I think we are hitting on some very important issues regarding online sales of genetics. 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? If strainly is going to take a percentage then I would expect something for that fee. I probably wouldn’t want to advertise for strainly with my own money. They provide a limited amount of exposure at the moment. A lot of cannabis people don’t even know who they are. So there’s value in the platform but the question is how much. The problem is a lot of sellers are/were directing business away from strainly because of their transaction fees. That forced the heavily handed screening of sellers to make sure sales stay on strainly. 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. Basically you just pay for advertising because that’s all they can really offer anyway. Promises to protect the customers safety sound nice but in reality are very hard to do. They also sell advertising space to vendors in the industry so it’s not as bad as he’s making it out to be.
You’re getting the platform to sell from 
Yes and that platform can be a simple exchange of buyer and sellers information. Or it can be a storefront where you have to buy directly from the site and it acts as a middleman for all payments. The market will decide what works best not any of us.
I got this from one of my favorite sellers on strainly. He’s one of the nicest people I’ve had the pleasure of doing business over the years, a wonderful Canadian.
I don’t want to throw shit on anyone, this is pure customer information about why multiple breeders have left strainly in such a short notice.
"Strainly changed one day to a Bitcoin Only system and wanted 7% of all our sales plus a monthly membership fee on top of that. I lost 100% of my business for 2 weeks not a single sale. I went from 4k a month to nothing. I told the owner of the site his ideas were not going to work and the site would die if left the way he changed it to.
Well after that he accused me of steering customers to my web site because I posted a photo of my seed bag with my web address on it. He deleted all my ads. said I could re post them if I wanted to. I’m not into playing games like little kids so I told him to screw off.
He then offered me for $300 a month to link my Strainly page to my web site. At that point I wasn’t going to give him any more of my money.
He then blocked my ip and now I am banned from his site but you can still see my avatar.
That’s what happened."
Pz 
Hi there,
I have to answer this one because we all know who it is, and this guy is far from being a lovely person. He’s the most manipulative person I came across on Strainly in 7 years. He played me for 2 years…
You are listening to someone spreading rumors despite having been treated more than fairly.
Now he goes around smearing Strainly and claiming “many breeders/members left” which is absolutely not the case. When I figured I was likely being lied to on many levels I started looking into the activity of this member a bit closer, and realized how much he was making in sales, and that he was syphoning as many users as he could to his website, even after being told it was against Terms of Use. I offered him the Affiliate plan, which is $299/month and allows sellers to have the Buy button redirects to their own website. It would have allowed him to keep making thousands each month and get our users in his own client database after they purchase from his site. He declined and kept advertising his URL in his profile despite the 2 previous warnings. That resulted in a permanent ban. The Terms of Use are the same for everyone.
There are 5 other people who decided to stop posting. They barely paid a monthly fee in years while making a ton of money. It is understandable that some people will decide to leave when they had taken for granted this service was owed to them for free and that replying with message templates to redirect all users to their own website at scale was their way of operating. It is no longer possible and the incentive for them to stay is gone. FYI, he was actually banned, he did not leave. He may want to take care of his karma.
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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”.
Since you’re going towards the eBay of clones and seeds model maybe you should just bite the bullet and get one of those nice CC merchant accounts. I know it sucks paying the fees but it might be worth it to be able to accept cards on the site. I know you were hoping bitcoin would save you from the fees but I think you know how people feel about that now.
You cannot do that in this industry.
That would mean requiring all our users to go through enhanced KYC and pass their details to this third-party CC processor. I refuse to do this. That would also force our users to pay 8-12% fees to these processors only, before we take anything. Not viable.
The current system allows sellers and buyers to use whatever payment they want on the side, or optionally our integrated peer-to-peer Bitcoin payment system (no KYC, no chargbacks, instant payments).
People do pay our fees in Bitcoin exclusively. It is not a problem for sellers. 90% of sellers use Bitcoin. For those who don’t CashApp or Strike app make it super easy and cost-efficient.
Facts. Everything that Strainly mentioned and most cc processors, including PayPal will revoke your businesses’s transaction privilege when they learn what its for. Head Shops, dispensaries, and even users here, buying seeds from user/sponsors can attest to this. Here in the US the federal illegality makes them jumpy
The Execs of Eaze tried dissimulating the nature of their business to their payment processor. Processor figured it out. Thos execs are in jail now. Very risky game to play.
Yes I’m in the hemp business also so I know about how this works. There are more businesses that are starting to open up to the industry. I’m getting calls every week from new companies wanting to work with us. 8-12 percent is from a few years ago. The rates are getting better every day.
So is this a forum sales call? 
Nope not selling anything. Just trying to let people know that the industry is starting to become more mainstream and to get ready for the next wave of opportunities
Monthly membership. The price depends on how many listings you have. You pay every month for each listing. As a seller I would prefer that to a 7 percent commission on every sale.
Let’s put this on the stress or a bad day but, seriously this explanation was absolutely not at the advantage of your project. He can be a scammer or a real nice person with lefty business practices, and all variations of this … you’re not supposed to disclose randomly the profile of your users at the first “drama-bait”. Don’t forget that it’s not a personal conversation, you’re identified as an entity.
The comparison is biased imho. I prefer to pay 5 digits on a qualified media with qualified audience (show, podcast, magazine… whatever), than 3 digits on an jungle of competitors with all kind of price’s range. You can’t seriously talk about advertising. It’s more a presence, and to be “useful to be seen there” you have to be already known by the mass. Like you logo on a football shirt. If no one know your brand, it’s pointless for the conversion.
This specific ecosystem is more complex. Little breeders are generally acting like a bank, it’s a loan-in-stock to the retailers without interests rates for the said bank. I pass on big players, it’s a hot topic. This 40% is arbitrary. The breeder/seedbank set the retail price, and also the wholesale/B2B price.
Now using a platform like Strainly is being a “one man army” in an unregulated niche. Strainly is not responsible of what is going on in term of products, you can’t say “sorry buddy, i’m unable to sell you for X or Y reason” like a retailer or a wholesaler. You can moderate the abuses, that’s all.
So, yeah. Having a complete firewall for all the retailing headache is something, and it simplify a lot the time you have to spend to increase your perceived valor.
It’s where the problematic of fees/bitcoin enter in game. It’s not an insult at all or a negative opinion, but my vision of strainly is more close to craiglist than anything else for now. At one point, it’s hard to figure out the limit between direct sales and the use of the platform because the job is the same.
Volume isn’t the only factor but it is one of the biggest, both for buyers and sellers. It’s potential, at the very least.
I spent hours trying to make it work with you and explaining why what you were suggesting could not work, being extremely transparent about all the constraints, just like I am here.
Your “hundreds of dollars of missed revenue from unpaid auctions” have been offset by thousands of dollars of normally paid features offered for free.
Your IP has been banned after I noticed you were blasting unsolicited private messages at scale with links to your site and your email address, even after being told to stop. At such point, I had no choice but to take back that gift you were using against the platform and its users.
Based on how hard I tried to make it right for you over the past, you had all the reasons to work with me and get this sorted out. But you acted unethically, posting on Social Media and on your own website how bad Strainly was.
The $300 Affiliate programme is precisely what you needed based on your actions, and as we can all see, you could afford it. A couple other members provided constructive feedback, stayed patient and they have been offered the Pro plan for free. Their sales are back to normal.
I really believe I tried everything to make it work for you but your reactions have been very emotional and disloyal to say the least. Left me no other option.
@Strainly i didn’t want to start shit talk as I said. I only wanted to provide further Information about why breeders are leaving your service. THIS IS NOT aimed towards you, it’s aimed towards the MEMBERS of OG. So if I where you I would take a few steps back and let everything cool off, because right now you are hurting your business and I like strainly.io! I probably as much as anyone here want strainly.io to be as good as possible. I understand that you are struggling to get the income you want. But this is not the way man, making strainly.io look bad in the biggest and greatest cannabis community at this moment.
@KropDuster I’m really sorry if I did something bad, just wanted the members to know…
Pz 
This might be better off in a PM gentlemen 
Everybody can read what I wrote
"Given the level of ethics, I am not even sure anymore if the genetics he sold were authentic, which I feel a bit bad about. "
And it’s true. I don’t give a high level of probability to this, but with all I discovered after months thinking you were a good person who deserved to be treated right, it did cross my mind you could be selling bag seeds…
This whole situation could have been avoided. As I said, I tried really hard. I spent several hours (prob around 5) during a very busy week, answering all your emails, as transparently as possible. Until the very last moment, I intended to find a way to make it work for you despite these changes. You spent almost all your energy smearing Strainly. A dozen of people reached out sharing what you were telling them. I was literally trying to make it work for you as you were smearing me and the platform. Very unfortunate.
@ LonelyOC
Breeders are not leaving Strainly. 5-6 people seem to have decided to close their listings for now, resulting in less than 3% of listings being closed.