Adding a New GearTrade section to Forum

[Telekóptero]

5. A big concern is that these deals are just for maggots…fair enough, maggot only deals should go on the forum…we don’t want to steal your good karma. We have no intentions of taking away your "Gear Swap" forum

OK, the explanation of your service makes it sound reasonable enough. Even possibly pretty cool.

although I'll greedily admit that i love getting all of the profit from any swap I've done on here, I also wouldn't mind supporting the TGR guys.

However, the community thing is what's so cool about this board. I'd want to know for certain that in no way could an outside community start accessing the maggot hookup. I love that we all keep each other accountable here, that we look out for each other, that we do cool shit gearwise for each other. That must not be tampered with or even mistakenly opened up to a larger community IMHO. It's not about the profit either, it's the "feel" here. there's a lot of unspoken trust here and it just plain rocks. cheers.

[FollowMe]

Considering that many mags waste time bickering/whining about prices being too high, I think it's a good idea. "Take it to TGR gear trade" is the answer.

Suggestion - -> maybe do a 6 month pilot program and let us decide after the period is up?

Also, I think Iceman's concern about random folk being "pointed" to the TGR forums is interersting.

[Bob O]

Thanks for the feedback.

I can understand your concern of outsiders infilitrating the boards, but this program is stuctured so this will not happen.

The reason we created our partner program, instead of adopting a normal affiliate based program, is that we wanted to create this especially for these types of communities. We wanted to let other forums and websites have their own gear swaps for their communities.

GearTrade feeds product to the major search engines for exposure, but the TGR Gear Exchange will only be advertised on the tetongravity.com website. GearTrade will not link to the TGR Gear Exchange, nor will the TGR Gear Exchange link back to GearTrade.

This way you don't have to worry about outsiders on the boards.

Our partner program is designed to allow other websites to have their own "gear swaps". This is essentially TGR's site, it is just powered by our software and managed by our customer service. We did this so we could preserve the communities, instead of just creating another affiliate link. We want other communities to benefit from our services, and allow them to keep their identity.

If you feel this might be a cool thing, and the boys at TGR agree, we'll give it a try. If it doesn't work, we'll pull it off the site. If this does not come to light, it is by no means set in stone.

It's pretty late, I'll chime in tomorrow. Hopefully, it won't be a junkshow getting up the canyon in the morning.

Good Night.

[Core Shot]

I forsee dismal failure here. Nice idea, but just not enough volume.
Particularly if the free maggot gear swap still exists.

How much gear actually goes through TGR gear swap in a year?
$50,000? ?
(I don't know, but you must have done the math. There ain't that many new full price skis there. Mostly used and abused)
Even if all of that goes through you, that's $1,500 in revenue for TGR and you make $2,000 for your efforts??
And that's assuming none of those sales get put on the regular free gear swap forum.

We'd be better off holding a bake sale or a fuckerware party.

I understand your eager desire to increase market share and get your name out there, but there may be other ways.
What about partnering with companies like TGR to offer their users a coupon for discounted purchases?
Or do the gear trade deal like you mention above, but have them go through a portal via clicking on a banner on this website to get a reduced listing fee (with a TGR kickback) on the full GearTrade website.

I just dont expect a lot of demand to pay to use your service to get a higher list price and yet not actually getting on the full gear trade site and reaching your full audience. Its the worst of both worlds.

What you need to save GearTrade is more volume on GearTrade. I tend not to check it because there ain't that much there.
Getting new customers but not having them on the main website seems pointless.

[Greguar]

I didn't know about geartrade before, looks like a cool site, I bookmarked it and will probably check it often. I don't think that TGR really needs something like that though. The current format works great and the elevated risk in transactions may actually function to keep some of the gapers out of here. We've all seen our local pow stashes get found out by some rookie loud mouth that doesn't know enough to not tell anyone else. Currently this is our own community pow stash, any change could risk that, I just don't see a need for this type of change.

[ActionJackson]

Ok. My turn.
I apologize for no response today buy I am always running around and forget to check in. What I do know and feel is the same thing that we feel in the TGR office. Its a tight knit crew and you don't want anything messing with the system. Thats the beauty of the forum. Freedom to avoid the man.

I dont see Geartrade or Rob O as an outsider by any means. He is one of you and the people that buy gear on that site are probably the same people too. But an organized company coming into the forum kind of takes away from its outlaw feel.

I want to help Rob O and obviously TGR always needs funding to keep our movement alive but I think I will hold off on doing this. Hopefully there is something else we can help Rob O with.

...and if you righteous folks that said you would love to help TGR make some $, go to our store and buy some things for Christmas presents. Watch our Untracked shows on FUEL TV and the films. And, damn, just keep skiing and boarding and feel the quality...
Thanks

[pointedem]

The gearswap thing sounds like a good idea. It actually sounds very well thought out. It seems like having this avaiable would do nothing but good for the web site as well as the maggots. Pesonally, i dont sell an awful amount of gear on the site, but for some one who does, it makes perfect sense to me.

Might as well try something different.. if it sucks, then no loss.. but it just might work pretty well...

[13]

I'm gonna go against the grain here and say give the geartrade thing a shot.

TGR has a tough enough time staying in the black I'm sure, and Rob seems to be a stand-up guy and I would be happy to help give him a chance to make his startup into something that could feasibly take on a giant like eBay down the road. How else could they do it without the support of a community such as ours?

I'm willing to try it out.