You need to create a separate listing for each part. Single listing per topic means, there should be only one price (SKU in technical terms) per listing.
You will mark that full PC listing as expired/withdrawn. It will get auto cleaned once marked as Expired/Withdrawn/Sold.
Like everything else, we will have to measure it. Whether it is better for the community, whether it is a PITA, whether it is confusing. Sure every change is confusing at first.
There is difference between change for the sake of change and change for meaningful progress. Just because something works doesn’t mean it couldn’t work better.
We had this debate when we moved to Discourse. We can discuss the hypotheticals or we can try the new system.
How is that fair to members who are already paying vs who are listing 20 items in a single topic. It might not seem for community betterment, but it is very good for discoverability and search and therefore seems good for the community as a whole.
Again how will be this enforced? Will the current way to list items be modified to structurally enforce this eg. via dropdowns? Otherwise in the free text field, I can put anything.
Naah.. this ain’t going to change as all of it stems from core values.
Sharing my thoughts as a casual “clearance” seller who usually lists several items at once.
Based on how I usually use the marketplace (clearance/multi-item sales), I feel like I’ll be pushed into paying for Plus (at least). I normally set aside a free day, clear out drawers and cupboards, and end up with 7–8 items to sell. I take pictures, write descriptions, and post them all at once. With the new limits, I don’t see any way to do that without paying. If I stick to the free tier, I’d probably skip posting smaller items because I won’t make time to come back later, which means the marketplace itself would lose out on those listings.
This also discourages low-priced items. If I list several things worth around 400 each and they take a few months to sell, the subscription cost alone could eat into the entire value of one of those sales. Over time, this will push the average listing price higher, and small, useful items might gradually disappear unless people already on paid tiers throw them in alongside other sales, since they would have remaining unused listings.
I am not sure how a “Superbump” is planned, but if it bumps all active listings at once, then I worry it could flood visibility in favour of paid users, especially those with multiple items. I will wait to see details, but it is something I wanted to flag.
Suggestions:
Free tier should allow 3–5 active listings. 2 feels too low.
Please do not cut the listing duration for free users if that is being considered. It feels overly restrictive.
Consider giving long-time/legacy users some recognition, maybe by retaining current privileges or setting a higher entry requirement (compared to the default) instead of shifting them all to the free tier.
I’ll admit these changes have dampened my enthusiasm for the marketplace. It never felt broken to me, so the shift feels harder to swallow. That said, I hope we can discuss things and roll out a version that works for everyone.
Honestly not a fan about the paid features.
Are we charging the other sections of this forum? Oh wait this is a community we can’t charge for that. Then why start charging users to list anything. I remember when you had to interact with this forum and gain status then go to classifieds to make sale. Gave me a good sense of community. Rather than moving to pay to use model why don’t we start doing community goals? Where users can participate in events by paying for tickets that can be used to fund the site or maybe a donation page like wikipedia or something else that isn’t a paywall.
As a free user having only 2 active listings is big red flag. In cases of clearance sale of low valued items or fully built PCs that do get parted out as not many buy completely built PCs that go for sale, what is a user supposed to do? Wait for the items to get sold to list the other ones or otherwise takedown a listing so that now we can list multiple parts which can’t be sold all together?
What happens if I have 3x of the same item I want to sell? Should I create 3 separate listings. For eg. I have 3 camera batteries I want to sell. What will the forum provide as a solution to this problem?
Haven’t seen more than a handful of people going for Reseller badge and actually pushing the amount of items that is needed to saturate that specific tier. You are creating features for a very small sample size of people. I get that people might onboard in the future but is it really necessary to the point where you start charging for listings? Comparing the ratio to normal vs power users what metric do you have to justify the features you are trying to implement?
Pricing of the tiers is also some what disbalanced. As mentioned previously someone who has Plus will pay Rs.18 per listing, Advanced will pay Rs.15 and Pro will pay about Rs.12 per listing. Someone who is paying a measly Rs.12 per listing is obviously making profits off of the stuff they sell (as no one has 50 items to sell unless they are clearing or are a store/seller), compared to someone who is paying 18rs might not be making a profit. This disparity between fees is unfair.
Easy way to circumvent paying anything is now to shift to Want to Buy sections and start making trades over there. No payment necessary. Anyone can access it. Will you start rate limiting that section as well?
What about those people who are providing services like 3D printing/Keyboard Repairs, etc. These users do not even have the relevant section to provide their services. Where will you place them when one Single Item listing will be made mandatory? If they abide by the single item listing rules how is fair to other users that they are making multiple sales off of one post?
IDK why we decided to move to discourse and what decision making went into this. But have you put out a survey where people have sent a feedback about it? Sure there was a section on it where people could let you know about the bugs and issues and it was handled really well but did you make a proper survey to find out if the changes made were helpful or not? If so where is the result of it?
I appreciate the changes being made to the forum but moving into a pay to use model doesn’t look intuitive. This is just my opinion y’all are free to do whatever change you want.
Some suggestions from my side:
If single-item was absolutely necessary for the forums discoverability it should have been given a higher priority than shifting to discourse. If discourse was such a high priority why isn’t it’s problems still solved. I found this post one-month after it has been put up. Why is such a big change not at the forefront of the classified section if not at the forefront of the homepage. People are not even used to this shift you are ready to revamp and test a major component of this website.
Revamping a core functionality of this website can have huge impact on it’s future. “Just because something works doesn’t mean it couldn’t work better.” can be countered with “If it works, don’t touch it”. We need to have most of our ducks in a row for this shift to be successful.
This forum is more than a decade old and I really respect what you guys have done for this community. Surely you guys have a vision with this and have some way to go about it.
BUT PLEASE, If nothing I said above makes sense, at least take more time with this change than what you have mentioned.
So its the count of listing per tier that is a concern. What should we start with.
Is 5, 15, 25, 50 a good number? Do remember, there is no hard limit on the total listings. The total listing are unlimited. These counts are only for active listings.
Please vote here so that we can implement the active listing limit based on best interest of the community and members.
If possible please increase the visibility of this Post and/or of the Poll. Can only see it in hot topics and not like a banner at the top of the page. (Post has only 474 views)
Items with low value (<3K) should be allowed to be listed in a multiple items format. I would not list many items if I had to go through huge effort for a small item.
Voted.
There is some confusion in the options though. For example, most people have voted for 3-5 active listings. I would fall into that category too, I usually have 3-5 active listings but many of my listings would have 4-5 and sometimes more than 10 items on sale.
I suspect most people have chosen that option just thinking of how many active sale threads they had in the past. They should have counted the number of items on sale if we are going by individual listings now.
Now on to the feedback on proposed changes:
Personally, I prefer the old system because it allowed me to list many items not needed anymore in a single listing. Each listing takes time and effort, e.g. having to choose location, warranty, purchase date, shipping, shipping risk from the drop-down menus for every single item would be too much. Previously I could do this in a single shot for all items. I recently sold an item worth only 300 rupees, I don’t think I would post such items in a single listing. It’s just not worth the time or effort required.
I would prefer if the sellers can list items using a template wherein we get to list multiple items on the same page and the system handles how to create individual tags or listings. If this is not feasible or if the new proposed system requires more effort even for small value itemss, it is a failure right from the start. Things should become easier not difficult with any new change introduced.
How the transition would happen is also confusing to me. For example, who are dealers? Are all members with market privilege currently earned through the old system are considered dealers? If so, will they all move to the advanced tier? See below
So will the free marketplace users retain their privileges permanently or with a time limit? Will the new members ever be able to gain such privileges? What limits will be placed if any on our listings?
Resellers who pay to get a reseller badge and privileges.
Taking away features from active users is never good for business. I think monetization by taking away features from existing users and hiding them behind paywall is going to hurt in the long run. Many of us came here because of the marketplace and stayed. But, making so many changes in such a short time without many of us getting over the change to Discourse is going to drive us further away. Maybe you can wait a year or 2 before you make any more drastic changes.
Forums are dying. There are multiple Whatsapp groups which offer free listing and stuff like that. I don’t know how hiding behind paywall is going to help the forum.
I think you should look into monetizing in other ways. Moreover, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth when something was presented as being good for us is finally being used to charge us and is ultimately bad for us. You could have been a little more upfront about what this change was about.
My bad. See, this is kind of confusing to me. I knew there was a Dealer’s paradise or whatever it was called, but couldn’t connect the dots.
Either call them resellers or call them dealers. There are also a number of badges that the new system introduced called Merchant, Arbiter, Broker etc for normal users. Too many similar sounding names just create confusion. I would rather just name those badges Seller -Level 1, Seller - Level 2 etc.
What feature is being taken away?
I am leaning with those who raised the problem about listing multiple items, often cheap/small value in one go because of the hassle it takes to create multiple listings. I didn’t vote for a fair number of available listings for free account because of the same conundrum — don’t think casual sellers who clear their stuff once in a while would find the restrictions and need to pay to unlock only slightly more acceptable. Even Plus tier feels limiting if the single item listing is enforced.
I would also support the suggestion to first roll out the new marketplace features, improve it so that it’s convenient enough for managing multiple listings and take feedback from the community in the meantime on pricing specifics before enforcing tier restrictions.
This is just beginning of "Shittification of TechEnclave”, I’m sorry to use strong language but this is how I feel with these changes.
Fair point.. and its of course addressed in the upcoming changes.
To add to that, there will of course be an initial beta testing period where everyone will have access and any improvements in the flow will be taken up. After that if there are still any concerns then that can be discussed and incorporated too. Nobody is getting paywalled here.
A very insightful contribution to the discussion. 
All these make me sad.
Where the forums are dying, the Market Place with its low barrier participation became the crown jewel of this forum and which continues to attract new membership even in this time and age. All these new restrictions feel very weird to me. If we are going to monetise that then that will drive people to look elsewhere to take part in these transactions and slowly people’s overall participation too may decline. People came here for market place and stayed for other discussions. If market place becomes visibly sparse in posting, reducing attractiveness to join a new forum and difficult to participate because we sell the product at a loss already reducing members posting, then that will reduce the incentive to participate here. A vicious cycle will form.
I don’t support this monetisation and premiumisation of the crown jewel of the Forum, i.e. the Market Place.
But I really don’t want the market place to become so restrictive and premiumised.