Purpose of the Commercial Advertising Section

[Peter van Es]

The Pagoda SL Group has created this section for vendors to advertise in. Advertisers can start new topics when they have goods for sale, they can add pictures and format or layout their advert here, just like with a normal forum message. Users of the forum can then reply to these topics, or reach the advertiser through the Personal Message facilities or directly.

We have a strict non-commercial policy for all our other sections, such as the Items for sale section. If you run a commercial business, and supply products and services relevant to our community, we invite you to contact us to find out how cheap it can be to:

• advertise your services here
• directly communicate with a vibrant community with over 500 active and 1700 reachable members, and many people just browsing for information on Mercedes-Benz 230 SL, 250 SL and 280 SL Pagodas
• and, to boot, you are supporting this community and it's upkeep with your contribution.

[Peter van Es]

Some advertisers are wondering if enough people actually see ads in the Commercial Advertising forum. I can assure you, these ads are seen.

Today, Dr. Benz's post on 280 SL parts topic has been viewed over 5800 times...  A new post by Scoot on Aluminium Alloy Wheels has seen 28 views in less than a one-day period.

Most regulars read all new messages on the site, because they use either the Show unread posts since last visit function, or RSS. They'll see new messages, wherever you post them. The trick of getting more traffic to the posts in the commercial forum is to keep a thread alive... get people to respond to your posts, post updates yourself, make your posts attractive... post pictures and so on. How you do that? Post questions that encourage people to interact... e.g. I have X, would X be more attractive if I did Y to it? Invite them to comment on things you might improve in dealing with them.

Most advertisers haven't cottoned on to this fact yet... secondly, when posting in response to a question in one of the topic forums, you are allowed to include a link to a commercial posting of your own.

Finally, most people who frequent (and I mean, really frequent) this forum are not likely to be your customer... unless you're lucky and have something someone happens to need. They mostly will have 98% of their cars sorted.

It is the non-regulars that you need to attract. The first time visitors. Make sure therefore you really advertise your knowledge on the forum, and share freely. In your signature, include a link to the Commercial Forum, inviting people to look there for items you may have for sale (have a look at my signature to see how that might work). Ensure that your Profile has the correct link to your website... visitors can then link there by clicking on the globe in your personal details in every post.

Post new items in the Commercial forum regularly (I would recommend once every two weeks or so). Remove stale threads from the commercial forum, once the item is sold. Also, if you are selling an item on eBay, cross post it to the Commercial Forum too (but remove it once the eBay auction has ended).

Additionally, we now have more and more people posting in the commercial forum... the fact that there's more advertisers, will drive up traffic to the forum!

If you've found things that work for you, let us know by posting them here (unless you consider them to be secret and to your commercial advantage, of course).

Peter

[Flyair]

Peter,
maybe a small banner or two on the home page with links to the lastest items being posted on the commercial page could persuade vendors to allocate some of their budgets to this site? As long as the revenues would go into supporting our statutory action, this, I believe, would not violate the non-commercial principle of the Pagoda group?

Stan

[Peter van Es]

The Board of Directors of the Pagoda SL Group has, in it's board meeting of 5/6 December 2011 decided to make some practical modifications to the commercial vendor policy, which apply to the Commercial Advertising forum, the Ebay and other vendor experiences forum, and to Vendor membership.

• For Sale postings can only be made by Full Members
• When the Board of Directors or a Moderator identifies such a posting as belong to a commercial effort, the post is moved to the Commercial Advertising sector, and the member's status is changed to Vendor so that he/she can be identified as such
• As long as the Vendor remains a Full Member in good standing (i.e. membership is paid up, no items are advertised/offered for sale in sections other than the Commercial Advertising section) they will remain a vendor with posting rights in the Commercial Advertising section.

Vendors not currently full members have until the end of December 2011 to become full members.

Additionally, for general use on the forum with respect to vendors, vendor experiences, and conflict resolution:

• We shall moderate away defamatory remarks, and statements/claims that cannot be checked by us as factual
• We shall remove comments on vendors in the eBay and other vendor experiences forum after a period (12-18 months) to give vendors the opportunity to re-establish their reputation (as has happened with some in the past) without being haunted by comments dating back to e.g. 2006
• Postings in the For Sale forum or in the Commercial Advertising forum may be removed by moderators without warning after a 6 month period or when the item is no longer available.

Peter van Es
President of the Pagoda SL Group