Q: If FurBuy offered a storefront for you to sell fixed price items and commissions with set quantities and shopping cart and order fulfillment services, would you use it? As a buyer or seller?
A: HECK YEAH!

Q: If FurBuy offered a robust commission tracking system, including commission detail forms and the ability to track commissions not just purchased on FurBuy, would you be interested in using it?
A: Maybe, more explanation on this idea would be great, though.

Q: Are you interested in seeing more cross-site integration with sites like FurAffinity, ArtSpots, AnthroStar, InkBunny and others?
A: Perhaps, depends on how/what we're integrating.

Q: Are you interested in FurBuy running contests to generate more activity and interest in the site? If so, what kind of prizes would you like to see?
A: Yes! Prizes donated by users would be the best way to go. But getting artists to work for free is kind of difficult, maybe let sellers have an extra auction or get featured on the front page for x number of days? I don't know what kind of buyer-specific prizes there could be...

Q: Are you interested in forums on FurBuy, and if so why?
A: Eh, not really. There's enough forums on FA and other sites, and I have a feeling the forums will just become a giant advertising space for sellers. =/ But maybe a request thread would be useful for those looking for something specific [or maybe something similar to Etsy's Alchemy would work].

Q: Are there any other features you'd like to see FurBuy add to make the site more compelling or relevant to you, or to make sales/purchases easier for you?
A: The ability to sort the pages in different ways would be nice [sort by: number of bids, high price, low price, etc].
And eventually later on [when FurBuy is a little busier] have sub-sections in commissions and art works for digital and traditional and sub-sections in Fursuits for commission and pre-made [another way would be partial or full].

Cool, thanks for your response. =) If you'd like to know more about the commission system, feel free to note me. Don't want to spill too much of the planned system before we even get it rolled out. It's partially completed right now though. Same with the Storefronts.

Storefronts for sellers would definitely interest me! I agree with Fuzzykittn that being able to sort the auctions by more than just their ending time would be wonderful.

More integration with FA and Inkbunny especially would be great (I hadn't even heard of Anthrostar until now), although I can't really picture it beyond just having a field in profiles to link to current auctions, or maybe on the submissions themselves. Perhaps I just have no imagination. :P

Forums don't seem too vital to me, although I'm not much of a forum-goer at the best of times.

Sorting auction listings isn't as easy as it sounds. Right now to save a very large amount of server processor time and in order to serve out the listings at blazing fast speeds, we pre-generate the listings every 3 minutes to a file in the server's memory cache. So they are not "live" pages that are handled by code. Adding sorting means we would either need to save a separate listing page for every possible sort method, or move the listings into "live" scripts on the server. Either way would require a good deal of development for us, but it's good to know more people want to see this feature so we can get it in our planning queue or move it up in priority.

What kind of features do you want to see in Storefronts? Right now we're just planning to allow sellers to post items as store items instead of as auctions, and set a quantity available (or unlimited if you can make unlimited copies, like prints, etc.) then buyers add items to a shopping cart and go through a checkout process where their order gets parted out to fulfillment with each seller and then it's up to the buyer/seller to complete the transaction. We also want to add the ability to integrate with existing store systems like Rabbit Valley such that orders go into their fulfillment system to allow the user to pay and take advantage of their existing automated systems. Are there any further features you'd like to see there?

Well, what we'd LIKE to do for FA and InkBunny and other sites regarding integration is take the services that we do best, like auctions and storefronts and commission tracking, and allow third party systems to use our backend to handle those services for them, through their sites. It adds value to their systems and to ours. So for example FA has the "Commission Info" tab, they could replace their code there with a simple JS link to FurBuy which drops into place the Commission Tracker for that user with FurBuy and not have to manage or maintain commission code on their site anymore at all. We already offer that feature for Auctions, but FA just hasn't added the support for it yet. Other little features could include a "Copy to FurBuy" link on any submission in your gallery to make the image available on FurBuy items/auctions/commissions with a single mouse click.

AnthroStar was previously YiffStar. Most "mainstream" furries don't seem to be active there, but there's a very large fringe contingent and group of Euro furs who are, likely because it's hosted in Austria.

Thanks again for your feedback, feel free to discuss anything else with us anytime. And feel free to direct any other folks you know would be interested in these features to your Q&A. =)

a storefront and commission tracking system would be an awesome addition, I would use those features for sure. :)

Duly noted, both have been in the works for a while now and we're just hitting the point where the rubber meets the road (aka the development "burn") so we're trying to make sure these are features folks are interested in before we invest the great amount of time and effort to make them a reality. Every comment of support we get makes it that much sweeter for us.

Q: If FurBuy offered a storefront for you to sell fixed price items and commissions with set quantities and shopping cart and order fulfillment services, would you use it? As a buyer or seller? YES! this would be lovely! I would be a seller and probably also a buyer. ;D

Q: If FurBuy offered a robust commission tracking system, including commission detail forms and the ability to track commissions not just purchased on FurBuy, would you be interested in using it? That sounds interesting. It would probably be pretty useful.

Q: Are you interested in seeing more cross-site integration with sites like FurAffinity, ArtSpots, AnthroStar, InkBunny and others? Yes, but not sure how would that work?

Q: Are you interested in FurBuy running contests to generate more activity and interest in the site? If so, what kind of prizes would you like to see? I have no idea what you could do for prizes aside from donated art, but I think stuff like website design, discounted memberships or free banner space for seller might be good prizes related to the site.

Q: Are you interested in forums on FurBuy, and if so why? Not really. General Q&A are nice, but if I want to advertise, buying ads on the site seems better. Maybe a dispute section, but that might end up with flaming and require heavy moderation...?

Q: Are there any other features you'd like to see FurBuy add to make the site more compelling or relevant to you, or to make sales/purchases easier for you? I think the storefront sounds good. I'm not sure how having an items wanted
section worked for a big auction site like ebay, but perhaps that could be a section in the forums? (if you make them)

A "Wanted Ads" system is definitely something we've been considering, yes. The question has been how to implement it, and right now we're leaning towards a Reverse Auction system, perhaps. Though those can be confusing to folks who aren't already familiar with them, similar to our current Dutch Auction system.

We appreciate the comments, and if you have any further ideas or questions or comments don't hesitate to let us know. =)

Q: If FurBuy offered a storefront for you to sell fixed price items and commissions with set quantities and shopping cart and order fulfillment services, would you use it? As a buyer or seller? I would definitely use it as a seller!


Q: If FurBuy offered a robust commission tracking system, including commission detail forms and the ability to track commissions not just purchased on FurBuy, would you be interested in using it? Yes I would, at the moment I'm using journals and emails to keep track. It's way too much all the over the place, if such a tracking system was available I'm sure many people would be happy :)


Q: Are you interested in seeing more cross-site integration with sites like FurAffinity, ArtSpots, AnthroStar, InkBunny and others? Certainly!


Q: Are you interested in FurBuy running contests to generate more activity and interest in the site? If so, what kind of prizes would you like to see? I'm not sure about that, but it sounds like it could be fun. Although I remember reading a previous journal about how some might abuse the contest system in order to win... so yea. I'm interested in art, maybe if Furbuy bought a commission slot from an artist, that could be the prize? mmm. or maybe just starbucks gift card lol XD


Q: Are you interested in forums on FurBuy, and if so why? I would be, it'll allow communication between sellers and buyers or anyone who is on Furbuy who either might have suggestions pertaining to the site itself, questions about simple things like shipping services. It could be useful.


Q: Are there any other features you'd like to see FurBuy add to make the site more compelling or relevant to you, or to make sales/purchases easier for you? I already think the site is amazing as it is, so the fact these might all be possibilities makes me excited about the future of Furbuy.

Once again, Thanks for all the hard work providing this community with such a great service.

You're very welcome, and thank you very much for taking the time to comment. =) Keep on producing amazing and awesome art and we'll keep on adding useful features and support. =D