WHAT IS THE BUY/SELL PAGE?
The Buy/Sell page is an internet place for buyers and sellers to place ads for gear cutting equipment. It is similar to the classified section of a newspaper. You can do things like:
Ask if someone has a machine or tooling that you need
Offer a piece of equipment for sale or trade
Seek a job for yourself
Offer a job available at your company
Look for someone interested in selling open time in their shop
Announce that you have open machine time available
Internet visitors can easily narrow their search to type (wanted, for sale, etc), category (gear machine, job, etc), and country of location. It is not a commercial listing service for machine tool dealers, although machine tool dealers are welcome to list a modest number of items. Hopefully the Buy/sell page satisfies the need of manufacturers and small shops everywhere for a free and easy way to exchange equipment and services.
WHAT DOES IT COST?
Nothing. It is free to all manufacturers working with gear-related equipment and providing manufacturing services. You simply need to create a membership to use the service. Again, the membership is free.
WHY IS IT FREE?
I want people to find and use Meshing With Gears. Plus it was a lot of work posting ads from emails. And the list never got shorter, even though there had to be out-of-date listings there. When Buy/Sell was about to go "live" there was the question: to charge or not to charge? The old service was free, so it made sense that this new version should also be free. After all, you're doing all the work, right?
The discussion forum was seeing a lot of buy/sell activity, too. It was clear that people needed a way to buy and sell within the gearing community. So the idea to automate it, keep it free, and make it DO-IT-YOURSELF just seemed so natural.
Yep. You create your account and the ads you want listed. You do all the work, so you don't need someone "writing copy" or "setting the type". Besides, it's still a work in process, so I hope to continue adding function and polish as time goes on.
WHAT CAN I SELL?
Any type of gear-related manufacturing equipment. That is, a gear hob or spiral bevel generator, a turret lathe or grinder is certainly allowed. Refrigerators, hunting rifles, and '57 Chevys are not! There may be grey areas of appropriateness, and MWG reserves the right to judge and delete ads where deemed inappropriate.
HOW MUCH EQUIPMENT MAY I LIST?
Right now, each person with a membership may list up to 5 items. When you sell (or find) an item, you can fill that vacancy with a new item. Normally 5 items is enough, but if that is a problem, let me know. The important thing to remember is that this is a service to gear manufacturers who need to find or sell equipment. Think of it as the internet equivalent to the "Sell Your Own Car" magazine you can pick up at the local convenience store.
WHY DO I NEED TO CREATE A MEMBERSHIP?
You need a login Account ID and Password so you can protect your ads and information. An Account membership is the best way I know to do that. You wouldn't believe ( or maybe you would) what spammers and hackers do to forums and email services that don't use safeguards. Meshing With Gears strives to maintain a serious business environment and I'm sure you want us to keep it that way. Secondly, the information allows me to contact a user if that should become necessary (ever forget a password?), and hopefully to identify and prevent misuse. Your information will not be sold or given to any other person or company. Period.
HOW DO I CREATE A MEMBERSHIP?
When you visit the Buy/Sell page, you will see a link,
Click here to login to your account or to obtain a free membership.
Click that link and you will see a login screen. Below the login prompts is the
"Click Here to Create a Free Member Account" button. Click it and fill out the next page which is the
NEW MEMBER SIGN-UP SCREEN.
I'M AT THE NEW MEMBER SIGN-UP SCREEN. WHAT NEXT?
You create your own Account ID and Password, but remember that the PASSWORD is case-sensitive. That is,
"myPassWord" and "mypassword" are different as far as the login is concerned.
The Account ID is not case-sensitive. So, when you log in, MYACCOUNTID is the same as MyAccountID.
Most items are required input. Else why would they be there?
Choose a First Question and Second Question wisely. These are personal questions for a good reason. You want to provide answers to these that are obvious to you and most likely you alone.
So, if you forget your password, you can go to the login screen and submit a request for your password. These questions will be emailed to you using the email address that you enter in your membership screen. You then reply to this email answering the two questions correctly. Then and only then your password will be sent to you in a reply, again to your designated email address.
Be sure that your email address is correct since that is the only way to assure that you can be contacted.
NOW THAT I HAVE AN ACCOUNT, HOW DO I CREATE AN AD?
Login to the Buy/Sell Page using your AccountID and Password. Go to "Your Postings" (if you're new, don't worry that you have no postings). If you have postings (ads) already, you will see a list. You can select one from the list to edit or click the "Create New Ad Listing" button to begin a new ad.
HOW DO I CLASSIFY MY AD?
After Quantity, there are two drop-down lists from which you decide on the classification. Notice that Category is empty until you select a Type of Listing. Unlike the newspaper version, the list of Category selections vary according to the type of listing. These selections are used in visitor searches and represent all possible selections for your ad (so far). If you want to suggest new Types or Categories, send us an with your ideas.
I SEE PICTURES OF EQUIPMENT IN THE BUY/SELL PAGE. HOW DO I INCLUDE A PICTURE?
If you have access to a digital camera and a website, most likely you can post pictures of your equipment. Take pictures in .GIF or .JPG format. .GIF is preferable since it is a smaller file and loads more quickly.
Once you have a .GIF (or .JPG) file of your equipment or service, it needs to be on your website or other web server so that it can be remotely linked to from our server. If you are unfamiliar with image files and remote linking please contact your webmaster.
Enter the link without any HTML coding. HTML is provided automatically when your ad is displayed in a visitor's browser.
For example, this is a valid input that will correctly create a link to your graphic file:
http://www.mydomain/myimages/my_equipment_picture.gif
and this statement (including the red) will NOT create a valid link to your image:
<A HREF="http://www.mydomain/myimages/my_equipment_picture.gif ">Here is my picture</A>
After entering your ad, go to the Buy/Sell page to make sure your image is displaying correctly.
If you see the message "Image Link Broken", that usually means one of two things:
1 - The image link is entered incorrectly (either a typo or as described above), or
2 - The web server that hosts the image file is not accepting remote links.
HOW MUCH AND WHAT KIND OF INFORMATION DO I USE TO CREATE AN AD?
The amount and type of information you provide is up to you and will depend on what your listing is all about. Visit the Buy/Sell page and look at the ads already there to get an idea of what seems to work.
If you are offering a job opportunity, tell the visitor the location, benefits, and perks, if any. Try to describe just what the job requires.
If you are offering open machine time you might want to give the visitor your location, which machine and capacity, quality control measures, and lot size you're looking for.
Remember, this is a DO-IT-YOURSELF service.
NOW THAT I HAVE AN ACCOUNT, HOW DO I CREATE MY COMPANY PROFILE?
Go to either the Buy/Sell Page or the Gear Services Page, log in, and go to "Your Postings"
(if you're new, don't worry that you have no postings).
If you have created your company profile already, you will be able to edit it. Simply click on
"Company Profile" to either add or edit your company profile.
Information that you provide here differs from your account membership information.
This information will be displayed on the website's Gear Services Locator page for visitors to view.
HOW DO I PLACE A LOGO ON MY COMPANY PROFILE?
All graphics, including company logo, should be in a .GIF format file to minimize bandwidth requirements. A logo graphic file must be located on a server that can be remotely accessed from our server. You simply type your URL address into the appropriate box on the form. If successful the logo will appear at the top of the form after saving the inputs.
If the logo does not show up, then there are two possible reasons:
(1) the URL as entered may be incorrect. For example, a valid input would look like:
http://mydomain/myimages/mylogo.gif
Notice there is no HTML used in the input - that is supplied when the Profile is displayed.
If you need help determining the URL that points to your graphic, please contact your webmaster.
(2) Some servers protect copyrighted material and graphics from outside access, but more commonly servers conserve their bandwidth resource by denying other servers remote access to their files. For whatever reason, if your graphic files cannot be remotely accessed by policy, you may want to ask your webmaster to permit our linking to that specific graphic. This can be done by locating a copy of the logo GIF file in a directory to which remote link permission has been granted. If you need our IP or URL information for remote access permission, it will be provided on request.
If you cannot set this up through your webmaster then you will not be able to show your logo graphic here. To prevent any possible copyright infringment we don't accept any logo files for storage on our server.
I HAVE SATISFIED MY NEED AND WANT TO STOP AN AD. WHAT DO I DO?
Login to the Buy/Sell Page and go to "Your Postings". Select the posting (ad) from the list that you want to stop. When the ad screen appears, select Edit. Near the bottom left is the Status drop-down list with two items : ACTIVE and WITHDRAW. Select WITHDRAW to remove the ad.
WITHDRAW doesn't actually delete the ad from the system; it only prevents visitors from seeing it. Should you need to display it again in the future, come back to this Edit screen and change Status back to ACTIVE. This might be handy when you want to reuse an ad for similar items and make minimum changes.
I AM SO HAPPY WITH THE RESULTS, I HAVE TO TELL SOMEBODY. HOW DO I SEND IN MY TESTIMONIAL?
Okay, you're probably not thinking about this - but if there is a remote possibility that you might want to later, to us, good or bad. We appreciate constructive criticism, and would really like for visitors to see what members think. Only initials will be used if comments are posted.
If we get any comments, it means two things for sure: someone actually read this page to the bitter end, and we will be staying up all night to code the first page of testimonials!
Questions? Please your questions to Meshing With Gears.
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