Phoenic Mall rules! :) discuss ...

I'd like to talk about possibly changing the mall rules. You all signed up under the current rules, so we need to agree to any noticeable changes.

I'm a little frustrated with the level of participation here. We don't need another social commitment, I'm sure. It's more about knowing that when something is posted here, everyone is aware of it within a reasonable period of time. Same-day replies should be normal, I think.

There are a couple ways to address this that I can think of. You may have better thoughts. Here's what I have:

Require daily or every 2 days login here. At the bottom of the page you can see

Quote :

Members connected during last 48 hours : 4bruders, doyler, Egg, msn_fanatic, Roby, SillyJillyPrincess, tsangpo, xaheras, zoro

Anyone whose name doesn't show up would be AWOL.

or -
Require posting weekly sales reports in the Individual Sales Tracking topic.

The good thing about this is that there's an actual reason for sharing the data - we can keep up with each others' successes and challenges, and be a better support.

Note that if we add this to the rules, it makes the forum itself an integral part of the mall - a necessary component rather than a helpful bonus.

I can live with things more-or-less as they are though, so if the consensus is not to change anything in the official rules that's ok. I'd still like to encourage people to post their weekly sales figures, and to pop in here regularly throughout the week. I guess news can still be spread via individual neomail for those who haven't used the forum.

*takes Egg out shopping for business jackets*


I'm fine with posting in the forum my stats. It's neat to look at them, sometimes I've forgotten to do so one week, but as soon as I remember I do so.

I have to confess that I don't track my sales and profits. Perhaps I am the only maller that doesn't. I've tried a time or too to put in an excell tracker but I can never get it to go. Its always been an exercise in frustration. I'm 58 years old and this stuff doesn't come easy to me. But then again I would probably be more motivated if i were dealing with real money. I could easily post my shop tills which would be gross revenue but the idea of sorting out profit from investment is daunting to me.

I do log on about 6 out of 7 days to see if something is happening in the mall. I don't always post but will make more of an effort in the future.

Egg I want to say that I am grateful to you for taking on leadership of the mall because it is a lot of time and effort to run a mall. I want you to know that your effort is noted and appreciated. :howdy:

Every mall that i have been in has had this participation problem. I do think that it would be helpful to have some sort of systematic way of making everyone check in with the group. It is reasonable to have a set of criteria that must be met to maintain mall membership.

zoro

I think checking in here regularly is a good idea. Perhaps mandatory log in every 48 hours is a bit much though (people may just log in, then log out) but I think sharing tracking data is important.

Zoro: To track your data you don't have to do much to get some good results. Its not necessarily item by item, but if you import your sales history to and excel spreadsheet and then take out all your till, or just the revenue from what you plan to restock, you can get a fairly good grasp of what sells and how much you're making.
If you want I can tell you more about how to do that, but I'm sure some of the more experienced mallers have better ways of going about this.

If you sign up to Neohangout.com they have a sales tracker that I use. Its just copy paste and then it gives you sales data by date and number of each item sold.

Also I think that weekly or so check-ins are the way to go

tsangpo wrote:

If you sign up to Neohangout.com they have a sales tracker that I use. Its just copy paste and then it gives you sales data by date and number of each item sold.

A copy and paste tracker might work for me. I could just add it to my daily routine. My application is pending approval.

Nice tip Tsangpo. I signed up for Neohangout.com and tried the sales tracker. It seems like a pretty effortless way to track sales. Like Zoro, I also no longer track sales; although, I did quite diligently for some time.

As far as logging in every two days, I am disinclined to support this, not that it would be bad. I think most people are very busy, and spend what little precious Neo time they have stocking their shop and figuring out the next best Hut to upgrade to--right. That said, I think once a week is certainly reasonable, and if you will be gone longer, you can leave a note in the BrB thread.

Personally, I must connect to a VPN everytime to view this website, because the Great Firewall of China blocks this website (and Neohangout.com) for some reason, so I tend to be lazy for several days in a row before connecting and reading the topics.

I did the cut and paste thing at Neohang out. it looks like a reasonable way to track sales. I haven't had time to figure out what else we can do there.

I didn't realize Chinese players have to get through a firewall to access Neopets. What on earth could be offensive about Neopets to the powers that be in China?

zoro

I cetainly don't think we should make things harder for anyone in China (or anywhere else for that matter).

Egg has been doing an amazing job keeping everything running smoothly. My sales bounce around a lot, but I'd guess they are a bit higher than I saw at my previous mall.

I continue to check-in every day or two, but I can see why others might not be able to pop in as often.

*hugs*

Jill

Well, that's about half the membership weighing in. I think the idea of requiring participation every few days is random legalism :splash: , but has the benefit of giving you something to read when you get here. If you show up every day and no one is speaking, you get out of the habit pretty quick. Any login difficulties just compound the disincentive. Communication is important though, so I have another idea.

The idea of posting your sales activity weekly could be a challenge, if collecting and compiling is too difficult. There are various applications available to help ease the process. Thanks g4kki for the tip! I'll mention the Neodaq one again, which is available for Daq members, and what I use. The time and effort to use these can be adjusted to how much you have available, in either case, I'd think. Obviously there's a real mall-wide benefit to requiring weekly posting of sales. We can help each other more if we know what's going on, and be on top of problems more quickly.

Before we actually change the rules to make this mandatory for everyone, let's just go ahead and see how it works for a while. I'll aim to post my data by Sunday or Monday every week. The format doesn't matter, but at a minimum, item count and till would be most useful for comparison, and hits if you have them. Your shop growth data would be great too!

I'll post some links in the Sales Tracking topic for good apps.

OK let's try the new rules to see how they work. Neohangout is going to work for me for sales data. What ti doesn't capture is the cost of restocking and I know that varies greatly from shop to shop. When I did clothing and grooming the cost of restocking was a fraction of what I'm spending now. I'm not sure if I'm making more profit now but my tills are definitely bigger.

My avatar is broken I'll try to find time to fix it soon.

After reading Egg's message above, I also signed up for Neodaq.com today and tried their shop tracker. It seems like a better tool if you want to track profit as well. I am going to enter data into both until the 1st, and then stick with the one I like best.

Of course, Neodaq.com also has the stock tracking tool. I input my data for that as well to give it a try.