Revert to the old ad system

[Diz]

This new credit system is awful and I can't think of a way to make it work. You either appeal to your lower budget buyers and give massive discounts to your higher budget buyers, or you do what you do now and screw over the lower budget buyers.

This new advertising system is absolute garbage for anyone not named Mick. Even the largest companies advertising on mcm like PebbleHost are losing a significant discount and having to pay significantly more to get that lesser discount.

It's no secret I buy plugin stickies, I have thought raising the prices from $3.50/week to $15/week was rough because before I bought them they were never kept. Sadly I couldn't do much. I went from paying $19 every two months to $84 every two months, that's a significant increase. (~ 450% increase) This is nothing in comparison to what Mick would do next to grab more money without growing the site.

Behold Micks latest money grab, the amazing credit system! Advertised in announcements as a discounted way of advertising when it is nothing like that. Yes, Mick now offers a 5% discount for crypto payments which wasn't a thing before, lets give him credit! Now, we went from getting discounts for buying additional weeks. That % maxed out at a 40% discount, now the max discount you can get is 35%. Not a big deal right? it wouldn't be except you now have to pay a minimum of $7,000 and use crypto to achieve that 35% discount.

I used to get a 30% discount, to get that same discount using the same payment methods I have been for years I would need to spend $7,000 compared to $84 that's an increase of 8335%. So I have gone through the 450% increase in weekly costs for my ads now I need to pay Mick 8335% more to get my same 30% discount. Even at the ridiculous rates, Mick is charging for his dying unadvertised site I wouldn't use all my credits for over 2 years. That's advertising four threads @ $15 for 52 weeks. So now not only am I forced to send 8335% more money to Mick I have to trust that he is going to keep this site alive for 2+ years.

I have talked to others and I have yet to find anyone who thinks this new system is good. I would love to hear what others think.

I would just like to say the last time mcm did something like this was when they added the reputation system in replacement of the vouch system and to this day there are still many issues and complaints around it. Why do another when everyone was okay with the way it was and Mick was making great money.

 

[Scroll32]

This new credit system is awful and I can't think of a way to make it work. You either appeal to your lower budget buyers and give massive discounts to your higher budget buyers, or you do what you do now and screw over the lower budget buyers.

This new advertising system is absolute garbage for anyone not named Mick. Even the largest companies advertising on mcm like PebbleHost are losing a significant discount and having to pay significantly more to get that lesser discount.

It's no secret I buy plugin stickies, I have thought raising the prices from $3.50/week to $15/week was rough because before I bought them they were never kept. Sadly I couldn't do much. I went from paying $19 every two months to $84 every two months, that's a significant increase. (~ 450% increase) This is nothing in comparison to what Mick would do next to grab more money without growing the site.

Behold Micks latest money grab, the amazing credit system! Advertised in announcements as a discounted way of advertising when it is nothing like that. Yes, Mick now offers a 5% discount for crypto payments which wasn't a thing before, lets give him credit! Now, we went from getting discounts for buying additional weeks. That % maxed out at a 40% discount, now the max discount you can get is 35%. Not a big deal right? it wouldn't be except you now have to pay a minimum of $7,000 and use crypto to achieve that 35% discount.

I used to get a 30% discount, to get that same discount using the same payment methods I have been for years I would need to spend $7,000 compared to $84 that's an increase of 8335%. So I have gone through the 450% increase in weekly costs for my ads now I need to pay Mick 8335% more to get my same 30% discount. Even at the ridiculous rates, Mick is charging for his dying unadvertised site I wouldn't use all my credits for over 2 years. That's advertising four threads @ $15 for 52 weeks. So now not only am I forced to send 8335% more money to Mick I have to trust that he is going to keep this site alive for 2+ years.

I have talked to others and I have yet to find anyone who thinks this new system is good. I would love to hear what others think.

I would just like to say the last time mcm did something like this was when they added the reputation system in replacement of the vouch system and to this day there are still many issues and complaints around it. Why do another when everyone was okay with the way it was and Mick was making great money.

I don’t really think your complaining about the credits themselves, but rather the increase in price from the credits. So I think the suggestion should be that he ads more ways discounts with the credit system without paying 7 grand. Unless there is something about the credits themselves you have an issue with that you didn’t mention.

 

[Diz]

I don’t really think your complaining about the credits themselves, but rather the increase in price from the credits. So I think the suggestion should be that he ads more ways discounts with the credit system without paying 7 grand. Unless there is something about the credits themselves you have an issue with that you didn’t mention.

No the whole system, why change something that wasn't broken or disliked? The credit system doesn't work as stated in my first line. You can't appeal to a mass majority of people with the new system, someone is getting screwed, Mick choose the lower-tiered buyers it seems.

 

[Diz]

The terrible value for money on the credits has made ads not worthwhile anymore. While I don't agree with Diz going batshit crazy in shoutbox, the new credits system is terrible value for money and everyone knows it.

Stay within the community for 5+ years and let me know if sitting back making a ticket as they want gets anything done. Do I go too far yes often but you can't sit and be quiet and complacent as the site pushing money over everything.

 

[Justis]

Your main complaint seems to be that you’re no longer receiving discounts you were receiving before as a buyer of long duration ads. However, nobody was ever entitled those discounts. MCM doesn’t owe anyone discounts on their purchases.

It’s also worth noting that it was already the intention to increase the price of ads in the section you have four ads in. Not reducing the price of ads in that section when discounting changed was a means of achieving that. The price of many sections were changed. Some we raised, some were lowered. Your dissatisfaction with prices should probably be more greatly attributed to the decision to charge more per week in the plugins section, rather than with the new system which just happened to come at the same time.

We’re in the process of completely changing our pricing structure. The credit system was a first and necessary step to that end. The issues you’ve pointed out, such as us being unable to offer exactly the same discounts to both short and long duration buyers is true. We’d need to have two separate stages of discounting in order to achieve that, which would overcomplicate the purchase process for the average user.

However, the current state, which is mixing the credits system with our old advertisement structure, is not the end goal. It’s a temporary state while an entirely different advertisement structure is developed for our XF2 update. A bidding structure, where there is no static price for ads. What our advertisers pay will be entirely dependent on demand for that specific position.

We’re not removing the credits system, but the complaints you have will be addressed. Or more accurately, they won’t apply, because the structure you’re dissatisfied with will no longer exist.

In the meantime, if the traffic and money our ads provide your business isn’t worth what we’re charging for the position, then by all means don’t pay for it. When there is a long queue for a position, however, we assume that it’s because those positions are worth paying for.

 

[Zero]

Your main complaint seems to be that you’re no longer receiving discounts you were receiving before as a buyer of long duration ads. However, nobody was ever entitled those discounts. MCM doesn’t owe anyone discounts on their purchases.

It’s also worth noting that it was already the intention to increase the price of ads in the section you have four ads in. Not reducing the price of ads in that section when discounting changed was a means of achieving that. The price of many sections were changed. Some we raised, some were lowered. Your dissatisfaction with prices should probably be more greatly attributed to the decision to charge more per week in the plugins section, rather than with the new system which just happened to come at the same time.

We’re in the process of completely changing our pricing structure. The credit system was a first and necessary step to that end. The issues you’ve pointed out, such as us being unable to offer exactly the same discounts to both short and long duration buyers is true. We’d need to have two separate stages of discounting in order yo achieve that, which would overcomplicate the purchase process for the average user.

However, the current state, which is mixing the credits system with our old advertisement structure, is not the end goal. It’s a temporary state while an entirely different advertisement structure is developed for our XF2 update. A bidding structure, where there is no static price for ads. What our advertisers pay will be entirely dependent on demand for that specific position.

We’re not removing the credits system, but the complaints you have will be addressed. Or more accurately, they won’t apply, because the structure you’re dissatisfied with will no longer exist.

In the meantime, if the traffic and money our ads provide your business isn’t worth what we’re charging for the position, then by all means don’t pay for it. When there is a long queue for a position, however, we assume that it’s because those positions are worth paying for.

Please don't get me wrong, but isn't a bidding structure exactly the opposite of what was suggested? This would mean that Diz would likely have to pay even more for the same ad because it's high in demand. To me this seems more like it will be even more unfair than it is right now.

 

[Justis]

Please don't get me wrong, but isn't a bidding structure exactly the opposite of what was suggested? This would mean that Diz would likely have to pay even more for the same ad because it's high in demand. To me this seems more like it will be even more unfair than it is right now.

Giving everyone the opportunity to compete for a position is more “unfair” than the current structure of allowing the first person to get it to keep it indefinitely, regardless of how much higher the demand grows in that section, and then complain when prices are manually increased to try and account for that change?

 

[mafia]

"credit system" so aids lol what

 

[Diz]

Your main complaint seems to be that you’re no longer receiving discounts you were receiving before as a buyer of long duration ads. However, nobody was ever entitled those discounts. MCM doesn’t owe anyone discounts on their purchases.

It’s also worth noting that it was already the intention to increase the price of ads in the section you have four ads in. Not reducing the price of ads in that section when discounting changed was a means of achieving that. The price of many sections were changed. Some we raised, some were lowered. Your dissatisfaction with prices should probably be more greatly attributed to the decision to charge more per week in the plugins section, rather than with the new system which just happened to come at the same time.

We’re in the process of completely changing our pricing structure. The credit system was a first and necessary step to that end. The issues you’ve pointed out, such as us being unable to offer exactly the same discounts to both short and long duration buyers is true. We’d need to have two separate stages of discounting in order yo achieve that, which would overcomplicate the purchase process for the average user.

However, the current state, which is mixing the credits system with our old advertisement structure, is not the end goal. It’s a temporary state while an entirely different advertisement structure is developed for our XF2 update. A bidding structure, where there is no static price for ads. What our advertisers pay will be entirely dependent on demand for that specific position.

We’re not removing the credits system, but the complaints you have will be addressed. Or more accurately, they won’t apply, because the structure you’re dissatisfied with will no longer exist.

In the meantime, if the traffic and money our ads provide your business isn’t worth what we’re charging for the position, then by all means don’t pay for it. When there is a long queue for a position, however, we assume that it’s because those positions are worth paying for.

You seem to have missed my issue, my issue is as follows. MC-Market administration or Mick decided to implement a new system no one asked for instead of implementing the countless suggestions the community actually asked for. My issue is that this decision to push the credit system no one asked for was pushed solely to grow profits for MC-Market, while at the same time doing nothing to combat the dying activity caused by account removal.

Why is MC-Market making the decision to spend thousands of dollars to develop a new system no one asked for instead of for the first time in 7 years putting money into ads to grow the site?

I had no issue paying the increase in sticky prices, I stated I didn't like it but I never felt this fucked over by it. You increased prices 450% over a decent amount of time. This new system increases the price of every ad you have to buy by 40% unless you line MC-Markets pocket with $7,000. What world does upper management live in here where they think 2% of their userbase would ever do that. MC-Market strategically removed discounts on stickies. Your 5% discount for crypto is stupid most can't get it for that rate and if they can fees make it so they maybe get an additional 1.5% discount. You removed the 40% discount and made 30% the highest you could get and made it so you have to spend $7000 at a minimum to get that discount. It would take me over 2 years of advertising 4 threads to use that much credit, now I have to trust you make it worth advertising still in 2+ years? To get 15% off you have to spend a minimum of $500 how many people are really going to do that? Y'all knew you phased out the discount, and that's messed up and nothing but greedy. Promote your site for once, add a suggestion someone asked for once and maybe people wouldn't hate every decision you make.

 

[Diz]

I doubt they spent thousands of dollars making it. Code-wise it's not too complex.

.... lmao

 

[Justis]

You seem to have missed my issue, my issue is as follows. MC-Market administration or Mick decided to implement a new system no one asked for instead of implementing the countless suggestions the community actually asked for. My issue is that this decision to push the credit system no one asked for was pushed solely to grow profits for MC-Market, while at the same time doing nothing to combat the dying activity caused by account removal.

Why is MC-Market making the decision to spend thousands of dollars to develop a new system no one asked for instead of for the first time in 7 years putting money into ads to grow the site?

I had no issue paying the increase in sticky prices, I stated I didn't like it but I never felt this fucked over by it. You increased prices 450% over a decent amount of time. This new system increases the price of every ad you have to buy by 40% unless you line MC-Markets pocket with $7,000. What world does upper management live in here where they think 2% of their userbase would ever do that. MC-Market strategically removed discounts on stickies. Your 5% discount for crypto is stupid most can't get it for that rate and if they can fees make it so they maybe get an additional 1.5% discount. You removed the 40% discount and made 30% the highest you could get and made it so you have to spend $7000 at a minimum to get that discount. It would take me over 2 years of advertising 4 threads to use that much credit, now I have to trust you make it worth advertising still in 2+ years? To get 15% off you have to spend a minimum of $500 how many people are really going to do that? Y'all knew you phased out the discount, and that's messed up and nothing but greedy. Promote your site for once, add a suggestion someone asked for once and maybe people wouldn't hate every decision you make.

We’re not putting significant amounts of development time into the current version of our site because all of our XF1 custom developed addons will need to be remade for XF2 which is already heavily under development. Anything we pay to have made for XF1 will end up being unused as soon as XF2 is released. It’d be a waste of money, time and would only delay XF2 further. The reason the things that have been published are related to financials is so that we have the income necessary to fund fast and robust development of all of the features we need re-developed for XF2 along with all of the improvements to the site that have had to be delayed for XF2.

Why would we spend our money advertising MCM when we’re not even where we want to be? Why would we pull resources out of development, push the date when we can release XF2, push the date when we can start paying for development of new features that the community can immediately see?

Doesn’t it make more sense to put heavy focus on as quickly and efficiently as possible getting everything redeveloped for XF2? So that we’re advertising when we’re where we want to be and when we’re able to provide the desired development time to the production site?

 

[Dann]

Our prices haven't increased anywhere near as much as the percents you quote above, but we've still seen a fair increase in pricing just from the migration to a credit based system - with as far as I can see no huge benefit for us as an advertiser.

The top banner has already slowly been increasing in price before this - yet nobody ever seems to pick it up whenever we drop it showing there clearly is no demand outside of us long term. Always plenty of people in the queue but nobody ever keeps it.
It's up to Mick if he's going to keep raising prices but there's a point where we'll just not bother with running advertisements long term on here as it just doesn't make sense... not that it really makes a huge amount of sense at the minute to run ads on here with the pricing before the move to credits.

oh well, if Mick feels putting prices up is in his best interests then so be it

Doesn’t it make more sense to put heavy focus on as quickly and efficiently as possible getting everything redeveloped for XF2? So that we’re advertising when we’re where we want to be and when we’re able to provide the desired development time to the production site?

If the site has lost a good portion of advertisers or users before XF2 is ready then what's the point? As an advertiser I'd like to see the site grow - whichever is the most cost effective way to do that. I'm somewhat doubting that solely focusing on development without running any advertisements is the best way to grow the site right now - I'd assume most people don't care if the site runs on XF1 or XF2 when they sign up.

I'm also doubting that the site is even growing at this point - our top banner ad has seen worse performance in terms of views meaning that the overall site is smaller than in 2019.
We're seeing ~6% less views per day on the top banner ad (Jan 2019 -> May 2019 vs Oct 2020 -> June 2021)

The top banner ad used to cost $415.40 back then, It's now $711.45... You've put your prices up by ~71% yet the site has shrunk by ~6%. Nice.



(Edited to correct the old price, It was $415 not $446 which makes the stats even worse... lol)

 

[Unavailable]

The top banner ad used to cost $446 back then, It's now $711.45... You've put your prices up by ~60% yet the site has shrunk by ~6%. Nice.

That's... actually really sad

 

[MrAniman2]

I haven't looked much into this new Wallet system but by the looks of it this might have been an attempt at masking (or reduce the impact of) quite a significant advertisement price jump...? And if so then people's frustration is quite justified.

I personally said "Goodbye" to Mc-Market advertisements like 2 years ago when the first biggest price increase happened in the "Builds" section (from $10-15 to $30-40 in a one year time or so if I am not mistaken?). At that time I truly felt Mc-Market didn't care about the artists and creators, and just wanted to suck out as much money as possible. Because how for the love of God can you justify taking so much and giving so little! Questionable support, poor user interface (regarding providing/presenting the products), none existent seller features, tools & analytics, and no external advertisements to bring in new users/clients... Such a simple thing as the "shop" prefix. According to Mick, it looks bad/messy and there are plans to implement something else... for years only promises!

A rough example that proves Mick doesn't care much about the interests and wellbeing of creators and service providers:

Hypothetical monthly income (from only the advertisement/sticky).
(you earned)$300 - 35% (taxes) = $195. $195 - $140 (4 weeks(of$35) of advert. on Mc-Market) = $55 Net income/mo from sticky thread (you receive at the end)
These numbers are and will be different for everyone but especially the small volume service providers work mostly to feed Mick not themselves...

So how does Mc-Market has the decency to leave content creators with only 18% of earnings was completely beyond me!

For a while back then, I expressed my concerns but at the end, I came to the conclusion maybe I am a fool and others can sell better and earn more to make Mc-Market advertisement fee seem fairer.
And always providing good support, going that extra mile in helping all people who contacted me, investing a lot more time and effort in my products than competitors is a mistake. Maybe the correct strategy is to make quick and cheap products so I can flood the market with new stuff constantly, waste no time on support, send shameless PMs advertising, spam advertisements in chat, make individual threads for each product and "bump" them in addition to having "sticky" thread... there were many things as I recall but I wasn't ok with any of it so I just left and focused on external advertising and different opportunities.

Creator/community appreciation is what Mc-Market is lacking a lot...

At the end of the day, Mick is the owner and can raise the prices as much as he wants, and we have no saying in this. But like I mentioned above such high prices, in my opinion, first of all, is a disrespect towards the community, towards the creators and service providers who feed him. I know maintaining the website and the community costs a certain amount of money as well but if nothing hasn't changed staff didn't get paid well either...

To all those who are upset about the price increase, I can say... there is a lot more options outside, Mc-Market is not the center of the world. I have pretty much left Mc-Market, none of my newest creations are available here, and looking back at it I can say it was the correct decision!

 

[Zero]

That's how markets work. High demand, higher prices.

I have a good understanding of how financial markets work, but a bidding system wouldn't solve anything. It would mean that the less interesting ads cost nothing while a few, interesting sections will carry it all. Maybe it's just me but I surely won't participate in price clashes just to get an ad spot. A bidding structure means that an interesting sticky thread, for example in the building section, won't cost $30/week anymore, but a lot more because there's high interest. this

 

[Scroll32]

I have a good understanding of how financial markets work, but a bidding system wouldn't solve anything. It would mean that the less interesting ads cost nothing while a few, interesting sections will carry it all. Maybe it's just me but I surely won't participate in price clashes just to get an ad spot. A bidding structure means that an interesting sticky thread, for example in the building section, won't cost $30/week anymore, but a lot more because there's high interest. this

But what insures that interesting advertisements don't get this spot? This also works itself by market demand because ads that aren't interesting won't get sales, this means that unless they want to piss away money, they will discontinue buying the ads which discontinues the bad add being there.