Commerical DIY project threads

Hi.

I have been working on a few new projects, and since I have now ventured pretty far into commercial DIY territory,I would like to ask the forum, if its ok to post new threads for project discussion on groupdiy.com. I am not asking the community to support my projects (even if participation is always nice, of course), but I am not sure if even having the threads here constitutes commercial spam on this open user forum

I tried setting up a little sub-page with a forum on my own site with links in the various projects to get out of everyones way here, but it seems people are still using this forum when they have problems. I imaging "everything at one place" is more convenient for the builders + they avoid having to go through the sign-up to yet another forum.

Everything I have done threads for thus far has been projects done "for" the forum (there even was a time when I didn't really make money on it, other than what my family gave me in PCB discounts), and the latest few were home-etch friendly (I posted artwork), but now, I have a 4 layer PCB on offer, which you would have to be a magician to home etch, which means theres no way of doing the project without putting money in my pocket. This seems like a different situation to me, which is why I want to ask.

Thoughts?

Gustav

If you support the group with a white page I see no problem.

Cheers

Ian

Agree with Ian

+1 on that..

Jakob E.

Gustav said:

Hi.

I have been working on a few new projects, and since I have now ventured pretty far into commercial DIY territory,I would like to ask the forum, if its ok to post new threads for project discussion on groupdiy.com. I am not asking the community to support my projects (even if participation is always nice, of course), but I am not sure if even having the threads here constitutes commercial spam on this open user forum

Click to expand...

A good question for Ethan to answer.... There is commercial value from using this forum for free market research, while there is some implicit benefit to the community from getting features included in kit projects that they want.

I tried setting up a little sub-page with a forum on my own site with links in the various projects to get out of everyones way here, but it seems people are still using this forum when they have problems. I imaging "everything at one place" is more convenient for the builders + they avoid having to go through the sign-up to yet another forum.

Click to expand...

Hosting your own forum is cleaner, and using your own forum to manage customer interaction could reduce unproductive noise here. Of course the chicken and egg situation is how do you attract new customers to your website?

A friend of mine has a guitar pedal company (Amptweaker) where he uses customer feedback to drive features and new models quite successfully. Customers apparently like to participate in product design, or think they are.  8)

Everything I have done threads for thus far has been projects done "for" the forum (there even was a time when I didn't really make money on it, other than what my family gave me in PCB discounts), and the latest few were home-etch friendly (I posted artwork), but now, I have a 4 layer PCB on offer, which you would have to be a magician to home etch, which means theres no way of doing the project without putting money in my pocket. This seems like a different situation to me, which is why I want to ask.

Thoughts?

Gustav

Click to expand...

Good luck with your business. At a minimum some white pages support for the forum seems indicated.

JR

Thanks for the feedback

Gustav

It is a good point that the white market actually helps support the grp while the black market does not