Wednesday 28 January 2009

It’s been a really hectic start to the new year as usual, not even had a minute to update the blog!

Great news for the start of 2009... Wightbay is getting more and more popular and last week saw us break new records for the number of visitors (nearly 62,000 visitors in just one week!).
Most the island must be surfing the site every week.

I have made some changes today to help us make some money to keep this great community site running smoothly. We’ve introduced a very small fee of just £3 for all motors listings. The extra revenue we hope to generate will help us cover the increasing costs that come with being such a popular free site (web servers, technical development, moderation etc etc!). Everything else is still free, so if you need a bit of extra cash to start the new year, start placing your ads now!



26 comments:

Anonymous said...

train your sales and marketing team to sell advertising space and keep this free! £3 is too much

Anonymous said...

yes i agree, you could even just charge the trade accounts!

Anonymous said...

I agree, just came to list my car and have been put off by the £3 fee. I thought the whole point of this site was that it was supposed to be free.

Anonymous said...

thats true i always put my ads on here but now do not as i think £3 is too much.

Norbie said...

This is supposed to be a free site. You are already making money through advertising. Do not charge individuals to list ads, only trade. This is disgusting and you will put a lot of people off with this.

Anonymous said...

How can you charge us for ads? People will just post them in the wrong categories (like they are already) and the site will become really messy. Either you charge everyone (and we'll all go use other sites instead), or keep it free and put up with the adverts everywhere.

Anonymous said...

If you charge £3 that's at least 1/2 your viewing numbers gone, i will not use the site as i know no one that will pay £3.

Anonymous said...

Quite clearly you feel your site has the quality and thoroughfare to allow charging.

However I feel your regular customers will feel otherwise and will use other publications such as Auto Trader that are designed to sell cars and do it well. Putting off your customers is not good practice on such a young site especially in a place where word of mouth is prevalent.

When you have nobody advertising in motors and you cannot sell advertising because of the lack of hits please come back and read this message and have a drink on me.

I am off to Auto Trader, bye

Anonymous said...

you must be making enough money from the advertising space to warrent not having to charge £3 to list a car. i agree with all the comments above, this will make the site very messy and will slash the number of visitors.


really not the smartest thing to do as the whole point of wightbay is to list things for free.

Anonymous said...

totally agree this price is silly, make money on companies not users! booooo

Anonymous said...

people have already started putting adverts in other parts of this site this is very silly managment by wightbay!!!

Anonymous said...

bit of a joke really, a free classifieds and u charge for cars, how about u charge the car companies who flood this site, rather then normal users.. isnt about the money its about principle, aint gona take long before someone else develops a site for cars on island and then ur stuffed!

Anonymous said...

£3.00 is a small price to pay to sell your car unless its less than £3.00 what do people want just add it to the price, what a tight fisted bunch but of course its only a small few people soooooo what how do you expect people to keep in business wightbay staff cannot be earning that much as the advertising is minimal, ok how about charging to clean up the site yes charging for people just advertising themselves wanting work and and the car dealer and all you other scrooges!!!!! How about making people pay anyway as some use it to make a living wightbay might lose a small few but will gain by cleaning up the site and getting rid of the rubbish and its not a charity Just hope I do not get one of you tight fisted bunch round to buy my car
Well you lot asked for it and you are only a small minority
Anyway try a 4 sale sign in your car and then wait forever

Anonymous said...

how can u say that, first as of as I know theres only 2 people actually working on site (after havin spoken to admin) apparently lookin over adverts theres only one person.. then theres jody, whatever it is she does. tbh i think this is all a joke, they aer makin enough of these car adverts, we are gettin BOMBARDED by companies such as ventnor cars, u think they get charged £3 a car?? er dont think so mate... what they need money for development?? and hosting?? lol please dont listen to the lies.. development?? develop what new ways of charging us?? of flooding this site with google adds and banners in order to pay off the investment they made with martin??? this is a joke!! aint gona take long before someone comes along with a good free system thats actually well marketed... then goodbye wightbay cars

Anonymous said...

Was wightbay set up as a charity? and if it was not someone paid to buy it so how will they get there money back? by advertising of course some pay with the advertising boxes and subsidise the rest and the likes of Jodie and ???must be working for nothing how do people make the money to run this? what is the answer someone has to pay and it should be traders the one's trying to advertise everywhere but the boxes
Anyone want to work for nothing I'v got a job for you and you and you.

Anonymous said...

working for nothing?? hardly, these adverts are already making money. how about concentrate on advert sales and such??

at the moment car companies are puttin cars on here every 4 days, completely flooding the system!

this site is turning into a joke, and if u knew anything about settin sites up to get a website like this isnt hard at all. wightbay was just first to market.

soon someone will make one of these and everyone will change over, just watch, someone just needs to market it well ! aint hard

Anonymous said...

no way £3! trade accounts should pay and sell banner space as said in other comments.

Anonymous said...

Hi i have been a member of wightbay for a couple of years now and its been a good free site, but if you start to charge the general public to place a add i am sure a lot of people will lose faith in this site and they will go elsewhere, why cant you just charge all the trade adds on the site as they are the ones making any money from there adds due to jobs and sales they get from there adds. Victor Meldrew

Anonymous said...

but nothin will be done about this because they can.. lol an u guys all lose out because they can, an jodie doesnt answer because this pays the bills so u suck, this site sucks

Anonymous said...

Oh for heavens sake - can't you lot put up with £3 for selling cars for god sake? TIP: Sell your car for £503 rather than £500 job done.

Isn't it amazing how quickly people turn against you when they don't get something for nothing?

Jodie does a great job there I'm sure as do the others, can't we just be grateful?

Put up and shut up or go somewhere else that charge more for less.

Anonymous said...

Pistonheads.com and autotrader.co.uk here i come.

Anyone want to come in on making a NO CHARGE car selling site for the island??

P.S
Hi, I have a 92 reg ex AA Transit van that comes with power steering, Mot till November and 6 months tax.
Has just had new carpet through out.
Has got three seats in the front and four seats in the back with plenty of room for carrying things etc.. Starts on the button and drives and pulls extremely well.

Im looking to swap for something 4x4 that i can take off roading, must have Tax and Mot though

WHY?? Lmao..

Anonymous said...

no you fools, you dont just sell your car for £503 do you, because it might not sell so your all missing the f*kin point.

the running fees for thier business is so so so minimal, they need a trained ruthless salesperson on the phone constantly selling advertising space! That money will pay the rest of the admins wages!

The numbers dont lie though, look at how few cars there are now advertised.

Sad thing is they will only realise this when its too late.

Ken said...

Hiya!

I think it's only fair to have nominal charges for 'expensive' private sale items such as cars, property, jewellery over say £250. It's still cheaper than any paper.

With trader adverts, maybe there should be charges on them all, with minimum 50p, and a percentage charge over say £100 prices. Would YOU give free shop shelf space? Let someone else have free use of your car sales forecourt, perhaps?

I agree all ads should be placed in their proper category. That's down to the site reviewing all ads, and simply deleting all those put elsewhere to avoid any charge.

Finally, please, don't allow any supposedly 'free' offer ads that involve signing up to contracts or engaging professional services. That's not free at all!

I do like the site, will continue to view items (difficult to get to sale categories, though) and advertise. Well done, Jodie!

Anonymous said...

Now for my comments.....

I know Wightbay will lose most of there hits with this change as thats the most active part of the site. (cars for sale)

I already see a new free autotrader website for the Isle of wight iwcars.com and I have already seen flyers posted around newport and the cowes area.

If you are going to charge sellers to use your site then you need to think about having a ad free site.

Cant have the best of both worlds!!!

I know how much wightbay charge for a banners on the site so i know that can fund a server and wages.

as sellers why would you pay to list a car on a site when all there traffic is diverted away from the site?

Sj said...

if wightbay start charging i wont be using it anymore!!theres plenty of other free sites to use

Jon Sinden said...

SO sad complaining particularly when very few of you people can actually spell.

You think you know it all don't you? How can a £10 per week banner pay someones wages you thicko? Grow up, shut up and f*** off to another site then as there are plenty of others happy to use this site. As for the ones stating it's easy doing a site like this, where's your version then eh? and, I hope you are well versed in asp too.

And stop posting as Anonymous you gutless gimps

%CASE CLOSED% :)

 

website tracking statistics