This mod enables you to launch a peer-to-peer community marketplace that is integrated into your vBulletin forum.
Here is how it works:
1) Install the plugin.
2) Customize the categories you want in your marketplace.
3) Contact Chad at Panjo: chad@panjo.com to activate your marketplace.
4) When a seller goes to a new or old subforum dedicated to buying/selling/trading, and clicks on the "post new thread" button, the mod will load a listing creation form.
5) The seller will create a listing. The listing will appear in the marketplace. A synchronized copy of the listing will appear in the appropriate buy/sell/trade subforum.
Is this plugin free?
Yes, this plugin is free.
Can you make money with this plugin?
Yes, you can optionally use this plugin to generate marketplace transaction revenue.
How is it with mobile?
The marketplace loads with layouts that are optimized for high res desktop, tablet, and mobile.
This does seem pretty cool. I don't know if my users will use it when eBay is just a click away and has a much larger userbase, but if it's included in 4.2.2 I might activate it for a while and see.
Here's a question - does the system handle delivery (download) of digital products (PDFs, or the like)? Having users sell digital products to each other for real money sounds pretty awesome.
Great question. This is a frequently requested feature. A 'digital locker' is on the product roadmap to better support digital goods.
Yeah, I actually think it looks pretty interesting and I'd like to try it out. Maybe those using it now can let me know if it's possible to try out on a live site in a way that will be invisible to normal users? (It didn't seem to want to register properly on my dev server.)
Anyone go through the details of the privacy policy or terms of service? I'm curious how much information Panjo collects and keeps. For example, does Panjo keep all buyer and seller contact info? Would Panjo ever try to sell that info to a 3rd party or directly try to advertise to my members via email or otherwise?
Doug - sorry for the delay in my reply. As I emailed over the weekend... Yes, you can install Panjo on your live site and hide it from members so that you can kick the tires. You can activate Panjo from within the admin CP. You can disconnect any and all links from the public site to Panjo in order to test it out.
Panjo keeps buyer and seller contact info. Panjo does not sell the info. Panjo plans to send its own 'marketing' emails. For example, a digest of items that might interest a buyer. However a member would be able to unsubscribe from any non transactional email. We haven't sent marketing emails to date. That is on our product roadmap. Members have requested 'what's new' and other similar email subscription options. Those emails would drive members to your site.
I've activated it in 4.2.2 - though my test listing is the only one there right now.
Panjo asked for my email address when I first went to list an item (it didn't when I started to list a second item) and has a note saying it will only be used to notify you of activity on your listing, and will not be sold. It didn't ask for other info - address or anything - though it asked for a shipping country. So all it's got is an email addy and a description of an item, which seems fairly OK to me. If they start directly emailing my members other than that, I'll be surprised (and very pissed!)
(Oh, it asked for my PayPal account, too).
Not much else to report. Most folks selling stuff on my site simply link to eBay auctions, so I don't know if it'll get used.
One thing I don't like about it is that the page title is "Panjo Marketplace", not your own site's.
We didn't use to ask a seller for his/her email. We used to rely on the email address on file with the seller's vBulletin account. We quickly learned that members often have old, bad, or unmonitored email addresses associated with their vBulletin forum credentials. As the marketplace was sending emails to sellers with information about their listing, like a question asked or the fact the listing sold, the sellers were not getting those emails. That is why we ask a seller for an email.
At present, we don't support modifying the page title. We have that on the product roadmap.
As far as I can see, listings don't get mirrored in the associated forum (using the 4.2.2 included installation).
When a seller creates a listing using Panjo and assigns a category to the listing, you can direct Panjo to create a thread post in a designated subform based on the category the seller assigned to the listing. If that feature is not working for you, let us know. There could be a configuration issue.
We didn't use to ask a seller for his/her email. We used to rely on the email address on file with the seller's vBulletin account. We quickly learned that members often have old, bad, or unmonitored email addresses associated with their vBulletin forum credentials. As the marketplace was sending emails to sellers with information about their listing, like a question asked or the fact the listing sold, the sellers were not getting those emails. That is why we ask a seller for an email.
Hmmm... I think the way it should work is that the fields would pre-populate with the info, but give the user the opportunity to edit it. Perhaps with a message conveying the importance of a current email address. The next time the forum member uses the service, it would again pre-populate, but with the email address he used last time.
Still waiting to hear back from Tom Mourmouras on skype still nothing
Thomas was just out at lunch (pacific time). What is the question that you are awaiting an answer on? FYI - over 200 forum owners have spun up marketplaces in the last 48 hours. We are working as diligently as possible to answer everyone's questions as quickly as possible. You can try to skype another team member at: chadbillmyer
Hmmm... I think the way it should work is that the fields would pre-populate with the info, but give the user the opportunity to edit it. Perhaps with a message conveying the importance of a current email address. The next time the forum member uses the service, it would again pre-populate, but with the email address he used last time.
Once a seller submits his/her email the first time, we do pre populate going forward.
Thomas was just out at lunch (pacific time). What is the question that you are awaiting an answer on? FYI - over 200 forum owners have spun up marketplaces in the last 48 hours. We are working as diligently as possible to answer everyone's questions as quickly as possible. You can try to skype another team member at: chadbillmyer
One of the devs were working with me via skype and said the problem would be fixed in 24 hours that was 48 to 72 hrs ago and no word if you need to see my forums just click on my sig. I told them to just update this mod as i have not updated to 4.2.2 yet still running 4.2.1 as I am waiting for dbtech to update some of the pro mods i am using