Thread: Bring A Cat Semi Automatics Back to Trade Me

To all the people hating on Trade Me, I get it. Their politics are bullshit and I agree with you completely.
I would encourage people to use alternatives such as gunstuff, gunbrokernz, allgoods, etc.

However, I don't think it's wise(or even possible) to just cast TM aside entirely and use another service.
Their market share is overwhelming, to the point that it is almost impossible to avoid using them if you want to buy and sell used goods in this country.
Listings just get far more exposure on Trade Me than they would elsewhere. Hell, many people have TM open in one of their browser tabs 24/7.
To put it into perspective, eBay has 182 million members, of which less than half are in the US, so about 80-90 million US members out of a population of 327 million.
That means that less than 30% of Americans are eBay members. Trade Me, on the other hand, has 3.7 million members out of a population of 4.9 million.
Over 75% of the population in NZ are TM members. There is virtually no other website in the world that has that large a percentage of the population as members.
Therefore, when you list something on Trade Me, it is visible to basically every adult in the country. On the other hand, gunstuff and gunbrokernz have maybe a few thousand members in total.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but the fact is you just won't get the same exposure as you would on Trade Me. Period.

My point is that Trade Me is just a tool. I think we're better off trying to use it to our advantage than we are trying to discard it altogether.
Feel free to disagree, but that's where I'm coming from.

Before you write off TM, bear in mind that you'll never be able to just hop on gunstuff or gunbrokernz and pick up a TV, smartphone, furniture, appliance, car, etc.
As good as those websites are, they're ultimately one-trick-ponies. You can't replace a website that sells just about everything with one that sells a very narrow range of items.
The anti-gun crowd would love for us to be forced off of all the popular platforms, just so our exposure is minimised and it's easier to portray us as a fringe group.
Youtube and Facebook have been doing exactly that for years now. Voluntarily leaving those platforms is only going to help them and hurt us.
We need to be seen and heard as widely as possible if we want to have any influence or credibility. The more online presence we have the better. TM is a part of that.
Trade Me would barely notice if we all left their site, but most of us would be hurting to some degree if we were unable to buy or sell guns through their site.
We have no leverage whatsoever in boycotting Trade Me, whereas we represent a much larger percentage of H&F's customers, and therefore our absence will be felt there.

Alright, rant over. Resume ridiculing my ideas.