Drumsellers.com Carries On

Hello!!

I’d like to introduce myself. My name is John McNeilly (otherwise known as “John R!!!!” by my mother, when getting caught doing something I hadn’t oughta, which was most days). I guess I’m the new ‘man behind the curtain’, your site administrator and fellow working drummer (but only on the weekends). I’m a Pearl guy.

You may have noticed some changes to the table of contents and the categories. We all have an interest in percussion, and some of that falls more in some areas than others. Towards that end, I’m trying to prioritize sorting based on manufacturer, rather than what the item is. Some you may not mind, hopefully most of us like it, but there will likely be a few that would rather it stay the same. To those that don’t want change, the current system doesn’t scale out very well, in my opinion. So we’re going to try something different. I’d like to grow this site so that it covers its own monthly costs. Perhaps this will help.

One thing that will help is some plain old-fashioned honesty. If you sell something that was listed and advertised and the connection came from this board, please make sure that it is paid through the board so that this site can collect it’s meager 4% percent commission. Places like eBay and Reverb charge a good deal more than this. Sure, you can get free advertising on craigslist, but it’s a lot easier to get ripped off there, too. Drummers are the best group of people to hang around with in the world of musicians, and right now this is our little community, which you don’t have on either of those three selling locales. A bit of integrity over that small commission will go a long way towards making sure that we’re here, rather than me having to take a couple gigs worth of earnings to pay the website hosting bills. Sure, I’ll do it, but it’s not really fair, and as a community, it usually works best when everybody does the right thing. That’s all I’m asking. Enough of that.

If you do have a listing, kindly take time to check the price and the shipping. Many of these listings could not be moved without me checking a mandatory box, which was either for shipping (which requires a dollar amount) or pick up. Pick up may not be something you offer, but for several hundreds of listings, checking that was the only way that I could get them moved into the new category. I apologize for the inconvenience, but it’s a good idea to make sure that your listing is correct now and then. Now would be good, LOL.

If you are willing to ship, remember to add a comment in your description that shipping cost varies by weight and ZIP Code. That way, the buyer doesn’t think it’s just flat rate and you can legally charge what it actually costs. I’m not a big fan of what I see on other sites where the item being sold looks artificially low, and then you have this ludicrous amount of shipping tacked on it. To me, that has the appearance of being deceitful, and I don’t want any of that here. We don’t attempt to deceive other members in our community.

One thing you’ll notice is that the listings where items are Wanted, those have been combined into one section and I may sort that a little further. The important thing to me was to get those out of the active sales because I often find them confusing and interruptive. Confusing because several of them have very little description written, some have none but a title; interruptive because that’s not something I want to see when I’m looking for something myself. So they have been grouped together.
If you do have a Wanted listing, please review and put as much information in there as you can. Help us to help you.

What I think would be helpful for the items for sale would be pictures, more of them. A good rule of thumb might be, two picture minimum, three for every $100 to $500, and three or four for every $1000. Or something like that. Like my 30 year old son says “piktahs guud”, and he probably spells it like that too. ( Oh you know you do Micah, your brother Ethan will vouch, LOL)

That’s about it for now. I am open to comments, advice, criticism. I only ask that you don’t put it on the front page here. Let’s save this for the people trying to sell items. Send me an email through this site and I promise to read it.

I’d like to thank Billy for his assistance and friendship, George for having created this in the first place, and my wife for putting up with the endless hours that I’ve already spent trying to bring a newer look to this community.

Thank you,
John R