Important Announcement Regarding Posting on Forum

[mirafzalkhan]

This Post is result of four or five post by one of our new member for his business promotion which are deleted.
It is observed that some member use forum for add posting for their business promotion especially from last few days this practice is increased very much. This forum is not for business promotion. It is a gardening discussion community anyone can use it for gardening discussion, but yes off course you can introduce yourself as gardening business man/women, if anyone interested in your product he will contact you by sending you a private message (PM).
From now it is strictly prohibited to post any message such like “this product is available for sale”. If any member will do this in future he will be banned & the post will be deleted.
Sending PM for without showing interest in your product is also prohibited; if anyone complains about this the sender will be banned.
Trade section is about exchange of things not for selling & Garden Resources for only those contacts & website which is only informative in nature. If someone asks a question at forum like that “from where he can get XYZ product” you can answer it by providing contacts but always for help not for business.
If someone want to post add, contact forum admin they will tell you the rates for posting add.

[ahussain]

ASA,

Please accept me apology for posting anything related to business.

I love gardening and help gardeners with purchasing cheaper seeds or plants that normally are not mailed to Pakistan. I do not run it like a business and make money. Recently one of your member ordered a plant which was deliver to my address and I mailed it to him in Pakistan. I do have a permit to buy wholesale.
I will make sure that no forum rules are broken. I am a new member and was not informed of this before. I am use to States forum, and was not familiar with Pakistani forum that is dictated by the administrator.

I do see people have their websites through which they sell plants. newThere is a section that is related to gardening trade and members do business through it. As a new member I see many more things that need to be corrected on this forum When you say there is a charge for posting an Ad then it is a business forum.

Thanks.


Amjad Hussain

[mirafzalkhan]

Mr. Amjad thanks for understanding us.
Now first thing this forum is not admin dictated, Admin is a group of senior members who implement some rules which are made by a team not by one person. Also in case of add earning the money not goes to admin or person pocket but it will be used for forum activities. As far as other things which is need to be corrected, we are not saying that we are 100% correct or always right. Please suggest something. If the admin team find it suitable it will be here in no time.

[khabbab]

I think amjad wanted to say "Managed by administrators" instead of "Dictated by administrators", right amjad ?

I think some things do need to be improved. I would like the suggestion from members how do they think this should be managed. I got following options in my mind:

Option 1- Let every one advertise openly even those who just want to sell their products. Just one post on forum and then gone!!!!

Option 2 - We do not allow any advertisement by any seller whether an active member or a new member. If you want to sell something, go somewhere else

Option 3 - We create a separate sub-forum named "Market place" and here anyone interested in selling can post AFTER PAYING SOME SMALL FEE. The fee can be either annual fee or quarterly fee or whatever. When a member visits "Market place" he knows he is going there to buy something and not get some knowledge.

Option 4 - We allow sellers to place their ads on our forum pages. There will be some charges of ads as long as the ads are displayed on the forum.

Option 5 - On some forums, you can not sell your product until you have posted 50 posts. So a person who is an active member and spends lot of time on forum can post his advertisement. But only on the "market place". So no fee needed in this case.

Option 6 - Why not ask sellers to provide discounts to forum members in return of their advertising post on the forum ("market place" section only). I mean we ask a seller to give plants at 50% discount to our members and we will let him post his ad for free. The practicalities can be decided.

So what do you suggest members?

[khabbab]

I do see people have their websites through which they sell plants.

anybody can have his website present in his signature. Even you can mention in your profile that you sell plants. That is perfectly okay. This is what happens at all gardening forums including Davesgarden and gardenweb forums.

newThere is a section that is related to gardening trade and members do business through it.

We immediately remove any commercial post in this section. If there is something we missed, let us know and we will remove it.

[tweedle2009]

I feel these are early days.Don't you think we are jumping to conclusions too early?


How many here have sites with stuff to sell?I disagree wid lots of ideas in discussion now a days.Some ppl suggested a membership fee for the forum.OK, consider this.I google for Ammocharis Coranica and end up on this forum.I want to ask something and I am told that I need to pay.I'll be Off in seconds.Why not do as the romans do in Rome.Sell backlinks,get advertisement,get banner exchange.This is how you make money.If we tag up a price for posting on this forum we'll never get new members.We shud keep one thing in mind.We are in Pakistan not in the U.S where everyone would be wanting to display his ad on the forum.We may not find advertisers instantly.I'd suggest to get as many banner exchanges as we can so that we get traffic to this forum from all around.It'll help us go for google adsense after 6 months.

The new posters using the forum for their advertisement should be blocked and that can be done by blocking links posted by any member whose post count is less than 10.This is a common practise on most of the forums.

Get the advertisers to give members of this forum discount or free gifts with all the purchases directed by the forum URL.Get them to display your banner on their sites too.

I am against membership fee.It could be a donation or a contribution but it shudn't restrict new commers from joining the forum without paying.

Let's be realistic.Who is going to pay for posting in Marketplace subforum? We are not DG or Gardenweb as yet and we shud make our policies realistic.If you get money, good.If you can't ... get the traffic.It's of no use keeping the advertisement space empty.Block advertising links in textual posts but get the ad banners.It could be for money or banner exchange or for anything.

[ahussain]

I see we are talking about how we can make this forum the best.The impression I received was what I had mentioned previously.

I know I am new to this great forum, but I almost totally agree with the suggestions of the founders comments. On this forum members should be allowed to talk about their collections only and share their beauties.

If someone wants to sell their product then they can go to another sub-forum under our forum by paying. Now my dilemma is I have something that no one else has and someone contacts me personally to buy from me then how will we stop that?

We made a mistake by posting the email address and contact information of all the members so now anyone can contact each other personally. The contact among the members should have been through the site administrator only and each memebers information should be kept confidential.

I personally have nothing against anyone member, but I do not agree with "tweedle2009" comments. We all know gardening is an expensive hobby in Pakistan and only those who have extra blessings can afford do this on a regular basis. If one can afford gardening hobby then he or she should be able to pay the membership fee for our future endeavors. I assure you we will not loose anyone by having a small membership fee.

Down the road we will be the site people will talk about when it come to gardening. Yes it can be a huge organization through which we can generate revenue. We need to launch a gardening magazine in Pakistan. There are programs in USA where they train people in the horticulture business and pay for their stay and transportation in the USA.

More to follow.

[Johara]

I think the forum should remain the way it is for the time being with no membership fee and no Ads. This forum is still young and we need to learn how to crawl before we start running. Let’s concentrate on getting more people, either by word of mouth or through the flyers which we are planning on distributing. If someone wishes to put a marketing link as his/her signature that is fine. If someone wishes to sell a plant instead of exchanging or giving it away, that should be done via pm between two members. I agree with tweedle, we do not have enough traffic for a company to pay for advertisement. Besides, I like going to a place where it is friendly and non commercial, we are bombarded enough wirh Ads each time we open our computers.

[khabbab]

The forum is surely in his early days. And we are also learning how to make things better. I expect more members to express their thoughts. I will enforce the following policy in a day or two. After this discussion is complete, i will post the forum rules in a sticky post.

1- Unless a member has 10 posts, he can not send PM, he can not post any links in his signature, he can not post into Gardening Trade section. If any one tries be clever and puts his trade/selling post in some other section, action will be taken.

Okay now there is a problem. Let us say if a person X joins the forum and after 50 posts or even after 100 posts, he goes to trade section and posts that " I have plants X, Y, Z for sale, you can contact me through PM". Should he be allowed to do that just because he spent enough time on forum? If we say yes he is old enough to do that, then consider this. If that guy earns 5 lac rupees in one year from forum customers, don't you think the forum deserves even 5 thousand rupees per year from that guy, No ? If you make money through forum, then only saying that "This is good forum, keep it up guys" This is not enough. Right?

We are not here to make money. We are all busy people in our daily life mostly doing jobs or some doing their business. The money we get will be used transparently. Those who spent it will know exactly where it was spent. If not then in future, nobody will contribute a penny.

We will never enforce members to pay for knowledge sharing. But we must distinguish between accessing the knowledge and earning money through forum. I agree that right now we will not get many advertisers but may be after some months. The adsense and banners, that needs heavy traffic which we will get in due time. The collaboration with nursery owners, we will be in better position only when more people will know about forum and forum has good popularity, which will take some time.

[ahussain]

If you make money through this forum he or she should pay the forum certain amount. I personally think it is our forum and we need to make sure we all help in every way we can. Can we track the PM ? I do not want to sound like BIGBROTHER or a watch dog group either.
As long as there is a transparency I personally do not care if we make billions. Those members who sell plants can Ad through our forum now or in future at a discount price.
Not acting now or leaving the forum as it is is not a good idea if we want this forum to be better. Can we set up and account where members can send money to. I will do my best to spread the word about this forum in the States and get sponsers to donate money. I will be the first to donate.