As many of you are well aware, the team at SalonGeek.com are rabid defenders of keeping the site Spamless. One of the downsides to anti-spam rules is that it can sometimes prevent valid and legitimate events, special dates, and classes being posted that would have otherwise provide a valued service to the community.

We are testing a new process and procedure that aims to provide a valid platform for Event Organisers to post legitimate dates of courses, events, etc... in a manner which keeps the site Spamless.

So how does it work?

Events are posted by Event Organisers in the Calendar or the Event Forum. Once posted, the date is then queued for moderation. When the date is reviewed by the moderation team and the entry is approved, it will then appear in the calendar and a new thread will be created in the Events forum to allow members to discuss the event.

Can anyone post?

In an effort to ensure we keep things as tidy and spam free as possible we created a nominal cost subscription that allows an individual to post events they are responsible for. This is the Event Organiser subscription that is accessible via your User CP settings. Note that this paid subscription does not offer any additional benefits apart from being able to post Events.

Whats left to test?

The system works and is tested as much as it can be at this stage without now releasing it live into the community to see if it truly provides a benefit. Depending on user feedback, it is safe to assume that there will be some tweaks to the system in the upcoming weeks. Please provide us with feedback and support for the team as we work to make SalonGeek.com even better for the future

More?

More information regarding the rules and processes of posting events can be found in the FAQ or by clicking here.

nJoy

Seems very fair and logical to me. It will also make it user friendly to find out 'what's on'

Its a fantastic opportunity for those who want to advertise their coming events to a massively large audience of people in the industry and at a very reasonable price....you couldnt even print posters for that price...

The idea and moderation seems sensible to avoid spam as does charging a nominal fee - it encourages a commitment and avoids just anyone posting. The act of having to register and pay something does the job.

I was surprised when nominal equates to £20 a month

If the fee is there to discourage spam the figure could be £1 per annum and it would fulfill that task.

I would be prepared to pay a nominal annual fee to ensure we can avoid spam. £20 per month/£150pa seems high

Mike

The fee of £150 per annum (£12.50 per month) is pretty cheap when you consider the cost of advertising a virtually unlimited amount of classes and course dates over the course of a year to 6,000 unique visitors a day.

The fee was chosen as a way to ensure some entry level of quality control. Personally I felt that any less and we would be inundated with 'noise' events like "Tea with aunt Jayne", etc... Which would drown out classes offered.

Sam, will we still be able to put non profitable events like geek meets etc on the social groups?

Sure, the team are still in discussion how best to handle these types of events

I personally think the fee is about right, if I were to advertise in my local house-to-house magazine that gets delivered to 16,000 houses per month it would cost me £25. This is a site dedicated to salon professsionals so the target audience is already in place to the hard work is already done! Any cheaper and you'd get every joe soap advertising events that aren't really all that relevant.

I agree that £12.50 a month is not an unreasonable advertising fee Sam and is a sensible setting for revenue generation. My point is that if the charge is levied to discourage spam I think you could set it a lot lower to satisfy that. For example if you just asked that all advertisers be premium geeks that would take a level of noise out that would probably make it workable.

Just a thought.

Mike

I appreciate your point of view Mike, but still disagree that it is any kind of entry barrier. The price is what it is at not for revenue generation, but to ensure only serious events are posted.

Yep I agree, if someone advertises an event that for instance is £100 for the day plus what ever they may buy at the event and then generate an interest and 20 geeks pay up and go to just this one event, then the £12.50 is a drop in the ocean, concidering £2000 is being paid to the event organiser plus £ spend at "the Event".
How much would it cost in admin time and hours to email, snail mail or print the "Event News" a tad more than £12.50.......and you can advertise more than one event for that month......and all it takes is one entry, one person and its done, no emailing printers with proofs, no back and forth calls about how this or that needs changing......more time left to actually organise an event and not being bogged down by paper work.....
If you are someone that holds events on a regular basis, then it becomes even cheaper as a yearly subscription is your best option.

Now people that are dead serious about their event, will know that this is a revenue maker for them, one that is the easist way to target their audience.... and it will stop the not so serious thinking twice about spending their money or hey hang on, it will make those not so serious, more serious and become event creators that will have a fab tool to increase their revenue and their fan-base.....

Win - Win in my book......

This is a wonderfull idea and hopefully will help clean up some of the postings on the general boards and for those that are seriouse about their buisnesses and growing them and of course offering good education to others then this is ideal.

Undoubtedly it will also make things easier for the mod's....I can just see it in my minds eye...someone posts..."OMG ive got XXXX coming up to teach me how to wax the ass off my poodle on 22nd Nov...ive been told 6 people are needed so if you want to bring your pooch along its only £275 and you do get a certificate of attendance which makes for ideal toilet paper after so very good value for money"...and the mod's will now be able to reply..."the voice inside says "events section"

Well done Sam...good way of tidying things up and for those wanting to promote a legitimate event ...whereby they will undoubtedly derive a commercial benifit from using it....then its only right that they should pay to advertise and at the same time put something back into the site.

Will be interesting to see if it survives into the long term and becomes a permanent fixture

Early days but I can see this really taking off. Better than the Events social group.

It appears in the new posts search so not going to be missed. I can totally see the benefits for both parties.
Posted via Mobile Device

Thought I would bump this up for the benifit of the site and for those peeps that maybe are a little unsure about this means of advertising events.

On the face of it this might look expensive and possibly it is if you are only planning one event.

However if you are planning regular events then this is well worth the money...in fact our costs for being able to use the system were recovered within days of the first event posting we did....so its a big thumbs up and well worth the relatively low investment

Would be good to see other events posted other than just the two companies currently using this new system

Yey good to see more and more companies signing up