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Yes and that platform can be a simple exchange of buyer and sellers information.
A platform like Budtrader for instance. No vetting whatsoever, simple exchange of information where you make a gamble each time you engage with someone and are asked to complete the transaction outside.
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Or it can be a storefront where you have to buy directly from the site and it acts as a middleman for all payments.
Acting as a middleman for payments falls under the money transmission and money service business regulations. It is $1M requirement to obtain such a status and $500k/yr to maintain. Peer-to-peer payments is the only way
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So if I’m going to advertise for my company I would probably want to send business to my website or wherever I make the most profit on the sale right?
Sure. How much do you spend on advertising your website?
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As a producer of products that your site brokers what reason do I have to work with you instead of someone else? If you’re going to charge a lot for the service then I would expect something in return.
You can work with anyone else that offers a better service. A seedbank will likely take 40%+ from you. Is it worth the logistics they do? Can you fully trust them with how they handle your products? Do they pay you upfront?
7% is not charging a lot. Let’s be serious.
Some breeders went from 0 to thousands in revenues using exclusively Strainly. Are you actually using Strainly when you speak about sales?
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If strainly is going to take a percentage then I would expect something for that fee.
That something is you creating an account and posting listings for free to get your stuff in front of thousands of eyeballs in a matter of minutes, and make a sale through a formal workflow that keeps you safer than on IG or forums. If using our payment system, it is also the guarantee that you cannot get a chargeback, since it is technically impossible.
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If the payment model moved away from a percentage of every sale to a simple monthly membership to be able to sell. Then it would be better vibes all the way around. Nobody spying on you trying to keep every transaction on the website. It wouldn’t matter where the sale happened because it wouldn’t change the strainly fee.
And you would probably be saying that you have to pay before having any idea if you are going to make a sale.
The monetization strategy you suggest has been suggested by others… and here are my findings after analyzing this strategy (even before it was suggested):
-You can make 100 transactions from a same listing, imagine you pay a subscription for one month, post all your listings (max out your monthly allowance) and then never renew your plan. That example is not extreme. There are MANY listings on here that have been listed for many years and through which sellers made hundreds of transactions. So you pay once $29 and then make thousands each month, for years on those listings. Strainly cannot survived being gamed like that.
-You know what else is going to happen? Sellers will post a listing then will edit that listing endlessly to sell different items using the same listing. e.g. they sold a pack of Cannarado Genetics, they will flip that listing for a pack of InHouse Genetics, change the photo, description… and bingo, they got free listings, hardly ever pay any fee. If I charge you for editing a listing, you will not like it. You could forget a 0 to your price or leave a typo in your listing. You want to drop the price of your listing, should I charge you again? You’d be screaming, rightly so.
-I never wanted to make paying a fee a condition to be able to post. I think the spirit of Strainly has always been to allow people to post for free, be as open as possible. Does not seem fair to charge someone who wants to let go one pack. You might have never tried Strainly in the first place if I had asked you to pay to post. Even charging a $2 fee to post a listing makes me a bit uncomfortable. 1. That would possibly reduce options for buyers and 2. it seems unfair for someone paying a -mandatory- fee and not making a sale from the listing(s). It would kinda force sellers to gamble on the fee. I feel better by charging for an actual feature or sale %. When you pay Strainly a fee, you get something in return, be it a/many bump(s), a/many newsletter feature(s), a permission to list auctions… you always get something if you pay Strainly (not “maybe”). I would like to avoid Strainly becoming a sort of an elite club for those who can afford “the cover”.