We've been squeezing our brains to find alternative ways and enable more engagement with the community as I realized the marketplace itself, yes it's a place to trade, but it's firstly a place to meet and talk about trades!
As mentioned in the WWSS, moderation as been turn off, fee to post raised and freebies disabled. The idea to have just a Classified Marketplace turned to be a bit boring and rarely useful. So why not add a bit of taste, expand this virtual territory borders to make it a bit more interactive and welcome conversations and contents about Buying and Selling in the Free Market, Competition VS Collaboration, Customer Engagement, Sales Strategy, Fair & Ethical Trading, Barter & P2P Exchange safety, Trade Regulations, eCommerce, Trust and Relationship Building are more than welcome.
This is what came to our mind; it can be expanded to some more related topics and area of interest. I'd like to avoid TA and anything that relates with shitcoinery. It happened already, and I'm not doubting it will happen again. It's probably part of the game, and if it will happen again, we'll take the opportunity to try to educate newbies and turn the conversation into a constructive exchange of information.
We also set a weekly routine with daily post to better connect with the community. The current schedule for now look's like:
  • 🀠 Monday's Market: an invitation to post a classified ad
  • πŸ–²οΈ Techie Tuesdays: discussion about latest tech discoveries (𝑖𝑑 π‘šπ‘–π‘”β„Žπ‘‘ π‘π‘’π‘™π‘œπ‘›π‘” π‘‘π‘œ ~π‘‘π‘’π‘β„Ž)
  • 🎴 Wild Wednesday: second invite to post an ad (𝑖𝑑 𝑀𝑖𝑙𝑙 π‘π‘Ÿπ‘œπ‘π‘Žπ‘π‘™π‘¦ π‘β„Žπ‘Žπ‘›π‘”π‘’ π‘“π‘œπ‘Ÿ π‘ π‘œπ‘šπ‘’π‘‘β„Žπ‘–π‘›π‘” 𝑒𝑙𝑠𝑒 π‘ π‘œπ‘œπ‘›)
  • πŸ—―οΈ Thrifty Thursday: to share any promos, offers, discounts, bundles... etc
  • ✨ Feature Friday: to spotlight any product or service
  • 🏷️ Spending Sunday1: an invitation to share any Bitcoin purchase
  • πŸ“£ Super Sale Saturday: an invitation to share any Bitcoin purchase
Wondering what you all think about this turn? How you'd like to see this territory going forward? What are we missing, and how could we improve it? Do you have any advice that could be useful to reach the aim2 has been created for?

Footnotes

  1. Thanks @SN to allowing this now to be posted in the ~AGORA! ↩
  2. From #363312: I believe that any of us has a creative and entrepreneur mind, because as human beings (not human doers) we always look to improve and cΜΆrΜΆeΜΆaΜΆtΜΆeΜΆ attract abundance and wealth for ourselves and others around us. And the way to do it is to take action and share our value[able]s with our community to make it eΜΆiΜΆtΜΆhΜΆeΜΆrΜΆ even more valuable. ↩
21 sats \ 2 replies \ @Fabs 25 Feb
I think that you are the only territory-owner who puts that much effort into a territory, but receives that few in return for it.
How's your experience been?
I really think that you're doing your best, don't know how to further improve the territory right now... I think it really has to come from the users...
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284 sats \ 1 reply \ @mo OP 26 Feb
Hey Fab, thanks for your response. Til now, we are having fun exploring every possible option to enable this marketplace to happen here. There are many more things @SN team could work on to accelerate this to happen, for example an Ad-post type, an image gallery, a featured image (like the job-post type has already) and DMs will be the cherry on the cake. A nostr integration will be the top... and I'm not the only one thinking about it. It will make SN become just a client, not responsible for anything displayed here. But as it is currently hosting the data on a centralized server... data it's (or will become) hot! I'm not expecting anyone to do all this, so in the meantime I'll just keep paying around.
These feature could radically improve the UX and enhance some of the trust needed to build a marketplace. Haven't personally the tech skills to submit pull request to the repo, otherwise I was doing that instead of writing with posts :)
The main friction, as you mentioned, has to come from the users. But the user(s) need to trust the community here, especially newcomers. The idea of @AG0RA bot wanted to do just that, create a place full of crap people can look at and sell. But obviously the original sellers were not here to interact with the possible buyers asking questions. It was nice to create an (king of) archive, useful probably to establish future subs.
Another major blocker is shipping, so let's just skip it and focus on P2P and geolocalized community content. This option thought it's risky for privacy, so probably the best is to focus (if you are a creator/seller) on digital products and services (for now).
There's so much more that need to be considered...anyway. I see SN as the perfect host for a marketplace, with an embedded payment method and a community that surround it... An ideal faceB marketplace alternative. But hey, we pay you in Bitcoin!
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It does seem like you not only have a vision, but also a plan for this territory's future!
I like how you're going about this, especially since you seem to be content with the process taking it's time- something that's rare nowadays.
Keep it up!
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I pop in from time to time to see what people are doing in trade land. I think generally classifieds are local to a person's geographical area. This makes trade more difficult as these classifieds are not. Therefore, the trades that are going to go best are going to tend to be "non-local" ones or digital ones?
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No sense to go with localized classifieds for now, maybe it will make sense for Austin/TX thought! Look's like some physical goods from the first ad in the ~AGORA has been sold there!
The community is spread around the globe and this allow to experiment with digital goods
i like this feature if added in AGORA. This way will the market circularize and also its fun to have an all week event.
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That's exactly the idea, and glad you appreciate it. The current community structure and size look's like is a good base to interact with digital goods
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