(Topic ID: 143653)

So how is everyone liking the recent changes on pinside Poll Added

By srmonte

8 years ago


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  • 240 posts
  • 101 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 8 years ago by DCFAN
  • Topic is favorited by 2 Pinsiders

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    Topic poll

    “How do you feel about paying to list or sell anything on pinside?”

    • Love it, quit being a cheap ass 96 votes
      38%
    • Hate it, I love being a cheap ass 155 votes
      62%

    (251 votes by 0 Pinsiders)

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    #106 8 years ago
    Quoted from ForceFlow:

    I've joined almost a dozen of them at this point. Facebook is becoming quite the secondary marketplace for all kinds of stuff these days--not just limited to pinball.

    Any pointers on where to find these Facebook groups for pins (I'm not an arcade guy)?

    #126 8 years ago
    Quoted from goatdan:

    I don't necessarily think that Pinside had the direct affect of raising the machine's prices. I do not think that people are randomly stumbling across Pinside, going "oh heck yeah!" and then buying pinball machines. You can track pinball show attendance, Pinball Arcade console games, and many other things a similar way. I would strongly argue that pinball has increased because the people who loved it as teens got to the point in their lives that they could afford buying their own machines. I argued that it would happen for a long time when I got in as I was one of the few "young 'uns" in the hobby back then, and so many of my friends said that they wanted one when they got a house, or paid off their student loans, or whatever. They started getting them right on time. Many don't post on Pinside.

    I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I never really "got" pinball as a teen in the 90s -- I'd throw in a few quarters and bat the ball around once in a while, but if I was at an arcade I was playing arcade games. I picked up Pinball Arcade for my Xbox a few years back, figured out that pinball can be fun when you understand the rules, and then found Pinside. And here I am three years later with three games in my garage! Might have happened anyway without Pinball Arcade and Pinside, but I kind of doubt it.

    #129 8 years ago
    Quoted from goatdan:

    I wasn't sure what people were talking about above, is there some sort of thing linking to what is all going on? I honestly don't understand it all.

    I think OP was complaining that he's being asked to pay $2 to link each ad he posts in the marketplace to a new post in the forum. As I understand it, this fee is largely designed to cut down on visibility for scammers/spammers, and if you make even a nominal annual donation to Pinside you can create free related forum posts for your for sale items (haven't tried this yet myself so it's possible this is bad info).

    #154 8 years ago
    Quoted from barakandl:

    I can see the fees having an overall negative effect on the pinside market. It could reduce the number of stuff for sale and could only end up with the big time people, like FUN advertising here.
    I sell lots of PCBs and other stuff. If i was to get dinged here a percentage for every item, I would consider not using pinside to sell my stuff. I try and operate on lowest overhead possible.

    Is there a fee for parts/mods now? I saw Robin's initial post about fees for games based on broad price tiers (and I have to say that $15 for selling a Road Show struck me as fair enough), but I haven't seen anything other than speculation re: fees for anything else. Has anyone tried to sell a part and been assessed a fee?

    Assuming there is a parts/mods fee, it seems like the fee structure and mechanism for collecting tiny fees will be crucial in determining whether it kills the Pinside market. I can't imagine they're excited about trying to collect $0.20 on a $50 sale (wouldn't the Paypal fees eat that up anyway?) so it wouldn't surprise me if the fees are just for game sales and not for parts and mods.

    #160 8 years ago
    Quoted from Jetzxi:

    Now that Pinside is a business, are the volunteers still volunteers or are they considered employees.........time to get paid?

    I don't begrudge Robin making a profit from administering this site, which I can believe is a full-time job and which in any event he's pumped plenty of time and money into over the years.

    Plenty of sites are a full-time money-making business for the owner/admin, but still staffed by volunteer mods. The example that leaps to my mind is homebrewtalk.com, the major beer brewing site. hombrewtalk.com charges vendors to advertise but doesn't have a buy/sell/trade fee for regular members doing one-off transactions. They do offer a $25 annual membership that removes ads from the site, allows you to have an avatar and extra PM storage space, and gives you the chance to enter regular prize drawings.

    I happily pay at homebrewtalk.com to avoid all of the ads, and would do the same here if Pinside went that route (would probably be about the same as the small annual donation I happily make now, with full knowledge that's going to pay Robin for the time and effort spent designing and maintaining this site). Since Robin has chosen to use the market place to monetize rather than going with an ad/membership mix, I'll be happy to support the site that way if/when I sell a game through Pinside (again in lieu of my small annual donation).

    #162 8 years ago
    Quoted from Jetzxi:

    Good to know, I don't frequent other sites that are moderated so I wasn't aware.
    Now that I think about it, there's a pinball company or two with volunteers so I guess all is normal.

    Yeah, it felt a little strange at first when I figured out that the admin of my home brew site was turning a profit, counter to the spirit of the internet or something. But then I thought about all the value I get out of the site and decided it was fair enough to pay him $25/year for providing such a great resource. It's a shift in mindset from "my money goes only to defray hosting costs" to "my money puts food and beer on the admin's table" but if the site is well run then it's worthwhile. Of course there are higher expectations for a professionally-administered site, but Pinside is already operating at that level IMO and in any event Robin seems up to the challenge.

    #169 8 years ago
    Quoted from Billy16:

    I'm not a fan of the new direction Pinside is going in. I see it benefiting a few at the expense of many.

    Who are the few and the many in this scenario? You mean Robin and his brother getting paid through fees?

    #181 8 years ago
    Quoted from captainadam_21:

    I was going to suggest looking to see if the amount of pinsiders on at any given time has dropped but I cannot see that feature on the left side of the screen on the forum page. Has that been removed?

    I don't think that would work here. Pinball is much more niche than homebrewing. I think it would cause far too many to leave.

    I have no idea if Robin's plan to cover two full-time salaries plus expenses out of pinball sales fees will work here. It may also be that the user base isn't large enough to earn that amount with a combination of ads and voluntary annual membership fees (paid by those that want to avoid the ads or have an animated avatar or whatever). I guess it's possible that everyone will run for the exits if the 0.5% fee on machine sales remains or ads start showing up, or, but I kind of doubt it. So long as this remains the place to go to talk about pinball (which you can still do for free) then it will be an attractive place to advertise games for sale.

    Quoted from captainadam_21:

    I find it hard to believe that mods would be willing to work for free while the owners are using the site as their full time job. But maybe some people like to spend their free time working for free and having people pissed at them.

    Sounds like a sampling of the mods aren't too bothered by it anyway, so that's good news for Pinside. I'll bet you'd find similar arrangements at other forums you visit, you're just less aware of the financial structure and the amount of profit being generated because it's based on showing you ads instead of charging small fees. Maybe I'm in the minority but I'd happily pay a few bucks (and we really are talking about just a few bucks here) not to see ads.

    Quoted from captainadam_21:

    Also, now that Robin is making a living off this website are we allowed to question his decisions? The old line used to be that This is Robin's site and he is running it out of the goodness of his heart so he makes the rules. But now that people are paying to use the site, do they have more say?

    I don't see how anything has changed. It was Robin's site last month. It's Robin's site today. He makes the rules because he owns and administers the site, not because of the profit (or loss) Pinside is operating at. And from where I'm sitting people have felt free to complain about it right along. But if you've felt the site is not sufficiently democratic, monetization of the site could be a good thing for you -- now Robin has an even stronger financial incentive to keep his users happy since if they vote with their feet and quit Pinside they're taking potential fees out of his pocket!

    #182 8 years ago
    Quoted from forensicd:

    I have noticed that since the pay model has been implemented, there have been very few pins for sale on here. Do you think this will hurt the market here?

    I just looked at a few days so it's not scientific, but I see similar numbers of games listed in the marketplace immediately before and after the new fees were announced. Are there fewer forum threads being started (and if so maybe the $2 fee for non-members to get a forum thread linked to their marketplace ad is having the intended effect?)

    #184 8 years ago

    Robin made some clarifications about the new system here:
    https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/question-about-fee-chargd-for-selling#post-2791785

    Notably from my perspective, no fees for parts/mods, and no immediate plans to shut down the regional buy/sell/trade threads or force those into the more formal market place.

    #187 8 years ago
    Quoted from Topher5000:

    I was wondering if it was always $2 to have a wanted ad show up in the forum.

    No that's new. I didn't know it applied to WTB as well as For Sale ads (could be a bug). As I understand it the rationale was to minimize exposure available to spammers/scammers since they wouldn't automatically get a forum post, but would have to clear the (very low) hurdle of contributing $1 or whatever first.

    That said might be worth shooting Robin a PM to ask if it was intentional to include WTB ads in the new changes.

    #194 8 years ago
    Quoted from Billy16:

    You seem to be right on top of most of the views posted in this thread, so I'm betting you can figure it out.

    Gotcha. In that case I find your comment pretty melodramatic. But it sounds like a $35 fee on a $5000 sale (in exchange for the very broad exposure that Pinside draws) is a deal breaker for you, which is fair enough, I wouldn't try to tell you how or where you should sell your games.

    #216 8 years ago
    Quoted from clone97:

    Laugh all you want I'm, not here to rack up posts by the thousands, But here to buy parts and games, and so far its been really fun, But to penalize the small run venders, I have met here with fees would be a sad day IMO, A real loss to the community as a whole.... So go on, do another thousand random posts if you must, I got some shopping to do.

    Quoted from Astropin:

    But that is what this place is Primarily about.....a gathering of enthusiasts to talk about pinball. This isn't a pinball store, it's a pinball forum.

    Also remember that parts and mods aren't subject to the new fee so the "small run vendors" being "penalized" are really private pin owners (or pin dealers) trying to sell entire pinball machines.

    #229 8 years ago
    Quoted from makeittogo:

    What does everyone have against Mr Pinball? It is free, simple and searchable? Just no pictures. Everyone used to get up early in the morning to be the first to see the new listings and rush to be first in line.

    Quoted from TaylorVA:

    Prices are usually stupid and you'd think that in a community environment like Pinside there would be some community policing to weed out the cons. Mr pinball is a decent place but just impersonal IMO.

    Agreed. Prices on Mr. Pinball are generally worse than on Pinside. And there's no ability to check out a seller by reading their posts, etc. so you're rolling the dice a bit more buying long-distance. From my anecdotal experience listing one pin for sale on both Mr. Pinball and Pinside, I also found that the least pleasant would-be purchasers contacted me through Mr. Pinball. I think people are slightly more likely to behave decently when they know they may run into you again on the forums.

    #234 8 years ago
    Quoted from srmonte:

    I heard that the 2.00 forum insert charge might be going away. Anyone know anything?

    Robin said that charge will be dropped. So i assume it's either gone now or will be in the next update.

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