NOTE: I am in the process of updating these! Look for a new version the week of May 9, 2016.
It’s been a long time coming. Due to popular demand I’m delighted to announce that the Trade Market is now a Facebook group!! It’s everything you love about the Trade Market (plus a few extras), now live and dynamic on everyone’s favorite privacy-smushing social network.
The Facebook group does NOT replace the weekly Trade Market posts. Those will still run every Monday as usual. Rather the EA Trade Market :: FB edition is a supplement to the weekly posts. This post serves as a brief walkthrough to the group. Feel free to use the comments section here to ask questions.
A few quick notes:
– If you’re not on Facebook you can’t join this group. 😉 Stating the obvious up front.
– EA Trade Market :: FB edition is invite-only. To join, go to the group page and request membership.
– Please read through the About section before posting in the group. This has details on what/how to post.
– Please read through the Welcome Doc before posting in the group. This has an overview of the group.
– NO EXTERNAL LINKS in the group. This means NO LINKS to ebay auctions, sale sites (i.e. Etsy, Bonanzle) or other blogs. You may only list items for sale within the group pages. Why? Because this is all about private transactions.
This post will cover where and how to post your items for sale/trade/wanted, how to leave feedback, and some basics about the group. I purposely structured the group just like some of the other popular FB swap groups (i.e. Lululemon Exchange) so if you’re a member of any of those the policies, rules and guidelines should be familiar to you. The group is invite-only not to exclude people initially, but definitely to exclude anyone who conducts themselves poorly or does not follow through on transactions.
Here’s what the group page looks like. Let’s talk real quickly about the Wall.
To keep things as clean as possible, the Wall should only be used for:
– questions for the group admins
– text-only for sale ads (if you have photos I’ll cover those shortly)
And that’s it. I’ll be using the Wall for announcements and such so by keeping it clean those announcements are visible to everyone. Erroneous posts will be deleted without warning. Not trying to be rude but it’s the easiest way to keep things clean. Again, everything you need to know about posting is covered in detail in the About section and Welcome Doc.
If you have suggestions about how to make the group better, message me (Roxy Effortless Anthropologie) through Facebook.
The tabs (highlighted in red above) are the main navigation of the group. Just to the right of the tabs are the Notification settings — when you first join the group you’ll get emails about everything. You can adjust the settings to get fewer or no emails at all. The tabs themselves are the main dish of the group.
More on each tab…
The About tab is where the details and rules are. When you first click into About most of the text is suppressed (I dunno why, FB UX design for the win!). To see the full text, click the “see more” link which is highlighted in the photo above.
I know the About is pretty long and wordy but there’s good reason for that. Please read through it carefully before posting.
The Events tab is currently empty…I may use this in the future.
The Photos tab is the heart and soul of this group. In here are photo albums devoted to each size of clothing Anthropologie offers, plus additional albums for shoes, accessories, home and kids. There’s also one album for “Wanted” items. Let’s say you have a jacket for sale or trade, size M…
…click into the “FOR SALE :: Size M” album and click the “add photos” button. When you upload your item photo, title it with the product name and size. If you don’t know the product name use the brand instead, i.e. Elevenses Coat size M…
The photo description is where you give details about the item. Again, the guidelines for what information to post are covered in detail in the About section so I’m not going to recap them here, as the About tab may change over time. Any posts that do not meet these requirements will be deleted without warning.
After your photo is uploaded people will only see the image thumbnail. To get more details about an item simply click into the thumbnail. DO NOT USE SOMEONE ELSE’S PHOTO for your sale post. Stock photos, i.e. the Anthro product photo, are fine. But if you use someone’s photo without their permission or a blogger’s photo without their permission your post will be deleted and you may be banned from the group. If you are a blogger and want to use your own photo that is of course fine.
If you do not have a photo, you may post your item for sale as TEXT ONLY on the group Wall. Please do NOT post both a photo and a text post. One or the other.
There is currently only one album for “Wanted” items. This works the same way as for Sale/Trade items — if you have a photo please upload it to the “Wanted” album. Make the photo title what the product you desire is and the size, then give details in the photo description. If you do not have a photo of your Wanted item, you may post a TEXT ONLY wanted post on the group Wall. Please do NOT post both a photo and a text post. One or the other. There is a second home for Wanted posts in the Files tab, which you can use so that people will still see your wanted items even if they fall off the immediately visible Wall posts.
LINKS TO OUTSIDE WEBSITES, EBAY AUCTIONS AND OTHER BLOGS WILL BE DELETED.
IMPORTANT REQUEST: When your item sells or you find your wanted item, please delete your photo or post. I will do periodic sweeps but in order for this group to be successful we need to keep the group pages clean. Old, outdated posts are the quickest way for this group to fail. It takes just a few seconds to be courteous to others by removing your post once you no longer need it. Thank you for your consideration of others.
One thing I’ve long wished for on the Trade Market is a feedback forum. But on a blog it’s easy to make up new identities and it’s hard to track who people really are. On Facebook that’s a little easier. So the EA Trade Market :: FB edition has its own feedback system! Now granted it’s a crude, rudimentary system but I’ve seen it work on other groups.
The feedback system lives in the Files tab. You’ll notice several positive feedback posts, split by small groups of the letters of the alphabet. Please leave your feedback under the first letter of someone’s LAST NAME. So if you had a trade with me (Roxy Effortless Anthropologie) you’d leave feedback under “A” for Anthropologie. If you have a transaction with Jane Doe you’d leave feedback under “D” for Doe and so on.
There’s another file called Negative Feedback which I hope we never have to use. As an FYI one negative feedback may not get you kicked out, but multiples definitely will. It depends on the situation is up to the group admins. Negative feedback is anonymously posted on your behalf by the group admins; more details are in the file.
Did your item arrive quickly and packed well? Let us know. Did your item come two weeks late, with a brown stain the seller neglected to mention? We want to know that too. I cannot stress this enough, you’re not tattling on someone by leaving negative feedback. You’re holding people accountable.
There’s also a file here for Wanted Items which supplements the Wall’s text-only Wanted Items. (This file is here because Wall posts may fall off the front page quickly.) And lastly is the all-important WELCOME :: READ ME FIRST doc. I highly recommend you read that first. 😉
To re-emphasize, this group is all about conducting private transactions. That means no businesses, no auctions, etc. Although it may be tempting to post a link to an ebay auction for a highly desirable auction, don’t. This group is about people working directly with other people and then leaving feedback for those transactions. To ensure community stability we will keep this as a closed, invite-only group. Thank you for respecting each other and have fun buying, selling and trading away!!
Questions? Let me know in the comments.
3 Comments