Why Are There No Ads in the Forumosa Personals Classifieds?

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1

without disrepect to those who have courageously placed ads, why hasn’t the classifieds personals here on Forumosa picked up?

i mean - Tealit gets about 2-3 new personal adds for each of WSM and MSW every day. i’m sure Forumosa traffic is at least that of Tealit. so why no ads?

of course, with virtually no ads now, it takes some “pioneers” to place the first ones. perhaps its due to the fact that the first few ads will be particularly scrutinized since they stand in isolation, but geez, is it because people are afraid or something?

and about the ads - i don’t view myself as being hypocritical here. i put an ad up back last september. i let it stay up there for about four weeks (including a picture - not an ugly one either). i got NO replies!! yet - in half a day of having an ad on Tealit, i’m sure i can get half a dozen replies.

what gives? for those who are single and have used Tealit, why haven’t u tried Forumosa classifieds?

2

It may be that the clientel on Forumosa.com is…well…different…that could be it…

3

Tealit’s ads are better, because you can see the title and some of the contents without clicking on them.
Tealit’s been fairly stable. They haven’t been totally redoing the whole site every year or so. They just went through a major overhaul, but all the ads are still there and they are basically the same. Why advertise on forumosa when you know they will just trash everything and start over in a few months?

4

Nah, I don’t think that’s it :stuck_out_tongue:

Any other ideas?

5

It could be that when you finally get fed up of your current prospects and figure that you have nothing to lose by placing an ad at f.com, in the hope of attracting that different clientelle, it’s bloody impossible to do so.

I’ve just spent 20 minutes typing an ad.

Clicked on submit to be told that my credit balance was insufficient.

Sure, it costs 0 credits to place an ad, but I obviously had the wrong kind of zero in the bank.

I clicked the link provided to see what happens, and got taken to the ‘give us your credit card details’ page, so I tried to go back and look for other options. It didn’t keep the data I had keyed in, so I was back to square one and gave up in disgust.

People use tealit because it’s easy to use.

6

Maybe it’s because everybody already knows about this old “language exchange” trick and so don’t bother with the “personals” ads.

Plus there’s still the stigmata that personal ads are just “creepy” you know what I mean? I mean, if you have to resort to a newspaper because you can’t pull your co-workers in the office (and let’s admit, this is the place where we are able to meet the “nice” Taiwanese girls…I am excluding the walking STDs that you can easily pull and easily regret pulling in dance clubs and pubs, I’ve never gone for that and hopefully will never be desperate to ever try.)

7

[quote=“mod lang”]Maybe it’s because everybody already knows about this old “language exchange” trick and so don’t bother with the “personals” ads.

Plus there’s still the stigmata that personal ads are just “creepy” you know what I mean? I mean, if you have to resort to a newspaper because you can’t pull your co-workers in the office (and let’s admit, this is the place where we are able to meet the “nice” Taiwanese girls…[/quote]

You get crucified for posting a personals ad these days? :astonished:

The headline of my ad was “Seeking non-Taiwanese girl”, and there are few enough of them around that the internet is (should be) a useful tool. No stigma (if that’s what you mean) attached to declaring your preferences so that you don’t have to meet a hundred no-hopers to find the one you wanted. My last girlfriend kept a dictionary next to the bed and knew the difference between ‘stigma’ and ‘stigmata’. I’ve waited five months to find one equally smart through normal channels, with no success. Time to try forumosa, which is how I found the last one.

So, no, I don’t know what you mean. You’re just being smug, judgemental, and semi-literate. I don’t work in an office, so if Goose Egg will fix it I’ll try whatever method seems appropriate to me and expect you to keep your inconsequential opinions to yourself.

Thank you for your understanding.

8

[quote=“Loretta”]It could be that when you finally get fed up of your current prospects and figure that you have nothing to lose by placing an ad at f.com, in the hope of attracting that different clientelle, it’s bloody impossible to do so.

I’ve just spent 20 minutes typing an ad.

Clicked on submit to be told that my credit balance was insufficient.

Sure, it costs 0 credits to place an ad, but I obviously had the wrong kind of zero in the bank.

I clicked the link provided to see what happens, and got taken to the ‘give us your credit card details’ page, so I tried to go back and look for other options. It didn’t keep the data I had keyed in, so I was back to square one and gave up in disgust.

People use tealit because it’s easy to use.[/quote]
I am sorry that you went through all this trouble, when I could have warned you about this bug.

Here is fair warning for those who are new to the Forumosafieds - which works(!), but is still a work in progress

If you have NEVER posted an add on the Forumosafieds website before…

  1. Go to www.forumosafieds.com
  2. Click on SUBMIT NEW AD (upper right corner)
  3. Login using the same Forumosa ID and your password you used to log in over here
  4. Click on “I want to submit a new ad”
  5. Use the drop down list to choose a random category (yep, I said random)
  6. See the error message that says “[color=red]Your credit balance is insufficient[/color]” and laugh the laugh of someone who knows better
  7. Click on SUBMIT NEW AD again (you are right, this sounds silly, but please… just do it)
  8. NOW, carefully select the category you want to post in - in your case, one of the 3 Buy and Sell categories

Everything should work normally from then on

Indeed, from this point forward, you will not need to worry about the Credit Balance error message again… at least until we get around to actually starting to charge for Teaching Ads (we only plan to ever charge for Teaching ads - but even these are free now)

If you encounter problems, please post them in this Feedback forum, or email me at admin @ forumosa

To date, the software we are using for the Forumosafieds is the most versatile one to date. It was critical that we used software that accepts Forumosa IDs as logins, and equally important that we could integrate its listings in the forums and print them out relatively easily for our upcoming print edition.

Unfortunately, it has its bugs, including this first-time login hiccup, which is obviously related to the Membership integration feature.

Please do bring these annoyances to our attention and we will try to fix them (or offer workaround solutions) as soon as we can

gus.

9

I’m trying to post an animal adoption ad, and getting this:

“Your credit balance is insufficient. Before you can post an ad to this category, you must recharge your account.”

And when I hit the ‘submit’ button, it doesn’t work.

Is this a bug, or are the ads now fee-based? :help:

EDIT: Oh, the 3rd or 4th time I tried posting it finally worked. Almost gave up though.

EDIT: I would have Killed this, but the option was missing.

PS. What’s BETA METER: 85% ??? :stuck_out_tongue:

10

It is an indicator of how close we are to finishing the website

Things we need to finish include a Chinese language character set, better access to the membership database, renovation of the Ad Submission forms and a process to easily export the ads to the upcoming print edition

11

My ideas of why there’s not much traffic on the forumosa personals:

  1. Many of us know each other in real life. How awkward is it to put your hopes and dreams of love in a place where people you might hang with can see it?

  2. There aren’t many female posters on this site. It’s a bit lopsided in that way.

  3. A majority of the posters on this site are either married or in long-term relationships so they have no need to post a personal ad.

As for me, relationships are on a far back burner. Finding a job is occupying most of my thoughts (although finding a local husband might become my only viable option the way things are going) so even if I hadn’t thrown my towel in a year ago, I’m too preoccupied with trying to manage to stay in Taiwan legally.