Bartertown.com

Hey everyone!

I'd like to ask for everyone's thoughts regarding a Bartertown "community" on Patreon. What sort of features would you like to see? Does the thought of a Discord server or other virtual meeting space sound appealing?

It's not much, but look here: https://www.patreon.com/c/communities And please tell me what you think.

Okay so the immediate follow-up question is "why?" Our ISP raised their prices, for one, but really I want to do more with the site. I've been so busy with work and life the past few years that I didn't have time or ability to make it more than what it was. Health-wise I'm in a far better place now, and with all this COVID-19 quarantine going on...well, I don't know about y'all but I'm not at work. It'll be at least another month before I'm back. So, it seems like now is the best time to see what all the options are out there.

Looking forward to your opinions.

IMO the biggest competition you'll have right now is Facebook. I cross-post here and into several game-specific trading groups I'm in on FB. Personally I find the experience here to be better. I know that, were something to go wrong, the admins here are fantastic and super helpful. This site has a great community. And, I mean, the rating system. Every trade/sale/purchase I have on FB is a roll of the dice. So far I've been lucky, and was only almost ripped off once (a bit of fortune on my end, the package got misdirected so I had time to do package intercept before it was delivered).

Obviously a full integration into FB would be impossible given that platform's designed limitations, but what about creating a Btown FB group? The idea I have kicking around in my head is:
- Regular group members can't post trade ads in the FB group, because ensuring that individuals on FB actually own Btown profiles would be a nightmare
- The group would be publicly visible so anyone could see it, which would give the site more exposure to a wider audience and hopefully direct more traffic this way
- As an added Btown Member or Advertiser perk, those users could link their trade ads into the FB group (maybe once per week, month?), which would hopefully encourage more people to pay for those services and increase the site's cash flow

So yeah, maybe branching out to FB would give the site more exposure and increase the number of Plus members and/or advertisers. Since it would be only a select group that would be permitted to post in the FB group, that would (hopefully) not increase the admin responsibilities in verifying BTown user accounts with FB accounts, since signing up for those services would have to be handled through the website.

Someone else said it earlier that, hopefully, eBay collecting sales taxes might drive a few more people this way, too. Now you can't just add shipping to the final price in your head, you have to add tax, too. And as a seller, it's a little annoying to collect sales tax, have PayPal assess your fees on the entire amount collected including sales tax, and then have eBay take the sales tax money away. So you get charged fees on money you never actually received.