a few minor details and want to make sure we have the time to review these listing submissions.
We're expecting to open the pre-approvals section to submissions between mid-later February. Essentially, we'll launch it over the next couple of weeks.
