the future of dreadlockssite and testers needed

one more update and a question to etsy shop users

its looking like we can do alot of more powerful stuff in the backend anbd on the user side

and although im not fully commited to this yet till i see what it canj do once the test datas fully imported it is looking very very promicing as our new home

now my questions for etsy shop ownwers and owwners of shops that alow music sales are

these are the current etsy costs

does scroll down to see my proposed costs

Listing fees

Each listing on Etsy costs $0.20 USD when the listing is published. For private listings , however, the $0.20 fee will only be charged if and when the private listing is sold. A listing lasts for four months or until the item is sold. After four months if the item has not sold, then the listing expires. Listing fees are added to your Etsy bill.

You may easily renew expired, sold or active listings if you like. A renewed listing is given a new expiration date four months from the renewal date. The fee for renewing a listing is $0.20 USD. Renewal fees are added to your Etsy bill.

If you have more than one of the same item, you can reflect the quantity available in your listing. When a transaction occurs and the listing is not sold out, the listing is automatically renewed at a cost of $0.20 USD. If a transaction includes more than one of the same item, then a multiple quantity fee of $0.20 USD per quantity sold greater than one is applied. Multiple quantity fees are added to your Etsy bill. For an illustration of how fees are charged for multiple quantities, please see this FAQ .

Transaction fees

When you make a sale on Etsy, you will be charged a transaction fee of 3.5% of the item price. This percentage does not include the shipping cost or tax. Transaction fees are added to your Etsy bill.

Advertising fees

Etsy offers advertising opportunities to increase the visibility of your items and shop. Advertising fees vary by opportunity. Ad fees will be clearly outlined before you commit to purchasing an ad. Advertising fees are added to your Etsy bill

now my propesition if you choose to consider this fair

zero listing costs

no limit in how long it can be listed for

no additional fees for multiple quantities no renewal fees

a flat 1% of sales

and as an option instead of advertising fees (although might consider an additional advertising optiomn if you really wanmt 1)

instead of advertising fees you can have a featured shop featured shops would have say 3% per sale fee

featuredsd shops will be added to a rotating slider ..simular to an add but would have like an ad sized logo info imagfe and perhhaps a short lil blurb aboit the shops goods

and hopefully this will apear on every page in the site

possibly excluding others shops

i still have alot to learn about how the featured ad might work ..but

would these fees be fair to you fair enough to consider it as an alternative or a better option then etsy for dread related goods

im hoping with enough of theese shops that dreadlockssite not etsy will become the goto place fir dread goods

(and related stuff like hand made clothing or whatevcer u want to sell)

i want us...meaning your shops.. to eventualy become the "big guys on the block' the default go to place ppl recomend over etsy

the only issue i see getting in the way of growing bigger then etsy in our niche is our ethics and the fact we screen shops and dont alow harmful goods and services but

this will give us a great rep for customers but might give us a lil bad rep for shop owners who are told no you cajt sell wax or crochet hooks here

anyway what do u think

--
My new book Ban The Taboo Vol 1
updated by @soaring-eagle: 07/23/15 03:23:12PM

just added

and your gonna like this 1

profile customization options 1st you can add your own logo..

and your own background

you can also pick any page to be your profiles front page

this means shop owners can make the shop the landing page musicians or just musicc lovers the music page or soundcloud page

it can be a custom page or anything

also added a guestbook feature

theres sooooooooooooo much more to come

i just dont want to throw hundreds of dollars into it till im sure it is definately going to be our new home

but

pretty much looking like a very strrong possibility so i did pay for the profile tweaks

i figured for shops and such it will be essential

oh your photo gallery can be front too anything

if theres anyone out there whos done alot of work with templates smarty objects etc.. get in touch with me asap

its unlimmited what we can do as far as customizing the site making it do what we want itto do and easily develop new modules and functions

but anyone with skills that wants to help out would reallllly help things along

--
My new book Ban The Taboo Vol 1

keep an eye on the test site www.greentechnologyforums.com as it develops

i believe once the user datas imported you will get a password reset email ..i think

most user accounts are created

however with this systejm a user account and a profile arent 1 in the same you have to create your profile, you can have multiple users sharing 1 profile (in the case of a band or business) or 1 user having multiple profiles (though we will set limits ofcourse) so when you login you will need to create a profile

ive added profile customization tools and hope to have a cover photo added tomorow as well

this is a whole new system that im having to learn new skills to use

so maybe adding some new tweaks and modules after the launch

creating a chats going to take a little learning on my part unless anyones willing to help out

this is a huge project that will be ongoing as even once we have a greatly inprovedsite we can develop new functionality specific to our wants and needs

please understand that this is a very major upgrade and perfecting some things may take time

the only thing im aware of however that will be temporarily missing is the chat and i should be able to find a tempirary 3rd party solution

ps

any coders who are willing to help develop modules klike the chat can proffit share as everything we develop thst might be useful on other sites can be added to a marketplace //freee or for a feee

we could put the "skin' the site design on the market too but i am not going to i put too mucvh into making it unique and want our site to be 1 of a kind

ps

the sites probably goinbg to be about 10-15 times faster then this site when completed

--
My new book Ban The Taboo Vol 1
updated by @soaring-eagle: 02/05/15 10:12:49AM

sooooo profile customizations looking kinda sweet now huh

https://www.dreadlockssite.com/soaringeagle

--
My new book Ban The Taboo Vol 1
updated by @soaring-eagle: 02/05/15 10:12:49AM

1 huge step closer

as im figuring it all out becoming more confident and certain that this will be our new home i just blew 200 more dolars (oh please donate anything u can) and got the shops uploading as we speak (or asi type)

along with several other modules to add more functionality

i am still looking for anyone and everyone willing to take any active rol in helping create this wether its coding simple busy work that can be asigned to you when needed testing ..or anything

its a massive undertaking for 1 man

but its getting done as fast as it can

how soon we can move may be completely dependent on when we can get a clean archive of this site and import it cleanly

note the upload/import process takes a few days

so theres a very strong possibility the site will have a screen show up saying we are upgrading add your email to be notified when were complete

so we will be "on hold" for up to a week

although there maybe a way around that to alow near instant upgrades if the archive tool is made bug free and dependable enough to alow a secondary archive then only import the diferences though that still will mean a hold of about 24 hoursto prevent stuff added during thatr time from being lost

anyways ..point is i just took a huge step towards committing us to our new home and will have the shops ready fior preview very soon

--
My new book Ban The Taboo Vol 1

shops are active

some of the buttons may need raranging and renaming and once i figure it out it might be helpful to create an all in 1 page as your front page wich i will profide a guide

you will see on profiles files

thats music or whatever files you wish to sell or provide free

if new file extentions are needed i can add them

but since zip and rar are included virtualy anything can be sold as a zip

you will see products this is for "real goods" crafts stuff you got lying around that you want to sell anything that has to be sent out somewhere

and you will see bundles

bundles alows you to bundle multiple items together

like an album if muysic woukld have 20 songs bundled (vids can be sold too digital artwork...oncanvas artwork through products etc)

right now i have it set to all profiles have a shop

ill probably create a few types of members when i figure out how and that will be regular, shop owners featured shops

theres also a possibility of making shops or featured shops or whatever a subscription plan a monthly or annual feee

at this time im not planningon doing that

but its a consideration for the future to do something like a 6 month trial period then 5 bux a year but like i said no plans on doing that at this time but it mightbe an option in the future if it becomes nesacary

right now the shops might not look so impressive but we canwork on making them look better as some of u add test items and tell mer what ya like and dont like

so

i need testing now

create files to sell mp3s create fake thingsto sell real goods set al orices at a penny

create a testshop profile...anyone just let me know who and we'll work on it

--
My new book Ban The Taboo Vol 1

huge update

a member volunteered to help

and promiced that within 2 weeks we wil have the site doing anything and everything we could ever dream it could do

and hes goingto do seo too that will have us back at the top dominating the nicvhe so we can reach the maximum number of ppl again

as an end user it is a new system it will take getting used to but it will be made to be simple to use

and its just way more powerful

the very 1st thing im going to want ya all to do is start uploading long high quality instructional vids that are detaikled and informative

yiutubes always been a sourse if absolutely horidd info

we have a chance to correct that ssituation

oh

i also added somethinhg today that i think..but need to look into more will alow you to login with virtualy any social networks login list those networks in a my networks thingy and ..i think..even oull in the updates from them if desired if it does what i think then youd be able to monitor all your social sites ferom here anbd even add them to your timeline if u want

--
My new book Ban The Taboo Vol 1

lil more info and a question this is related strictly to ppl that wish to sell items or music

to have the ability fir profiles to have shops i just found out costs 20 a month (for me for the site subscription) or 15 if paidannualy

i dont mind eating that im not in this for a business as yiou know but i already blew 200 today to buy the shops modules 250 a month for the server etc etc its adding up

so question

theres options that i can think of to ensure costs are covered ..like

a possible low annual subscription say 5 bux a year

i might just eat the costs at 1st and see how it goes ill do the 20 a month instead of the 1 big payment fir the 1st few months see how everything goes then we'll 'have a meeting' and figure it iut from there

i want to havgetotal transparency as always

if i end up making a profit you will know and then no way thered vbe added fees if im losing money butyour making a profit then maybe we'll find a fair solution if your nit making much (doubhtful) then ill just eat thge costs and maybe ask fir donations i dunno

just letting you know what the situation isand thinking out loud

--
My new book Ban The Taboo Vol 1

i am in love with what thed new site will be able to do

and that is literaly anything and everything we can dream of it doing

the ppl created the system isnt a big corporation like the one that developed this its 4 people 4 great amazing people who want to help make the site do exactly what we want

now we were talking about what it could be made to do if we wanted it to and i was throwing out all kinds of ideas and every 1 of them they said yup you can make it do that

1 thing i said was 'i bet we can make it have a 'find a dready near you" module

not like the old member map we used to have that showed an address u out in..but a map that showed where you were with your phone (if you enabled it that is) so all you dreadies living in towns where u never see any edreadies might just see a lil blip on the map with a freinds name from tye site passing through your town so yu can go meet up and say hi

i thought up the idea randomly

and 1 of the site developers said heres asite im working on that does exactky that

built on the exact same site technology

http://www.zeroonin.com/

see we can do literaly anything we can dream up with the new site

if you like this.. i can add something exactky like it

im blown away by the flexability

--
My new book Ban The Taboo Vol 1

Hey there SE,

i just opened a profile on the ww3 site, but see your comment and realize that's not the new site. I was hoping to help out in some way (why I opened the profile). I don't have any programming or technical experience, but I'd like to help if there's something I can do. I am very interested in the shop features, so maybe I could help with testing there? Let me know if there's something I can do.