Too many featured resources

[Nekio]

Hello, since when there are 16 featured resources when the limit was supposed to be 4/4 like it was always?

Seriously 10 USD a week to have the other 15 resources advertised here? What's the point of this? It was always 4 the limit of the featured resources...

I've my survival setup featured and isn't even showing it on the featured list, so for what I've paid?

Don't know why this was changed, but it isn't far for what you pay...

I know people that don't have their resources featured here would ignore this, but having a resource featured with other 15 ones.. it can be way easier to advertise updating it every day without paying anything if there are 16 featured resources...

Thanks

 

[Nekio]

The home page of the resources keeps randomizing all the featured resources.
Whenever you click on setups, only the setups will show up.

It's good like it is now, since it gives other resource owners the chance to be in there as well.

Yeah, I know that's random, but 16 featured resources are too many resources for $10 a week.

Resource owners can have the chance to have customers via sticky threads on premade setups for example, featured resources was always 4/4 limit, that's why it's way more expensive than the sticky threads for example

 

[Zero]

Hello, since when there are 16 featured resources when the limit was supposed to be 4/4 like it was always?

Seriously 10 USD a week to have the other 15 resources advertised here? What's the point of this? It was always 4 the limit of the featured resources...

I've my survival setup featured and isn't even showing it on the featured list, so for what I've paid?

Don't know why this was changed, but it isn't far for what you pay...

I know people that don't have their resources featured here would ignore this, but having a resource featured with other 15 ones.. it can be way easier to advertise updating it every day without paying anything if there are 16 featured resources...

Thanks

I agree. 16 featured Resources is way too much.
I think 6-8 featured Resources is the sweet spot, however I also think its really hard for the casual user to get into the featured resources section. It should be more balanced tho.

 

[Jayson]

To clarify, the limit is 6 featured resources per category. The index page gets random featured resources from all categories.

The “4/4” displayed was a low priority to change because it does not impact functionality, but I’ll work on updating it when I have time.

It is understandable that you wish for the limit to be reduced as your resource once got more attention, but management figured it would be best to allow it to be per-category. Before this change, it was virtually impossible to get a featured resource slot because of infinite extensions.

 

[Justis]

When people are looking for plugins, they go to the plugins category. When people are looking for setups, they look in the setups category. Previously, advertisements in resources were not very well targeted, since featured resources from any category would show up on every other unrelated category. Our aim is to make the resource section’s advertisement functionality much more relevant to the people who are looking at them, as sticky threads are. Where there is a small number of featured resources per category (six), which are not rotated and are always displayed in their category.

The only problem is the main page. We experimented with a few designs which would make the resource section more like our forums, forcing visitors to choose a category before they could see any of the thread options. However, we’ve yet to find one that the community can agree on. Currently, the main page does display all resources from all categories and that does mean that all featured resources are also displayed on that page. However, this is not the design we intend to stick with, and the result of it being the way it is right now is only that the advertisements get additional exposure on the main resource landing page, whereas they would normally only be displayed at the top of their respective category.

 

[Nekio]

When people are looking for plugins, they go to the plugins category. When people are looking for setups, they look in the setups category. Previously, advertisements in resources were not very well targeted, since featured resources from any category would show up on every other unrelated category. Our aim is to make the resource section’s advertisement functionality much more relevant to the people who are looking at them, as sticky threads are. Where there is a small number of featured resources per category (six), which are not rotated and are always displayed in their category.

The only problem is the main page. We experimented with a few designs which would make the resource section more like our forums, forcing visitors to choose a category before they could see any of the thread options. However, we’ve yet to find a one that the community can agree on. Currently, the main page does display all resources from all categories and that does mean that all featured resources are also displayed on that page. However, this is not the design we intend to stick with, and the result of it being the way it is right now is only that the advertisements get additional exposure on the main resource landing page, whereas they would normally only be displayed at the top of their respective category.

So if there're +16 advertised resources on the main page, it won't be far to make it way cheaper as it can only be shown by people who click on the setup category?

 

[Justis]

So if there're +16 advertised resources on the main page, it won't be far to make it way cheaper as it can only be shown by people who click on the setup category?

I was merely clarifying the purpose of the different format. I can’t really speak on what prices are "fair" or not. Prices are adjusted almost every month in order to match the current demand. The goal is to ensure that pricing is set up so that all of our slots get filled and nobody is left waiting in queue. It’s a difficult thing to balance.

 

[Ivain]

I agree the prices are pretty absurd now. I get that there's tons of resources out there, but perhaps in such a case a different setup might be required. With featured resources not showing up, there is very little difference with having a waitlist for the actual visual spots and this system.

I personally also find the pricing of 'premade builds' to be a bit high now that you have to scroll down much further to get to the section, and it seems people agree with me because only 4 out of the 5 spots are actually taken right now, and I'm pretty sure that is only the case because the threads that hold those spots were paid very far in advance. It actually INCREASED from the 35 per week I already found too high to be worth it (I lost interest after it increased past 20 per week) and is now $40 per week, making it the same price as a sidebar banner, which gets so much more exposure. To reiterate, a premade builds sticky is apparently worth the same as the 3rd priciest front page ad, beaten only by bottom bar ads and sidebar SQUARE ads, both of which are actually invisible to paid users, meaning they might actually be worth less in reality.

I think it might be a good idea for everyone that has paid for featured resources in the past and has paid for them since this change to get together and compare their statistics, see how many views they gained from each ad they bought.
Purchases depend on the resource itself so are not a valid statistic, but views are, or close enough.
If it turns out that the views per ad have significantly decreased with the new changes, you have hard data to back up a petition to either revert to the previous system or else lower the prices of the ads by the same ratio as the decrease in views.

This should honestly be the same for the pricier ads in general every time something changes that affects their exposure.

$40 per week for a forum sticky that's 3/4ths the way down the site's front page, and not even the most visited area of that subforum (established servers, videogame items, minecraft accounts and 'other products' all have more activity) is absurd, and I'm fairly sure the only reason the price went that high was because of the high demand generated by the premade shops in the pricing period between $20 and $35.

 

[Zodiac]

Yeah 16 featured is way too much

 

[Ivain]

Yeah 16 featured is way too much

Especially with only 6 showing.

 

[Nekio]

My latest invoice of two months:

Trying to renew it for another two months:

Wtf is that? Double price and 15 resources instead of 4 showing up?

 

[MrAniman2]

I've just boycotted all my MCM ads at this point, it's quite ridiculous.

Try to beat the $40 price tag in Premade Builds section . I stopped considering ads after price jumped over $15 in Premade Builds section as I strongly believe Mc-Market doesn't do enough for its creators to justify this price tag... But as long as there will be people ready to blindly give a major share of their earnings to Mc-Market nothing will change.

 

[Ivain]

Try to beat the $40 price tag in Premade Builds section . I stopped considering ads after price jumped over $15 in Premade Builds section as I strongly believe Mc-Market doesn't do enough for its creators to justify this price tag... But as long as there will be people ready to blindly give a major share of their earnings to Mc-Market nothing will change.

That will end soon though. I know Oddysey etc make a decent amount per month but at some point its just no longer going to be worth it. There's already been an open slot for several weeks so once the ads bought under the old prices are gone I doubt there'll be much in premade builds.

 

[Mick]

The price being $10/week with only 4 featured resources was always far below what the price should have actually been set to, but due to limitations with the ads manager previously it wasn't possible for us to set a limit per category for the amount of featured resources.

In our announcement we explained this change, and all we have done now is bring the price and number of available featured resource positions up to try and match the demand. Before we made this change, we had literally over 100 queued featured resources. Since the price was so low for the amount of promotion you get is, the people who had slots would almost never stop paying and so it could take several years for you to get your slot, which isn't fair or sustainable.

Now we adjust the prices of featured resources in the same way that we adjust the prices of stickied threads. If there's too much demand and queues we'll up the prices but if there's very little demand/interest we will lessen the cost. Essentially this means that we're able to sell the slots to the most successful people willing to pay the most, and it works out best for MC-Market and ensures queues aren't several years.

We know this certainly isn't a very good change for the people who previously had featured resources, but the change was necessary. Previously you were getting potentially a hundred dollars a month of value for only $30/month or something like that.

We won't be decreasing the number of featured resources going forward, we will of course continue adjusting the prices as necessary though.

Denied, thanks for the suggestion