Is it too early to ask about plans for the Mall?

October 5, 2023 12:39 PM

I'm working on holiday/ end of year sales plans for my artistic venture and wondered if there's anything in the works to promote the MeFi Mall this year? It felt like it was sort of forgotten last year.

I mentioned this in a Talk post last year, but I had a few ideas that could boost the mall while helping to support Metafilter:

- Ask vendors to give back a % of every sale that comes through the site (I would do this in lieu of - actually maybe even in addition to - the discount I currently offer)
- Offer premium placement / banner space / spotlight posts for a fee
- Add an "I have a shop in the Mall" feature to the profile page, similar to the "I help fund" callout

Thanks for any updates, or for adding this to the to-do/think about list!

posted by Sweetie Darling to MetaFilter-Related at 12:39 PM (7 comments total)

There could even be a Mall label on peoples' signature(ish) lines, kind of like staff. So you'd read a comment by someone and think "oh, smart" and then notice that they have a store and want to check it out.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 2:33 PM on October 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

There could even be a Mall label on peoples' signature(ish) lines, kind of like staff. So you'd read a comment by someone and think "oh, smart" and then notice that they have a store and want to check it out.

My concern about that is it provides a bit of a financial incentive for people to post a lot.
posted by aubilenon at 3:56 PM on October 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

This would be nice, honestly, like, I have Christmas presents to buy and want to get things that are weird and wonderful, and also would like to benefit other mefites.
posted by corb at 7:38 AM on October 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

My concern about that is it provides a bit of a financial incentive for people to post a lot

Fine by me: if their posts suck we can flag them for removal. This place can use more FPPs.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:03 AM on October 6, 2023 [7 favorites]

There could even be a Mall label on peoples' signature(ish) lines, kind of like staff.

This feels like too much of a formal endorsement, and a way of creating a kind of hierarchy of users. A profile widget or field, sure. Something on a par with the way we identify staff, official representatives of MeFi itself? That feels way disproportionate.
posted by Dysk at 12:28 AM on October 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm enthusiastically in favor of this! For Mall vendors who give MeFi a cut, I'd even be in favor of putting a star or something against their username everywhere - just for the duration of the season, perhaps?

> My concern about that is it provides a bit of a financial incentive for people to post a lot.

Mayyybe but what's the harm in greater engagement? Spam only tends to become a problem on bigger sites. On here spam gets flagged and deleted quick, and our canny mods have had image tags disabled since forever, and there's plenty of checks built in against anyone abusing the comment section for profit.
posted by MiraK at 10:18 AM on October 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

This sounds like a great idea and thanks for the idea of kicking a percentage back to the site, it is appreciated. Not aware of any particular status on this, so we're in a wait and see mode.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 1:18 PM on October 17, 2023