Add-on Classifieds for XF2

At this time we have no plans to release a dedicated Classifieds mod, although limited Classifieds functionality may be added to the eCommerce mod I'm making, at some point in the future.

We were approached by someone regarding Classifieds before. When I let this person know that I would be releasing an eCommerce mod rather than a Classifieds mod, I was met with some pushback. I've included my answer below as I feel like they do still accurately represent the reason why we haven't released a Classifieds mod yet.

DragonByte Tech said:
If there is no dedicated [C]lassifieds product for XF1 nor XF2, then that means the market for it is too small to be worth the investment. I find it very difficult to believe that not a single 3rd party developer [has] thought to create one if the market was huge (on [third party developers'] end, I'm not talking about how much trading goes on @ [anyone's] site).

For comparison, the Classifieds product we have available for vBulletin 4 has sold less than 1/10 of our most popular product, it has only sold slightly better than a product that has not received updates since mid-2014. At a rough glance, it's easily in the bottom 25% worst selling products in our line-up.

An argument could surely be made that because it doesn't receive frequent updates it may be missing some feature that a lot of Classifieds customers find interesting, and that wouldn't be entirely wrong. However, I would counter with the notion that all of our most popular products receive the occasional email saying "hey are you still developing this, can you add feature X" and so forth.

In short, it does not appear to be worth the significant time investment for 3rd party developers to create a dedicated Classifieds mod at this time.

Further anecdotal evidence exists in this thread - the level of interest has been less than the level of interest I received for my thread regarding the eCommerce mod. I do concede that the fact that I had a (somewhat) complete product to show helped spur interest, but if a Classifieds mod was something a lot of people wanted, there would have been far more interest shown when Arty announced they were making one.

That being said, we are of course constantly evaluating interest and plans are subject to change at any time :)


Fillip
 
At this time we have no plans to release a dedicated Classifieds mod, although limited Classifieds functionality may be added to the eCommerce mod I'm making, at some point in the future.

We were approached by someone regarding Classifieds before. When I let this person know that I would be releasing an eCommerce mod rather than a Classifieds mod, I was met with some pushback. I've included my answer below as I feel like they do still accurately represent the reason why we haven't released a Classifieds mod yet.



Further anecdotal evidence exists in this thread - the level of interest has been less than the level of interest I received for my thread regarding the eCommerce mod. I do concede that the fact that I had a (somewhat) complete product to show helped spur interest, but if a Classifieds mod was something a lot of people wanted, there would have been far more interest shown when Arty announced they were making one.

That being said, we are of course constantly evaluating interest and plans are subject to change at any time :)


Fillip

While that's unfortunate, I do appreciate the reply :)
 
At this time we have no plans to release a dedicated Classifieds mod, although limited Classifieds functionality may be added to the eCommerce mod I'm making, at some point in the future.

We were approached by someone regarding Classifieds before. When I let this person know that I would be releasing an eCommerce mod rather than a Classifieds mod, I was met with some pushback. I've included my answer below as I feel like they do still accurately represent the reason why we haven't released a Classifieds mod yet.



Further anecdotal evidence exists in this thread - the level of interest has been less than the level of interest I received for my thread regarding the eCommerce mod. I do concede that the fact that I had a (somewhat) complete product to show helped spur interest, but if a Classifieds mod was something a lot of people wanted, there would have been far more interest shown when Arty announced they were making one.

That being said, we are of course constantly evaluating interest and plans are subject to change at any time :)


Fillip

I don't know about that. This post alone has garnered lots of views and attention not to mention every time classifieds is mentioned anywhere there are plenty who pipe up. Maybe we're more vocal. Whether that translates to more than marginal volumes I'm not qualified to state but I would imagine it's a little less bleak than you portray it to be.

Fact is there was a working Classifieds for XF1 with a dev that disappeared, it was a fairly good addon at the time of his exit. I don't have sales figures on it but I'd hazard a guess that it was more than a few of us who purchased it (and now regret it somewhat).

I hope your post doesn't discourage @Arty as I do believe there's a market for a robust classifieds addon that isn't just some generic sales/RM/custom field addon that's been bent to fit the mold.
 
I don't know about that. This post alone has garnered lots of views and attention not to mention every time classifieds is mentioned anywhere there are plenty who pipe up. Maybe we're more vocal. Whether that translates to more than marginal volumes I'm not qualified to state but I would imagine it's a little less bleak than you portray it to be.

Fact is there was a working Classifieds for XF1 with a dev that disappeared, it was a fairly good addon at the time of his exit. I don't have sales figures on it but I'd hazard a guess that it was more than a few of us who purchased it (and now regret it somewhat).

I hope your post doesn't discourage @Arty as I do believe there's a market for a robust classifieds addon that isn't just some generic sales/RM/custom field addon that's been bent to fit the mold.

I do not think classifieds have the same effect they had in the past...
personally, If I wanted a classifieds section, and I had the traffic to support
a classifieds, then I would just get a script that was made for the task...

I just recently visited a site that has a classified section, 500k posts,
and the site cant be any deader then Jesus Christ himself. I cant say
how the site has over 25,000 threads and is no more active then a boring party...
 
The most financially successful communities I know all run classifieds as an important part of their site.

On xenforo its often the case that if one developer even says he is releasing a large addon then other developers will consider the slot taken and will not risk competing. So if a classified project goes south then that doesnt mean there is no demand for it. Just read the classifieds threads by mrgoodie, etc. Clearly there is demand.

Thats not to say a classifieds addon will be de facto successful. It all depends on how its thought out and if the essential functions are present and work well. For example if you compare vbulletin social groups to IPS clubs then you can easily spot why the first is dead as a doornail and that the second was built by carefully implementing suggestions & feedback.
 
The most financially successful communities I know all run classifieds as an important part of their site.
Completely irrelevant to the points being made in this thread.

Unless the developer of the Classifieds mod is a bona-fide saint who does not mind spending thousands of hours working on something for little to no benefit, the developer does not care whether you make millions off using their product.

Saying the most financially successful communities run Classifieds is like saying "the most popular forums run an Arcade mod and therefore it is a good idea to release an arcade mod".

No. That's not how that works. That's not how any of this works.

Releasing an Arcade mod still means you are dealing with people who want their 20 year old arcade games to record scores, but it isn't working. Without the source code for the flash game in question, you as the developer are playing a guessing game.
Releasing an Arcade mod still means you are dealing with people who want their $gameHostingWebsite games to record scores, but it isn't working. Those sites have either shut down or have changed the source code to no longer allow downloading of their games by hard-coding the domain names the games send scores to.
Releasing an Arcade mod still means you are dealing with people who want their brand new HTML5 games to record scores, but it isn't working. Because there is no standard for HTML5 games, you are forced to spend hundreds of hours researching each individual game to find out if it's even possible to capture its scores.

All of that means time spent supporting the mod, which is time you are not spending supporting other mods, which is time you are not spending creating other mods.

The developer of the Arcade mod does not care whether your site is 500% more active and you make $500 a week from AdSense as a result of their Arcade mod. They only saw the initial $35 from the sale of the mod, and possibly another $35 a year if it has a renewal fee.

Forum owner yearly income: $26,000
Developer yearly income: $35

Spending thousands of hours a year for pittance in return doesn't sound like a good use of time to me.

On xenforo its often the case that if one developer even says he is releasing a large addon then other developers will consider the slot taken and will not risk competing. So if a classified project goes south then that doesnt mean there is no demand for it. Just read the classifieds threads by mrgoodie, etc. Clearly there is demand.
Low demand is still demand, but when the demand is low and the initial investment is high, it becomes a very silly project to gamble on.

Thats not to say a classifieds addon will be de facto successful. It all depends on how its thought out and if the essential functions are present and work well. For example if you compare vbulletin social groups to IPS clubs then you can easily spot why the first is dead as a doornail and that the second was built by carefully implementing suggestions & feedback.
Then again, what you actually mean by this is "implement 30+ highly advanced features that only exist in applications that took hundreds of thousands of hours and millions of $ to develop, but package it in a product that costs $60 or less, and if you don't implement these features what's even the point of the software?" :P


Fillip
 
Completely irrelevant to the points being made in this thread.

Unless the developer of the Classifieds mod is a bona-fide saint who does not mind spending thousands of hours working on something for little to no benefit, the developer does not care whether you make millions off using their product.

Saying the most financially successful communities run Classifieds is like saying "the most popular forums run an Arcade mod and therefore it is a good idea to release an arcade mod".

No. That's not how that works. That's not how any of this works.

Releasing an Arcade mod still means you are dealing with people who want their 20 year old arcade games to record scores, but it isn't working. Without the source code for the flash game in question, you as the developer are playing a guessing game.
Releasing an Arcade mod still means you are dealing with people who want their $gameHostingWebsite games to record scores, but it isn't working. Those sites have either shut down or have changed the source code to no longer allow downloading of their games by hard-coding the domain names the games send scores to.
Releasing an Arcade mod still means you are dealing with people who want their brand new HTML5 games to record scores, but it isn't working. Because there is no standard for HTML5 games, you are forced to spend hundreds of hours researching each individual game to find out if it's even possible to capture its scores.

All of that means time spent supporting the mod, which is time you are not spending supporting other mods, which is time you are not spending creating other mods.

The developer of the Arcade mod does not care whether your site is 500% more active and you make $500 a week from AdSense as a result of their Arcade mod. They only saw the initial $35 from the sale of the mod, and possibly another $35 a year if it has a renewal fee.

Forum owner yearly income: $26,000
Developer yearly income: $35

Spending thousands of hours a year for pittance in return doesn't sound like a good use of time to me.

Low demand is still demand, but when the demand is low and the initial investment is high, it becomes a very silly project to gamble on.


Then again, what you actually mean by this is "implement 30+ highly advanced features that only exist in applications that took hundreds of thousands of hours and millions of $ to develop, but package it in a product that costs $60 or less, and if you don't implement these features what's even the point of the software?" :p


Fillip

Filip, nothing against you but coming into an addon request thread and pissing all over the idea/suggestion is a tad unwarranted. I respect your opinions on the matter as you are a senior dev with some experience but you're turning this into an off topic discussion.

Appreciate it.
 
He did not just come here to piss on your classifieds parade, he was asked to come here and offer his input. Last time I checked this was a discussion forum.
 
Filip, nothing against you but coming into an addon request thread and pissing all over the idea/suggestion is a tad unwarranted. I respect your opinions on the matter as you are a senior dev with some experience but you're turning this into an off topic discussion.

Appreciate it.
I was summoned to the thread, hence why I replied in the first place. If I see someone replying (directly or indirectly) to the merits of the points I made in my first post in this thread, I may continue to reply in order to clarify and/or add additional context to my points.

I also do not agree that discussing whether it's worth a developer's time to develop a Classifieds product to be off-topic in a thread discussing whether a developer wants to spend their time developing a Classifieds product.

That being said, I don't wish to disrupt the discussion so I'll refrain from commenting in this thread going forward.


Fillip
 
I was summoned to the thread, hence why I replied in the first place. If I see someone replying (directly or indirectly) to the merits of the points I made in my first post in this thread, I may continue to reply in order to clarify and/or add additional context to my points.

I also do not agree that discussing whether it's worth a developer's time to develop a Classifieds product to be off-topic in a thread discussing whether a developer wants to spend their time developing a Classifieds product.

That being said, I don't wish to disrupt the discussion so I'll refrain from commenting in this thread going forward.


Fillip

Appreciate your understanding and I'm not intentionally trying to stifle opinions here just want to keep discussion on the requested addon and not the micro economics of app/addon development.
 
I agree with @DragonByte Tech 100% and I am not even a coder. It is easy to be selfish and say "I want a classifieds, and there is demand for it" however, from DBs perspective, he is only getting $49-$99 per sale, plus yearly renewals, until people get bored, then move onto the next shiny object addon that comes on the market at that time. Forums have already had their hay-day, and so have classifieds, and I am sure the demand is not really there as it was in the past, so I do not see this type of addon that would really have to be advanced for a select few XF forums, and once that well is tapped, then what, you expect DB to keep up with updates with few sales that just trickle in every now and then? Sorry, I dont see it....

I am bored, I think I will buy XF Gallery....
 
For anyone who is interested in creating a classifieds addon, please have a look at the brilliant classifieds addon for inspiration.

In regards to demand: This $45 addon has gotten 190 purchases so far, while IPS has a much smaller marketshare than XF. The addon is only available for IPS 4.1 and above and requires the $100 IPS Commerce. There's also a competing classifieds addon with over 200 purchases of $50 plus renewals. Also requiring IPS commerce. So in essence 400 people have paid a total of 20k to 60k total depending on if you include the cost of ips commerce.

My point is that if classifieds can be successful on IPS then surely there is demand for a well polished addon for XF.
 
I agree with @DragonByte Tech 100% and I am not even a coder. It is easy to be selfish and say "I want a classifieds, and there is demand for it" however, from DBs perspective, he is only getting $49-$99 per sale, plus yearly renewals, until people get bored, then move onto the next shiny object addon that comes on the market at that time. Forums have already had their hay-day, and so have classifieds, and I am sure the demand is not really there as it was in the past, so I do not see this type of addon that would really have to be advanced for a select few XF forums, and once that well is tapped, then what, you expect DB to keep up with updates with few sales that just trickle in every now and then? Sorry, I dont see it....

I am bored, I think I will buy XF Gallery....

Normally I wouldn't respond at this stage because it won't end well but to your point:

1. I'm not sure what my state of self has to do with this. It's an addon request thread, we're all selfish and want new stuff. There is obviously 'some' demand for it as evidenced by the support so far. Also there is no competition currently for a classifieds addon which is another bonus.

2. Not sure why you're quoting a theoretical sales flow here. DB Tech has made his opinions on the matter clear, he won't be developing/selling one and we can all move on from there. So this whole price discussion that you're playing out for us is entirely moot about an addon that doesn't exist from a dev that doesn't want to do it anyway.

3. I don't know why you're putting down forums and classifieds and addons on the XF official forum. I'm not sure that adds value to this discussion.


For anyone who is interested in creating a classifieds addon, please have a look at the brilliant classifieds addon for inspiration.

In regards to demand: This $45 addon has gotten 190 purchases so far, while IPS has a much smaller marketshare than XF. The addon is only available for IPS 4.1 and above and requires the $100 IPS Commerce. There's also a competing classifieds addon with over 200 purchases of $50 plus renewals. Also requiring IPS commerce. So in essence 400 people have paid a total of 20k to 60k total depending on if you include the cost of ips commerce.

My point is that if classifieds can be successful on IPS then surely there is demand for a well polished addon for XF.


Thanks Alfa, good to see it's at least being implemented elsewhere.
 
I think it is commercially viable for XenForo too.

While I would love to have a classifieds add-on for XenForo, I don't think that such an add-on for XenForo can be "commercially viable".

See the classifieds add-on @Alfa1 recommended above. It costs $45 and was sold 190 times. Even if we assume all 190 licenses have been paid for and the $45 stay with the developer, the revenue was $8550 which is by far not enough to cover even the development and coding costs (even in states like Vietnam or similar low income countries).

And if you would charge $190 for such an add-on for XenForo (which would be okay in my view) you will get a lot less customers and still not reach the break even point.
 
My point was that on a platform like IPS there were 400 licenses sold for 2 classifieds addons in a relatively short period of time. XF does not have any Classifieds addons and the 64 pages of discussion of the addon by mrgoodieshoes shows that there is significant demand here. $45 would be really low for a classifieds addon IMHO. On IPS people have to buy IP.Commerce for $100 plus 6 month renewals.
 
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