I am going to be buying ads for the next 30 years.

I will still be here, will they?

If not for the harm it may do to the auction industry in general, I actually welcome their online auction projects. They spend a huge amount of money on development, marketing, and promotion, and ultimately every one who has tried it has been anywhere from a disappointment to a dismal failure. They are trying to appear on the cutting edge, but ultimately they need more than someone with Ebay experience to properly sell a tractor online. While they waste time on these projects the online only publishers leave them in the dust.

The sellers realise in the end that if they need to auction an item, they need a REAL auctioneer to do it and a REAL auction website to promote it properly.

Buyers are online looking for equipment more everyday, and their old print standby is not always their first choice.

We know from attempts in the past that print publications would always refuse our advertising because we were too much of a competitor.

That just tells me that we are on the right track, and after 8 years we will continue on.

See you in KC

The print industries stance is somewhat alarming to me. The example above is just the beginning. In fact, it goes beyond just online only auctions. A company I work with advertised (or rather attempted to) in the Truck Paper, and the ad mentioned “Bid Onsite or Online” and was rejected for publication. The explanation given was Sandhills offers their own online auction service and any other online auctions are a “conflict of interest”. I'm not sure what the short term solution is to counter these actions.

In addition to these, I know the Star Tribune here in Minnesota is quite restrictive. We can not use the word firearm or any firearm brand names in ads. Also, as a company you can not have forums (or classifieds) where buyers and sellers can sell items. If you do, your ad is rejected.

Yet people wonder why revenues are decreasing at print publications. Seems to me as revenues get tighter, the acceptance standards would become less restrictive. However, that appears to be the exact opposite of reality.