FS Question: Can I list items for sale on my own website and post a link to that?

As per the question in the title. Can I, instead of putting a large number of listings on here, do item descriptions on my own website and link to that? To be clear, my website will have the items individually described with fixed prices, nothing in the form of auctions. Please feel free to delete this message once answered.

I've moved this here from FS as it is a question about Forum policy.

We are discussing and will post an answer a bit later.

I believe members have linked to a gallery of what they're selling which is fine imo. Links to actual listings, I'd have to think about that but yeah, kinda what Greg says.

Linking to a gallery for pictures of what you've posted for sale in the forum is one thing but linking to a storefront is another. I'm with Greg - it's a slippery slope and up to the moderators but one I'm probably not in favour of. APUG has their "Partners" status which allows for storefront links at the bottom of their home page but my guess is that it's fee-based and probably not what you had in mind.

Why not just list it here as well?

If you think this is a valuable enough resource, surely it deserves the time taken to list here "properly"?

People reference going to Freestyle or B&H photo all the time. People link to places to buy other photo materials, when someone asks. When someone discovers a good lens product or website, they refer to it. We often send people to Camera Eccentric for reference material too, and they have a for sale page. We reference big auctions like the European one, and big camera shows.

To me, mentioning that you have a site where you'll be listing photographic equipment is exactly what should be posted here. Why "hide or hinder" people's quest to get Large Format equipment?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by goamules

People reference going to Freestyle or B&H photo all the time. People link to places to buy other photo materials, when someone asks. When someone discovers a good lens product or website, they refer to it. We often send people to Camera Eccentric for reference material too, and they have a for sale page. We reference big auctions like the European one, and big camera shows.

To me, mentioning that you have a site where you'll be listing photographic equipment is exactly what should be posted here. Why "hide or hinder" people's quest to get Large Format equipment?

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Doesn't this depend on whether the OP's website is him selling as a dealer or privately and the amount of trading/sales. It raises the question of someone blatantly promoting themselves to increase business sales. I can think of one lens seller who was probably treated a bit harshly in this respect.

I'm not being judgemental, there could be excellent reasons for listing in detail "private sales" on one's own website where you have far better control. edit-ability etc. Some do this anyway but list all items here with links for the details, but others in the past have posted one off sales links to their own website or a PDF.

It's one for the moderators, there could be exceptions ie someone closing and selling off their darkroom , kit, leaving LF - one off sales rather than continuous trading.

Ian

I'd rather see it listed here. I won't bother clicking a link.

Thanks to kleinbatavia for asking, and to everyone else for your comments.

We'd really like all offerings here to be self-contained - you shouldn't have to go to another site to find out enough about what is being offered so that you can decide whether you want to contact the seller to pursue it.

Unfortunately, the image hosting here is pretty klunky, particularly if someone has a large listing with many items. So we've made a partial exception in that we've tolerated links to external sites that are simply image repositories and not themselves free-standing advertisements or sales venues. These can be commercial image-hosting sites or pages hosted under your own web domains.

But it's not so difficult to copy text here for posting. If a FS list is especially long and complicated, there's always the option of uploading a pdf or a plain text file as an attachment to the FS thread.

So our bottom line for now is:

1) Please post the full text of your offering, including item descriptions, pricing and terms of sale, here within the Forum.
2) If necessary, you may link to a pure image-hosting page elsewhere.

Two workarounds that happen already:
1. A friend refers to a "good seller's site." So now the site owner isn't greedily getting more business. He's using someone else to get it. Again....what's wrong with business? The OP didn't say "can I continually post about my private sales" (like a certain Meniscus lens manufactuer used to). He said can I mention it once.
2. A person that posts one item for sale says "PM me if you want other items". He privately gives his website or inventory list. Nothing wrong with that, this is a community and finders are sometimes useful.

The idea that one post of one page on the internet of millions of pages would "blatantly increase sales (implying unfairly) is silly. Trying to control human nature is not very realistic. By allowing an occasional mention of your photo-related website isn't going to end the LF Forum world. Just say it can't be done but once or twice a year.

I could rattle off a dozen examples right now of how people direct LF Forum users to their websites....where they sell items. It's not that big a deal. It's like trying to stop "shop talk" at a Christmas party. You can try, but you don't have the level of control that you think you do.