Archive

Bob Treend · Site Admin Joined: 01 Jul 2007 Posts: 80

May 27, 2008

As you can see I moved the WHAT'S NEW to the forum. I think this will work out better. Hopefully after you read this you might look at other areas of the forum and participate.

May 16, 2008

It's no surprise that we are having some problems setting up the membership fee program. This thing is far more complicated than you would think. If you are trying to sign-up for the first time and are having a problem you can email us directly and we'll set up an account for you. It's still free. Send your name, address, email and your preferred user name and password. When it's ready we'll email you. We do appreciate your patience during this transition time and hope to have everything working soon. As to when the billing will start, at this time your guess is as good as mine...

May 5, 2007

We are in the process of setting up the program for membership fees. There will be a $20 annual fee for full use of the site. Over the next couple of days it will be installed and during that time there may be a glitch or two. If you have a problem, please be patient while we work on this. Be assured we will get the bugs out ASAP. Thanks, Bob

Follow up: Have to share this... I posted the above about an 90 minutes ago and have already received 16 emails all saying they will support the site. I really appreciate this. After almost 2 years of paying for everything myself I sure could use the help. In case your interested, I've spent almost $20,000 so far, not counting the thousands of hours of work I've put into it... Creating a web site like this is not easy or cheap, and the expenses go on. Right now the programmer is working on something to improve the promotion of the Featured Seller's and some other smalll improvements. I believe this site has a bright future and hope you will all continue to use it and help it grow. Bob

April 16, 2008

Warning Update

He's back, registered under another name and posting ads, which I deleted. I hate to say this but, be sure you know who you're dealing with before you do any business with someone in France. Especially if it looks like a ''deal''. He seems to specialize in uniforms but could offer anything. There is some info about him on the forum in the Fakes and Frauds section. See SS General's Tunic. Sorry all you good guys in France but I want to protect my members

April 14, 2008

Warning !

There is a guy in France by the name of Dominic Tricoire who keep posting bogus ads. He's harder to get rid of than a nest of roaches! I keep deleteing his ads and cancelling his membership, but he keep coming back. I've checked him out and all I'll say is that if you respond to one of his ads you can expect the worst. Don't be a sucker...

March 5, 2008

The Forum

The other day I was talking on the phone to a member who has been a collector for many years and is quite active in the hobby. I asked him what he thought was the reason that more of our members haven't used our forum. His answer was very interesting. He explained, that he had been looking at, and occasionally using, one of the ''big'' forums for years and had made an interesting observation. While that forum had thousands of registered members, he had noticed that the majority of the posts were by a relatively small group of people. He estimated a few hundred. He said that most of the members had only posted a few times, whereas the ''hard core'' segment contained members who were on the forum daily and had posted thousands of times each. He felt that the forum had become a ''chat room'' for this group of collectors who, in his words, ''didn't have a life''. I did some research and it seems he is correct.... at least about the numbers.

I never intended that our fourm try to ''compete'' with the big boys. They have been around much to long and are too well established, and righfully so, as they have done a great job. However, I had hoped that our fourm would be used mainly to discuss issues pertaining to our site, such as discussions of items being offered etc. Unfortunately, very few of you are taking advantage of this great resoruce. I would like to encourage all of you to join our forum (you must sign up even if you are a member of our site) and post your thoughts or comments. It's a shame not to use it when it has such great potential. Everyone of you knows something or has something to say that would be of interest to the other members...

Membership Fee

I want to thank all those who wrote me about the $20 membership fee we will activate in the near future. With one exception (you can't please everyone) you were all very understanding and express a willingness to help support the site. Much appreciated!

How we're doing

For those interested in the numbers, here are the stats on our site for the month of February. This is directly from our stats report. It may look a little complicated but you should be able to figure out most of it. Thanks for your support!

Month of 2/1/2008 to 2/29/2008
Important Totals
Item Accesses Bytes
All Documents 1,798,366 10,552,689,290 18,352 View Chart

Executive Summary
12,869 unique visitors came to the site, as determined by the typical
behavior of browsers accepting user-identifying cookies and including a
projection of the true number of visitors not accepting cookies.
The web site received 18,353 visits. A typical visitor examined 54.20
distinct files before leaving the site. A typical visit lasted for 5.66
minutes. The longest visit lasted for 1,439 minutes.

Visitors came from 7,224 distinct Internet addresses.

The web server delivered 23,710 unique documents one or more times each.

14 distinct types of documents were delivered.

The web server was visited by 1 distinct authorized users. Authorized users
are required to log into the web server with a specific name and password.

0 distinct Internet web sites were accessed via the proxy server.

There were 121 requests for documents which did not exist on the web server.
The web server was linked to by 784 distinct pages on other web servers.

The web server was linked to by one or more pages found on 377 distinct web
sites.

1,067 distinct search keywords were used to locate documents on the web
server via Internet search servers, such as Altavista(tm) and Yahoo(tm).

6 distinct Internet search servers were used to reach the site.

Visitors used 134 distinct web browsers and other web access programs to
reach the web server. Visitors used 66 distinct operating systems on their
computers. Visitors followed a total of 11,437 distinct, non-trivial
&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;trails&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot; among the documents found on the web server.

February 4, 2008

The time has come

It's been over a year since this site was launched (January 18, 2007) and I've been paying the bills out of my own pocket all that time. With the cost of programming and monthly fees it's come to quite a tidy sum. I believe it's time to ask you members to help with the expenses. Don't get worried, it's not going to be bad.... I've given it a lot of thought and here's what I intend to do. For one yearly membership fee you get full use of the site, just like you do now. You can buy, sell, or auction all you want. Want to run a hundred ads and sell $100,000.00 worth of stuff? No problem. Want to buy from 50 different for sale ads or auctions? Go for it! You're use of the site will be limited only by how much you can handle.

So, how much money am I going to squeeze out of you for all this service? How about $20. a year? That's less than $2 a month and here will be no other fees, commissions or hidden charges. As always your thoughts and ideas are appreciated. I might print them here.... I'll be putting the plan into effect in the next few weeks and hope you will all continue to use and enjoy this site as it continues to grow. Good collecting, Bob

January 25, 2008

Caution

Mr. Fritz Matjaz of Slovenia has had his membership to our site revoked and his ads removed because of complaints from our members. A word to the wise...

Birthday

On January the 18th our site was one year old. Thanks to all for a great first year! We've topped 2000 active members with more signing up dialy. Whatever you have for sale there has got to be a member who wants it.

December 4, 2007

Trying to hide...

I've noticed that a few members are signing up using a phony name and address. This is really not a good idea. If you want to remain anonymous it's going to make it hard for you to do business on our site. When you answer an ad with a name like ''John xxx'', do you really think the other collector will want to do business with you? It looks like you have something to hide or are trying to pull a con job on them. If you are one of those who has used a phony name, I strongly suggest you go to your account and edit the record to show your real name and address. We don't give out this info to anyone, so rest assured your info will be kept confidential.

Sales

In the past couple of days there have been quite a few new items added to our site. But, I see that the total number of pages has remained the same. What does this mean? Simply that things are selling. I'm glad you sellers are having such good results. Spread the word!

Novenber 28, 2007

Thanks to all...

It's two o'clock in the afternoon on Wednesday. I just sent out a ''newsletter'' email to the entire mailing list, half on Monday night and the other half last night. Already there has been over 100 new sign-ups and they're still coming in. And, I'm happy to say, some of the new members are already posting ads. I just want to say ''Welcome'' to those new members and thanks to everyone for your support. Because of you this site is getting better and better all the time....

November 10,2007

New Categories

Just added the new ''International Militaria'' section to our categories at the request of a few of our members. So now you can offer your non-German militaria too. Also, you might notice, we moved the edged weapons accoutrements into the edged weapons category.

Featured Sellers

This week you will see something new on the Home Page. There will be a box which says ''Featured Sellers'' and it will contain one of the featured seller's banners. Click the banner and you go to that sellers items. This banner will rotate so all the featured sellers will get some Home Page promotion. This should be great for them because new people finding us usually see the Home Page first. It's just my way of saying ''Thanks'' to the featured sellers for their support.

November 7, 2007

Firefox

I've received several complaints from members about pages on our site not loading correctly. It took some time and figuring, but I finally determined it was because they were using the Mozilla Firefox browser. If you use it and are having problems, I stroungly suggest you use Internet Explorer to view this site. I know, it's not perfect, but it does work for us....

November 3, 2007

Feautred Sellers

I want to thank those who joined the new Featured Sellers section. It's only been open for about 12 days and we already have 7 members. In a few days we will be adding a link to the Featured Sellers on the My Account page. That's the page that pops up after you log-in. This should give these dealers even more exposure and make it easier for you to jump directly to you favorite dealer to see what's new. I have a couple of other ideas to help the Featured Sellers... just need to work out the details in my head before I proceed.

October 26, 2007

Follow up....

It seems that my email problems started a couple of months ago when Roadrunner became Comcast. No need to go into tech details, let's just say things changed and not for the better. I ''think'' I've got everything sorted out now. If you have tried to contact me and got no reply it's because of the change. Please don't hesitate to follow up if you need to contact me. Thanks for your patience! info@germanmilitariacollectibles.com

October 22, 2007

Ok, it's up! We just got the Featured Sellers working. You will find the link on the home page. Just give it a try (log-in first) and you'll see what it's about. If you would like to have your banner displayed, you are welcome to join. The main thing is you have to have at least 25 items for sale or auction. Email me and I'll send you the complete guidelines and I'll be glad to help you, or create a banner for you. There is no charge.

October 11, 2007

The Great Email Curse

It's unfortunate but email is not perfect. Ever so often I get an email from a collector who is having problems getting in touch with another collector through our site. And, every so often I get an email from someone asking me why I haven't answered his previous email. First, let me say that I ''always'' answer your emails. Even if it's a quick few words, it goes out. I think it's very poor taste not to respond when someone takes the trouble to write. Now, I know I covered this before, but as they used to tell us in the Air Force, ''some people never get the message''. The usual problem with not receiving emails is because they are being ''filtered''. Many email programs have a ''safe'' or ''approved'' list, and if a sender is not on the list their emails will not get through. Be sure you have our email adderess on your list if you have one.(info@germanmilitariacollectibles.com). All emails that are sent when you are answering an ad are sent through our server. If you are offeing something for sale and our email address is being blocked, you won't be able to communicate. You might consider putting your phone number in your ads. This is a problem we will all have to live with until the net is perfect.... don't hold your breath!

October 3, 2007

Comments on the Survey Results

In response to the survey one member expressed his desire to have a feedback system on our site. (This was the first I had heard about his being ''burned'' and I still don't know who he was talking about). I assume he is thinking about something like the ebay system. On ebay every item is sold throught an auction or ''buy it now'', which means that ebay itself has a record of who the buyer is, and only the buyer can post feedback. When someone buys an item through our For Sale ads, he does it by sending an email to the seller and negotiating the sale. Hence, we don't have any way of knowing that every email resulted in a sale, and have no way of knowing who purchased the item. If we put an ebay type system on our site, anyone could post feedback on anyone else, even if they did not do business with them. This could cause some real problems as some members might use the system to trash other members they don't happen to like.

Another member expressed surprise to see that we allow a certain collector to use our site. Our policy is simple. As long as we don't get any complaints about someone ''ripping off'' another member, they are welcome. There are a lot of rumors about some collectors, some deserved and some not deserved. It would be impossible for us to judge each one, so we have to confine ourselves to what happens on this site. As an example of false rumors, I happen to find a thread on a forum some time back, that said I was the source of a repro KC that was making the rounds. This was total b.s., I didn't know anything about it. Still, there are probably collectors out there who will think of the fake KC when they hear my name. Do right by our members and you are welcome to use our site.

As to the idea of the chemsitry approach to detecting fakes. Interesting! I'm afraid this is beyond me. I would hope the collector who suggested it will persue the idea himself. We need all the help we can get.

October 1, 2007

The Survey Results

I want to thank those who took a moment to answer the survey. You comments and ideas are appreciated.

Below are all the responses that I received in their entirety. The only thing I edited were the names of some individuals, as I felt this would be unfair to them. And I didn't post the name of the sender as they may prefer to remain anonymous Otherwise the text is complete and just as I received it.

Some of the problems mentioned have already been addressed and solved. Some others are being worked on and still others are beyond my power to do anything about. I answered all the responses and where I could I offered help. I will impliment those suggestions that I feel would benifit the site. Again, my thanks to those who wrote!

Here are all the responses in the order I received them....

As far as I'm concerned it's fine the way it is.

* * *

Hi , not sure about how to improve the site ? will think about it and send a email if I can sugest anything ? Thanks for putting this up I haven't used it much but plan on soon .

* * *

Bob. This is an excellent site and I can't think of anything that could make it better? As for advertising. I think word of mouth is the best way to advertise. I have gotten a lot of my friends who I deal with to join this site and they say it is a good site especially since replicas are not allowed. Keep up the good work Bobn because you are doing one hell of a job.

* * *

i have only been a member for a very short time but from what i see you guys are the greatest , you help idenify the bogus stuff listed on ebay and from other scorces,you helped with a scam alert for people like that paul norwak or what ever his name was,and i belive a lot of people get removed from the forums because they do not realize that they cant offer things for sale and need to become a member and this should be bold at the start of these threads...thanks and keep up the fantastic work you guys all deserve a pat on back.

* * *

I checked your site a short time ago. I must admit I was surprised to see **** offering items for sale. **** has had a well earned, notoriously bad reputation for at least 25 years that I can recall. I cannot speak for other collectors but as soon as I see his name on a site, I move on and don't waste my time looking further. Your credibility, which is very important, suffers irreparable damage when you are linked with ****. You might want to check this out with other collectors to see if it is the problem I think it is.

* * *

In general I like it, but I will bitch like every other tightwad collector that prices are too high. not many deals., ahh yes I do realise that the''deals'' don't last either. some of the ''vendors'' and their ''as is'' policy on semi questionable items is not real warm and fuzzy. that ***** has alot of stuff period all good.........hmm he has some rarer stuff I will say that you don't see very often and the pics are not that good, is all I will say. he may be 100% legit , I have never been a customer of his and have no beef with him, but the no guarantee by sellers is a problem. just my 02 worth. this guy may be a dear friend of yours so don't be hurt by my comments.

* * *

Too many fakes!

* * *

Thanks for what you are doing.

I used ***** for many years when ***** owned the operation. The website has gone south since ***** sold it. That is what happens when you make too many changes. I am a member but I do not use the website and I will not re-new my membership.

Now to your questions:

Could the website be improved? Probably, but very carefully. Do not make any major changes and only fine tune what you presently have.

The layout and organization seem OK to me.

Everything does seem to work but I have had trouble removing items that have been sold. I remove then from my personal list but they still appear in the general list,

I don't want to see any major changes. Fine tuning only to address glitches.

Getting more items for sale or auction will simply take time.
Something that I have done is to let friends know of the website and this works well. You might ask each member to let friends know of the website. This can work very well.

How to spread the word. Word of mouth between friends is the best option.

I really don't pay much attention to the Blog.

I have received inquires from around the world, Australia, England, South Africa etc.

* * *

Images should expand when clicked, in that you
should be able to have a very good look at the
item.

* * *

The site is very good but does need a section for German weapons parts and another ordinance such as de-activated rounds ect. I think the quickest way to attract new members is to attach links to militaria web ring sites and send notifications to German re-enactment groups all of which universally collect German items as well. Most sites allow free links to be posted. Now that ebay has outright banned anything showing a swastika or any weapons related parts and ordinance this should help to increase traffic to your web site once people become aware of its existence and see links to it on other sites they use already.

* * *

Great site - lots of neat stuff.

* * *

I find the site difficult to navigate.

* * *

I will not continue to participate in any of your auctions, I have been burned 3 times in the short time period I have purchased from this site. I will not recommend it to any one I know.
With out feedback,your sellers are selling stuff, telling people they can have a inspection period and them doing whatever they want and if you look at some of the high end items they are obvious fakes, I got burned in a bad way.
As long as you have no feedback system, you will have no checks and balances that force people into being honest.

(follow-up to previous email) Hello, I left a negative e-mail and I left it while in anger over my dealings with a couple of your sellers. I then decided to look over the site more closely and came to the conclusion that you really are going to need a feedback system. Because you do have a few people selling some bad reproductions, but overall I see some people who are doing it right and I know are good people.
I say this because I have met some of them. In my 30+ years of collecting and selling.
A few bad apples do spoil the whole barrel and I want to retract part of my earlier statement.
I have no idea how much it cost to run a site like you are running and I have no idea what it takes to have a feedback system, I might even start selling on your site just to try to set an example.
My policy is if you do not like it, return it. No one is perfect and I have unknowingly sold reproductions myself and found out later I had made a mistake. So I have probably even done it and never even known that I had done it.
But I do my best to tell people that it is a repro or not.

* * *

Hi --Overall, very impressive, but hard to access, as I can't seem to get logged in. Instructions appreciated.

* * *

I have a degree in chemistry, although I do not work in the field. I also collect militaria of all types. I think a “blog” or some type of network should be created where-in the actual weights in grams of specific medals by individyal mfg could be listed No forger or maker of fakes could get the metal composition exactly right. Different types of Iron and Steel even weigh different amounts. I would never concider a purchase of a Knights Cross without knowing the exact weight of a original! But even 20 or 30 examples from collectors would give a very very close figure top work with.Example hollow back Panzer assault badge bronze 8.25 gm to 8.20.

Or from a diff mfr 7.58 to 7.54 gms. This would give everyone some idea, people would have to purchase a small scale but this can be had for less than $75 or in a pinch bring the item down a jeweler or a scrap gold dealer they all use accurate scales. This could also be used for other items maybe even daggers?????

* * *

Hi Bob, site ok for me

September 25, 2007

Survey

A couple of days ago I sent out an email to everyone asking for your help in improving the site. I know that sometimes, due to the nature of the web, not all the emails are received. So, in case your would like to help and didn't get the email, here it is...

Hi everyone,

In an effort to make our site better I would like to ask your help....

Please take a moment and send me a reply email telling me what you think of our site. You are invited to respond to any or all of these questions, or comment on something I didn't mention. I value your opinion!

How do you think the site could be improved.

What do you think of the layout and organization?

Does everything work to your satisfaction?

What changes would you like to see?

What can we do to get more items for sale or auction?

Any ideas on how to spread the word and sign-up more members?

Is there any subject you would like to see in the Blog?

Is there anything at all you would like to comment on?

I can't cover every possible subject, so feel free to say anything you want.

Thanks for your support and help.

Good collecting, Bob

FOR SALE and WANTED ads

I got thinking about it and it occured to me.... Why should a FOR SALE or WANTED ad expire after 90 days? If the piece isn't sold, the seller would likely still want to sell it. And if the person wants to buy some type of items, he probably still wants more. So, I decided to set the ads to run for a full year and let you decide when to cancel your ad. If you sell something or if you don't want to buy something anymore, just go to MY ACCOUNT and you can delete the ad. And don't forget, you can go to MY ACCOUNT at any time and change your ad too. You might want to take a look at your account and check the active ads in case there is something there that has alreay sold. I hope this will make the site even better and thanks for using us to sell your militaria.

Easier Navigation

I made another change that I think you will like. When you log-in, your MY ACCOUNT page comes up. In order to make it quicker to get to the good stuff I added a direct link to the GALLERY and the HOME PAGE. Take a look and you'll see them. This should save a click or two and get you where you want to go quicker.... And, by the way, any time you want to get to the home page, just click on our logo at the top left of the page and you're there.

August 30, 2007

Two New Categories

At the request of a couple of members we added a Toys and Models category to our listings and are going to make an exception to the ''period pieces only'' rule in this category. We seperated it into Modern and Vintage. You may put modern made toys, figures, movels, vehichles etc. in here. Afterall, these were not made to fool anyone.... at least I don't think so...

The Blog

Several members asked me if I would post more articles from the old DG magazine in the Blog. Ok, I've added a couple recently, and will continue to post more in the future. Of course, I'll post articles from other sources also. Our stats show that many of you are looking at the blog on a regular basis. I'm glad you like it.

How's our site is doing.

We now have about 1,400 active members and about twice that many ''lookers''. It bounces around some, but anywhere from 300 to 500 people look at the site every day and we are getting several new members daily. The search engines are finding us and our position is getting better all the time. I just typed in the words ''german'' and ''militaria'' on Google and we came up on page 2. Not bad, considering it shows 483,000 sites with those terms. The way I see it, the only thing we need is more militaria for sale. The buyers exceed the sellers by quite a bit. If you want to sell German militaria, this is definately the place!

August 8, 2007

Some Improvements

We just made some improvements to our program which we hope will make listing your items easier and faster. These apply to the pages where you list items POST FOR SALE AD and POST AUCTION.

First: We moved the ''use my seller's template'' to the top before the categories and we defaulted it to yes... with the check mark. Most of you use the template so you won't have to click it each time. If you don't want to use the templete just click it and it will turn off.

Second: We set the ''I will upload pictures from my hard drive'' to default to yes. Again, most of you use photos so you won't have to click it, and again, you can click it off if you wish.

Third: We found a small glitch in the program when posting any ad or auction. It seems that somehow the paragraph line break command got corrupted and it was not recognizing paragraphs. It was running them all together as one long paragraph. We fixed this, so now it will put paragraph breaks where you want them.

Hope everyone will approve of these changes. I believe our system for posting ads is the easiest to use on the net! Try is when you have something to sell. If you an idea you think would make it better, let us know and we'll see what we can do.

July 12, 2007

Fakes and Fantasy

In the past couple of days quite a few people have been posting repro and ''fantasy'' Nazi items on the site. I'll be as clear as possible! I don't care if you say it's a repro, re-manufacture, newly made, or whatever, if it is not a period made piece don't post it here! I'ed shut this site down before I'ed let it turn into a dumping ground for this trash!

June 8, 2007

New feature: Militaria Blog

In this section you will find a series of articles on the various aspects of Third Reich militaria collecting. These are intended to introduce the new collector to a particular area of our hobby and to provide the experienced collector with a refresher course, or perhaps some new info. They are not intended to replace reference books in one's library, but are here to ''wett the appetite'' of the collectors, and encourage them to aquire the books or magazines they were taken from. Many of these sources are currently available from book dealers, or the publisher, and some are long out of print. In the case of the later, it might take some hunting to aquire them. Militaria shows, other collectors and this web site might be good sources.

Most of this info was aquired by scanning pages and running them through an optical character recognition (OCR) program. While this is the most efficient way of aquiring the text, it is not fool-proof and errors are encountered. We have proof read all of these articles and made the corrections we found. However, don't be surprised if you find a mis-spelled word or other error here and there. We could only do so much.... In the case of the photos that accompany the articles, some are from the article itself, while others are photos I added from other sources as I thought appropriate.

This feature of germanmilitariacollecibles.com will be an ongoing project. I will add more material as often as it is available and I have time to do so. These first few days I'll post what I have already prepared.

Blogs are new to me, as they may be to many of you. One thing I noticed is that when you open the link you will see several articles listed one after the other. These are not the only articles we have posted. Near the top of the page on the right you will see ''Previous Posts''. Look at the list and you will see the other articles available. Just click on them to view. Below ''Previous Posts'' you will see ''Archives''listed by month. Only June appears here because we just started. I suggest you look at all three places; the opening page list, the previous posts and the archives to see everything. Have fun!

We need material for this feature. If you are an author who has written something about German militaria collecting, and would like to share it with our readers, we would like to see it. You can email a copy to us. A photo copy or scan is also ok. If we use it, and we will try to, you will receive full credit. Be sure you tell us your name, the title, where or who published it (if it was) and the date published. Also, if you have something in your reference collection you think the other collectors would like to see, please let me know and we'll see if we can publish it. Older material from the 60s thru 80s would be especially welcome. Items that come from other that the standard reference books would be great. Again, if we can use it we will give you full credit for your contribution.

Finally, I would like to express my thanks to Roger Bender, of R. James Bender Publishing, for his interest and support of this project. Bob

By the way... You might have noticed the WHAT'S NEW banner on the home page blinking. This is something new. I'll set it to blink when I've posted something new here, and let it blink for two or three days. When it's not blinking you'll know that there hasn't been a new post recently...

May 31, 2007.

The site has been up 136 days.

One of our members informed me about a scam atrist trying to sell items on our site. With the info he supplied I was able to do some research and verify that, yes, this guy was indeed bad news. As a result, I cancelled his membership and sent him an email telling him not to attempt to use our site again. He went by the name Pawel Nowak from Poland.

Another member informed us of Sylvie Salter of the Czech Rep. After checking on him we found he too was up to no good. You won't be seeing his ads any more.

This is the kind of feedback we need from you guys. Not only did our members check things out to cover their own backs, but they cared enough to let us know so we can try to cover yours. Our sincere thanks to them. From what I saw on the web about these two characters, I'm sure some of you other members must have known about them, but said nothing to us. Shame on you!

If you encounter someone on our site who's a crook, we want to know. Be sure you are right before you accuse them, and give us as much info as you can so we can verify it. We won't cut someone off just because one person says we should. Let's all work to try an keep this site as ''clean'' as possible.

May 25, 2007

The site has been up 130 days.

We have hit the 1000 mark! We now have over 1000 signed-up members, with more every day. The serach engines have really kicked in, and people are finding us more easily. If you've been waiting to ''see what will happen'' with our site, the time has come to stop waiting and start using! Post some items. There are 1000 collectors out there wanting to buy them.

There was a problem that showed up ''sometimes'' when listing items. When the seller told the system to post the listing it was sometimes giving ''page can not be displayed'' message. It was however posting the item... Anyway, we found the little bug and fixed it. So, If you had this problem you shouldn't see it again. From what I can tell the posting system is working prefectly. I did some testing and was pleased at how fast it was.

We've received several emails from collectors who had signed-up for our site but did not receive their ''activation'' email. In every case it was because their email program was blocking it. Please be sure you have our email address: info@germanmilitariacollectibles.com on your ''approved''or ''safe'' list so our emails can get through.

I've mentioned the ''
Blog'' feature before and we are still working on it. If all goes as planned we should have it up in about 2 weeks and will start posting the articles.

Improving your sales... If you really want your militaria to sell, the best thing you can do is use photos in your listings. Digital cameras have gotten really cheap and posting the pictures on our site is very easy. The small investment you make in a camera will pay back many times over. Take a look at our HELP section for tips on how to use them.

April 19, 2007

Our site has been open for 91 days....

The membership of our site is approaching the 1000 mark. We get several new members every day and the site is visited by an average of about 200-225 different people each day. All this means that when you offer something for sale, every day your chances of selling it increase. And when you run a ''Wanted'' ad, you chances of finding your item are getting better.

I would be very interested in any comments you have about this web site. I don't pretend to know it all, and I'm sure some of you have thought of things I haven't. One thing I would like to hear especially is what you think I could do to get more collectors to list their for sale items. We have far more buyers than sellers...

During the day I am constantly checking to see what's new on the site. I check the ''Gallery''every hour or two. One thing I noticed... that most of you don't pick up on because you have lives other than this site!, is that quite often an item will appear in the ''For Sale'' catagory and the ''Gallery'', and within an hour or two, it's gone! The ad has been withdrawn. I suspected what was happening, but to be sure I sent some emails to the members selling the items. Sure enough, they had already made a deal and the piece was sold. Again, I want to stress the improtance of photos in your ads. Pictures sell militaria!

Here's a selling tip...

If you have an item in the FOR SALE ads for a time and it doesn't sell, try relisting it with a headline that says ''Price reduced'', or something similar, and drop the price by a few dollars. By relisting it, it will go to the front of the GALLERY, so you'll get increased exposure. If the ad expires with the item unsold you can simply go to MY ACCOUNT and REPOST the ad. You can edit the ad to show you have reduced the price or you can just re-run it as you please. You can do the same thing with an unsold auction item. With our large membership base there is someone out there who wants your militaria!

Have you told your collector friends about our web site? If you send us their email address we will be happy to let them know about us.

Thanks for using germanmilitariacollectibles.com

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