CCL Messageboard

Did anything actually change?

I found it. http://www.comiccollectorlive.com/LiveData/StoreLocator.aspx

The store counter is down to 39 left from the 2-300 around 2010. They ran some people away it seems. Any more loses and my Little Golden Books which aren't allowed would make a page 1 store all by themselves!!!

150. About 150, in the heyday. There were never 200-300 stores.

When I first opened my Store a decade or so ago there were 5+ pages of stores. Twenty-five store per page equals 125 plus about a half page at the end equals between 130-140.

BTW:

Loses - "become unable to find (something or someone)"

Losses - "the fact or process of losing something or someone."

Why is this word so hard for some people to use correctly?

It's not "looses" either.

Agreed. The most number of pages of stores I ever saw in 15 years was 6.

I remember 8 pages or so at one point that didn't last long but the actual high end number isn't the point. It's how low it is right now. I thought it was on the rebound a little over a year ago climbing back closer to 100 but it looks like now a number of those have disappeared since the last time I looked. If you subtracted out the CCL store and the stores open by employees it's even less and more shocking. If 8 more close down you'll have stores on the 1st page with less than 1,000 items offered up. According to the front page there's 245,514 members. That means over 245, 400 members don't find the current store setup good enough to use. If even 1% liked it and used it the stores would count in the thousands.

Seems like a good time to just flush the existing setup and do a rebuild on the store setup to make it compatible with the future while fixing a lot of the stuff we've been begging for since 2016 or longer. Once it's fixed, offer up a period with X number of free uploads for returning members or even new accounts for a while to encourage new stores and listings.

Yes, I'm sure CCL would love to give free stuff to former members whose goal the last several years was to dissuade people from coming to this website.

So you're saying the over 245, 000 members who aren't happy enough with the current store arrangement to be using it right now couldn't have some of them enticed back to a new, improved retail setup? Get real.

If you're trying to say me specifically, then leave me out. I was specifically thinking of an allowance to migrate the existing stores inventory into the new setup with a small number to get new users started risk free so to speak since they'd only be gambling the cost of a monthly subscription and not the upload fees to try. I estimate I have over 200,000 comics plus trades, thousands of Funko Pops and action figures, etc... Anything they tossed out in an initial trial setup arrangement wouldn't make a dent I expect in covering my listing fee's if I choose to list again and barring something new that allows for syncing, I'm not close to being ready for adding in a second set of inventory to manage separately.

I would enjoy seeing a lot more stores and a lot more inventory to shop from so I would benefit from that but that's the point of people trying to sell anyway.

E-Bay does something like this already. They send members monthly coupons that allow for X number of free listings. That's what encouraged me to try E-Bay selling in the 1st place. Then I tried a 1,000 item store but during the pandemic, they converted the 1,000 item stores into having 50,000 items listed for free stores with usually another 10,000 free listings that could be accessed through their monthly e-mail coupon offers. Once I get close to the 60,000 item limit, I'll probably keep building and upgrade to the next size up. All because they believed in their setup enough to let us try it free from upload fee's. I really don't think I'm the only person they made these offers to. If you want to be Like Mike, as they used to say, a good first step is trying to do some of the things Mike does.

As of right now, something similar that allowed for 60,000 items for one monthly fee like E-Bay is doing would have all but two of the current E-Bay stores covered entirely allowing them to expand and grow increasing total sales and attracting more traffic in general to the larger number of CCL offerings. One bulk e-mail to 245,000 members, LIST X Number of comics for FREE for 30 days, monthly store fee starts at that point, upload fee's start after the X number is exceeded. What's it cost to try once a new retail setup is implemented, a little bandwidth stuff?

What if those stores used Media Mail to ship their comics?

While we're working to have that removed and penalized, I just ignore those stores and shop from the one's that offer legal shipping. I've even got a new USPS agent for their retail sites (Debra Bibb) working on it with me now in addition to Alex. They just raised the Media Mail rates Sunday to further discourage the crooks as well as covering the cost of additional inspections to increase the number getting busted. Instead of arriving at the customers doors COD for full Parcel Post, they hopefully start charging Ground Advantage full rates to return them to the senders COD. That should open a few crooks eyes when they have to pay to get their wares back before having to pay the correct amounts to send them to the customers like they should have in the first place.

For E-Bay though, all you do is sign up for an E-Bay account. In your free time create drafts. On the 1st of the month check your messages and you'll see an offer for X number of free listings. Send that many items to market from the preconstructed drafts making sure they end at the point the offer ends so you don't get billed for having them flip over to another month. next month, repeat or pull the unsold items from the ended listings folder to relist based on that months offer. repeat until you have enough drafts and ended listings assembled to open a larger store and sales to justify it.

There's no reason I can see something like that couldn't be done by CCL to encourage growth. I wouldn't even be opposed to CCL being the point the money gets paid to so they can handle the Sales Tax collections like they probably should already be doing. It works for E-Bay and AA to make everything legal and equal for all.

Hey, I've got an idea. Since you're such good pals with Alex and Deb that you got them to raise the rate of Media Mail why not instead get them to allow comics to be shipped legally using Media Mail? You have such great influence on how the Post Office operates that it should be no problem for you to convince them that the whole premise of "comics have advertising so you have to pay twice as much to ship them as normal things" is patently false and ridiculous. That would actually benefit you as well as you would be spending less on postage yourself.

And, if you don't mind, please stop referring to me as a "crook" or a "thief" or a "felon", etc. I am not and it deeply offends me that you regard me as such.

Do we need to get you two in a boxing ring? :p

Just my .02 I don't sell a lot of books online . I've done roughly $6k in sales on eBay since Feb of my own books. (none here though) However, it just amazes me how little change I see on this site over the few years I've poked around as a buyer. In the right hands, this place could run circles around sites like eBay or Macari, HipComic etc.

My biggest complaint is the use of stock images. (the second is more niche and that is the lack of differentiating between NS and Direct listings. Took me about 2½ years but I managed to complete a post-whitman Batman Vol 1 newsstand run. (so.. 1980-ish to 2011) Had it not been for sites like eBay I would not have been able to complete that without a lot of blind-buying or constant inquiries to sellers. Nobody has time for that.

To me. This site is a dinosaur. I always say Marvel had a huge missed opportunity to use the initial explosion of the MCU to funnel new (and old) people into comics. And this site failed to capitalize on the explosion of online buying like the sites above, and FB/social media groups that focus on flash/BIN sales etc.

Of course, server and bandwidth & hosting costs are an issue, all I am saying is I see so many missed opportunities to attract a lot more sellers. I still funnel people to here though when looking for obscure books so.. hopefully, that has led to some sales for all.

Stock images are there because most stores don't have time to scan 25000 books. And, seeing as how 90% of my stock is newer releases, it would be pointless for me to scan three vf/nm copies of a Batman issue from 6 months ago.

You want scans, ask for them.

As to the news stand issue, I also don't have the time to go through the books from the 80s and 90s with newsstand versions, delist those that are newsstand, relist them under a different variant (not to mention getting the 1 or 2 people who care about such things to correctly enter in change requests for a variant) and pay a second time to relist said issue.

HaHa! No, that's not necessary. We actually used to be friends until he started calling me a criminal.


You do have some good points here. It has been a while since any changes have been made. It could be better (and it seems like they're working on it) but I still think the site has a lot of good things going for it as is. Still, I would like to see some improvements.

I love having the stock images because it does save a lot of time when listing. Plus there is the feature where you can add your own images and have them in the listing. I have a lot of comics in Inventory where the actual book can be seen and often the back cover as well. Not everything, mind you. I'm not going to put a scan of some average 50 cent book, only something higher priced or censored. I also send scans to anyone that wants one.

Same with Newsstand editions. A few years ago I started adding that to my Item Details for clarification since some of the stock photos are showing Newsstand even though you might not be getting a Newsstand. Of course the problem with that is that some people don't check the Item Details or even know that it's a thing. I do wish that you could mark them somehow to let people know just by looking at the thumbnail.

Yes there have been a missed opportunity or two. Yes it can be a little frustrating that there has been a lag between updates. And yes, I am happy that something is being done now to make changes for the better. I hope they take our concerns seriously and try to accommodate them.

I have to think that it was not mentioned in this forum because it would be met with 'trollish' comments (deserved or not) that are counterproductive, and frankly waste time. I have done it myself, and regret the stance as it disables communication.

Moving forward, the problems hopefully will get solved as we get on to more important matters.

-MTJ

I've always had a fix for this. Do an update (OK, stop laughing) where a new info line appears for each issue for sale, "Direct Edition?", with a drop down box with three options, "Yes", "No", and "N/A" or "N/S" (not applicable or not specified). All existing issues already in the system as well as new listings will default to the latter. Those who wish to differentiate for customers can do so by applying Yes or No. Those who don't want to don't have to do anything. The results will be listed like all the rest of the info for items for sale (condition, price, etc).

This shouldn't be that hard to make everyone happy.

I just mailed an order. Media cost me $14.42. Priority would have cost me $42. I think I'll stick with my illicet ways

I have to agree with you, especially on the newer\recent adds.

I DO try to add pics for more expensive items... $100.00 or more but I do not do it often, as most people just do not click to find my marketplace photo, so like you I do it via request. I take returns if someone just does not want it, I find the photo makes little difference.

one suggestion that would make the entire IMAGE issue null...
It would be NICE if I wanted to show MY image it would be AUTOMATIC, as soon as you click on MY item for sale. Stock images would be the default unless I chose my uploaded one. I would not even care if Stock images were watermarked.

This is what I have suggested also. We don't need two separate listings for Direct Market and Newsstand. Just the one and some way to let the buyer know which it is just by looking at the top image. It could be a dot or something saying: "Direct Market", Newsstand" or "Not Specified" like Corey said.