Global Economics and Trade Help Desk and Q&A

[Cerma]

Sounds good, I was under the impression there was another step to the global economics and trade situation.

[Dei Terrare]

Would a country selling lamd would go on this forum?If not please tell which forum would be approprite for the subject I just mentioned.

[Ceni]

Would a country selling lamd would go on this forum?If not please tell which forum would be approprite for the subject I just mentioned.

This forum is perfectly fine.

[Lacertus fidelitas]

I need help you known buttons in store fronts where you click the text and it brings you to a new section of the page how do we do that

[Separate Texas]

I need help you known buttons in store fronts where you click the text and it brings you to a new section of the page how do we do that

If you set your storefront description posts (ie: Small Arms, Aircraft, Ships), the subject is a link to that post, and you can link it through the standard url-under-text, you should be good. This also allows you to do table of contents and back-to-top buttons.

[Maltropia]

I need help you known buttons in store fronts where you click the text and it brings you to a new section of the page how do we do that

I think what you're looking for is the ANCHOR command. I explain it down at the bottom of this guide which, now that I look at it, could really use its own anchors.

[Lacertus fidelitas]

Thank you (not sent from my iPhone).

[The High Tatras]

Is this a sufficient description for a PT circa WWII era car that I plan to sell? Most of the technical specifications are copied from the Volkswagen Typ 82E Kommandeurwagen, which is a Volkswagen Beetle body on a Volkswagen Typ 82 Kübelwagen chassis. This is probably the closest RL equivalent to what I want to produce. I also want to know what a reasonable selling price would be for it.

Introducing the Ruthenia Motor Works “Timberwolf”:

This is the best selling automobile in The High Tatras. It runs methanol fuel, which is made from the “destructive distillation” of wood. Many people in The High Tatras make this kind of fuel with homemade contraptions that are similar to a moonshine still. You can also attach a wood gas generator to this automobile, which is a different and even simpler technology. It is powered by an air-cooled 985 cubic centimeter 25 horsepower boxer engine with four horizontally opposed cast iron cylinders, cast aluminum alloy cylinder heads and pistons, magnesium crankcase, and forged steel crankshaft and connecting rods. The engine is located in the rear of the automobile. It has a four-speed manual transaxle transmission. It also has independent torsion bar suspension on all four wheels. It is four-wheel drive and has a high 28 centimeter ground clearance so it can be driven on muddy unpaved rural roads. It can carry a driver and up to four passengers at speeds of up to 80 kilometers per hour. It has a crank-start that can be used if the battery freezes during cold winter weather. Please memorize the proper hand signals according to your nation's traffic laws if your trafficators (retractable semaphores) are damaged or malfunctioning. Be especially careful when driving at night.

[Insui]

Rerate?: Link

[Cattleland]

Greetings,

I'd like to hear your idea about that:

---

My storefront, Cattleland United Dairy (viewtopic.php?f=6&t=271956) produces milk and dairy products, but we offer as well a franchising solution of Bars and Milkstores and Factories under Cattleland United Dairy License.

The fact is that we also are in partnership with other companies and nations, and nations have interest in invest money in our company.

---

Here is the idea, aka "the trouble doubt":

My storefront is enough, or it would be better to open another thread as "Cattleland United Dairy HeadQuarter" where are registered partnership, investments, our stock-exchange, and are announced new products.

While the actual storefront will be used only to sell our products.

What do you think? :I

[Yohannes]

Hey Cattleland

I am not one of the better formatting Ge&T roleplayers out there, but if that is my storefront, I would most probably want to keep the investment and other contents related to your storefront in one thread only. The reason for this is that, unlike military storefronts, dairy farming / dairy production type of storefront don't cover a lot of things. Although yes, there will be various categories (product listing, service, about your business, vision & mission, leading figures, 'invest in our business' section.. etc.), they can still be covered in one well-formatted, consolidated storefront thread.

The problem will be.. how to ensure that prospective clients/roleplayers who are visiting your storefront will not be confused of where to go.. if say, they want to apply for something (thus generating 'business' in a way because they are posting something IC-related post, detailing their interest to conduct business with you). A well-formatted storefront detailing many things, yet still allowing the capacity for readers to easily navigate through each of the section, can still be done. Another benefit of not dividing your business into multiple threads, will be the ability for you to generate future interests from multiple customers easily.

If they can see that everything is available in a single thread (provided the formatting is good enough to allow easy navigation), especially if they see all the recorded IC posts from your previous clients/customers.. they will know that your storefront is a thriving business.. and will be more inclined to post there as a result. Its like a chain reaction, the more record of IC postings people see, the more likely they will want to participate and post in your storefront.

And finally, branching out to the NationStates or International Incidents forums is also another good way to generate positive recognition for your storefront. GE&T storefronts represent the businesses of the so-called 'NationStates/NS world'. Do not limit yourself to GE&T, and try to roleplay your businesses in dairy-product related threads out there @II and @NS forums. Your OOC network of people is also important for your business growth, but you will not acquire that OOC network if number of customers is still small for your business so far. The words-of-mouth will come later, and when they do come, you will want to make sure that you are centralising your storefront in one thread.

This is just my opinion, and others will probably disagree with me hehe, but if that is my storefront, then I would most probably keep its contents in one thread.

[Yohannes]

I have a question to the established long-term storeowners of GE&T.

There seems to be this trend whereby quantity is deemed to be better than quality lately. I've observed the creation of multiple storefronts that don't have satisfactory contents, nor interesting things offered by the storefront owner, yet they seems to be creating their storefronts for the sake of being 'global leader' or perhaps.. wishing to compete with the already well-established storefronts in their respective sectors.

If we are talking only about 2 or 3 new storefronts without depth created at around the same period, then that is fine. But when we are starting to see 5 or 7 new ill-thought out storefronts (without contents) all created at around the same period - not one of the storefront is in-depth and in some cases only a mix of big logo, pictures and 1 to 2 paragraphs in a few uninteresting sections, and worryingly describe themselves as 'world leader'.. then I don't know.. it just seems a bit... silly to me.

Admittedly, we're all there once. I myself was guilty of this during my newbie days back then. What I did was, I made multiple (like 5 to 6) storefronts, slapped pictures all around them (not even edited, just straight out of the internet), and then proceeded to call myself 'world leaders' on this, and that. Luckily for me, a couple of well-established storefront owners back then were kind enough (and were more active than they are now), where they proceeded to offer advice, suggestion and tell me off, as well as telling me what I did wrong through the telegrams. I still went by that principle, when I realised that the quality of my military storefronts were not up to par and certainly were below standard, and not having the time in real life to fix the errors contained within these storefronts, I then proceeded to close and lock my military storefronts out of IC continuity.

I thought as a roleplayer progress through their GE&T lifetime, they would slowly realise that having multiple storefronts meant almost next to nothing.. if the quality of the said storefront is deemed by the well-experienced roleplayers as below standard. But there seems to be this worrying trend toward 'having more is better' for the sake of claiming one self as 'world leader', which is a bit funny considering a poorly-built storefront with only 18 international clients cannot certainly claim to be a 'world leader' for its sector.

What I was trying to ask was - have you guys noticed this recent trend of 'more but below-standard is better than one or a few but very well-built' and 'quantity over quality' mindset, or is it just me who see this trend?

[Anemos Major]

I have a question to the established long-term storeowners of GE&T.

There seems to be this trend whereby quantity is deemed to be better than quality lately. I've observed the creation of multiple storefronts that don't have satisfactory contents, nor interesting things offered by the storefront owner, yet they seems to be creating their storefronts for the sake of being 'global leader' or perhaps.. wishing to compete with the already well-established storefronts in their respective sectors.

If we are talking only about 2 or 3 new storefronts without depth created at around the same period, then that is fine. But when we are starting to see 5 or 7 new ill-thought out storefronts (without contents) all created at around the same period - not one of the storefront is in-depth and in some cases only a mix of big logo, pictures and 1 to 2 paragraphs in a few uninteresting sections, and worryingly describe themselves as 'world leader'.. then I don't know.. it just seems a bit... silly to me.

Admittedly, we're all there once. I myself was guilty of this during my newbie days back then. What I did was, I made multiple (like 5 to 6) storefronts, slapped pictures all around them (not even edited, just straight out of the internet), and then proceeded to call myself 'world leaders' on this, and that. Luckily for me, a couple of well-established storefront owners back then were kind enough (and were more active than they are now), where they proceeded to offer advice, suggestion and tell me off, as well as telling me what I did wrong through the telegrams.

I thought as a roleplayer progress through their GE&T lifetime, they would slowly realise that having multiple storefronts meant almost next to nothing.. if the quality of the said storefront is deemed by the well-experienced roleplayers as below standard. But there seems to be this worrying trend toward 'having more is better' for the sake of claiming one self as 'world leader', which is a bit funny considering a poorly-built storefront with only 18 international clients cannot certainly claim to be a 'world leader' for its sector.

Is this a question or a statement? ;P

[Yohannes]

Sorry, pardon my confusing way of writing

What I was trying to ask was - have you guys noticed this recent trend of 'more but below-standard is better than one or a few but very well-built' and 'quantity over quality' mindset, or is it just me who see this trend?

Nothing wrong with spamming 10 new storefronts of course, we all want to create threads related to our nation in the forums, and this is a roleplaying forum after all. But I just found it funny, that is all.

[Lamoni]

Sorry, pardon my confusing way of writing

What I was trying to ask was - have you guys noticed this recent trend of 'more but below-standard is better than one or a few but very well-built' and 'quantity over quality' mindset, or is it just me who see this trend?

Nothing wrong with spamming 10 new storefronts of course, we all want to create threads related to our nation in the forums, and this is a roleplaying forum after all. But I just found it funny, that is all.

You are not the only one seeing this trend, Yohannes. It is worrying, but a lot of these storefronts tend to die out within a few weeks, from what i've seen. The turnover is... immense on GE&T, and I don't think that nearly enough people use the available tools for improving their storefronts.

[Yohannes]

Ahh I see.. at least now I am a bit reassured to see that I am not the only one seeing it.

I am fine with individuals doing as they want contributing to the forums with many storefronts, and I am excited to see people are happily roleplaying!

What I am worried for are the new players. I simply don't want the new players of GE&T to see - and then proceed to emulate the practice of individuals subscribing to this 'more is better' or 'quality < quantity' doctrine. Another thing too, having an ill-thought out storefront does not mean that you are 'world leader' of the sector of your roleplayed business, because GE&T meant next to nothing at all when we take into account the number of players (with more experience) who don't even bother to create their fictional businesses' storefronts here; hence the quality > quantity fact at the end of the day.

If you can't convince the more experienced roleplayers to acknowledge your nation as what it claimed to be, then having as many number of storefronts as you can in a Global Economics & Trade forum (or claiming to be 'leading' something) will not help your cause at all. What is even more galling is when the properly-constructed storefronts are buried to the back of the forums because the owners of these storefronts decide to bump their storefronts. I've noticed this happening to your business Anemos, and I actually think it significantly decrease the chance that people see your storefront (because this has been happening quite often recently), thus hurting your business indirectly.

But your storefront is already well-known/popular. The problem (and I feel sad for) is for the new ones who are trying their best with new, well-constructed storefronts.. they are not given a fair go because they are finding themselves being constantly bumped back unfairly.

[Lamoni]

If you stay on GE&T for long enough, you really start to learn who has good storefronts, and who doesn't care as much, or doesn't know how to do any better.

[United Eastedge]

Name for my cartography/mapping storefront? Any suggestions?

[Lamoni]

Maybe you could see if you could do something by playing around putting words after the word "map." It worked out for Mapquest, after all.

[Lynion]

Are there any tips for starting a storefront in GE&T section?

[Lamoni]

http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=107737&p=5386484#p5386484

http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?ns=1&f=6&t=107737&p=5386493#p5386493

Plenty of good information can be gained from the guides found in those two posts, I would suggest that you read all of them before starting on a storefront of your own. It is quite a bit of reading, but it is well worth it, in order to avoid the multitude of low quality storefronts that we see all the time here on GE&T.

http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=16223

http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=227511

http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=255862

These are also good.

[Lynion]

Quite a bit of a read, but thank you.

[Lamoni]

Quite a bit of a read, but thank you.

You're welcome, Lynion. It is quite a bit of a read, but well worth it.

[AstyriaCorporation]

Those are all great reads. I'd also suggest looking over long-term successful storefronts and see what makes them so successful. Look at their quality, the effort put into them. That'll help give you an idea.

[Machina Haruspex]

Sorry, pardon my confusing way of writing

What I was trying to ask was - have you guys noticed this recent trend of 'more but below-standard is better than one or a few but very well-built' and 'quantity over quality' mindset, or is it just me who see this trend?

Nothing wrong with spamming 10 new storefronts of course, we all want to create threads related to our nation in the forums, and this is a roleplaying forum after all. But I just found it funny, that is all.

As Lamoni mentioned prior, these new storefront seem to die off within a few weeks, a month at best. Eventually the creators either grow bored and leave GE&T, some find out the established stores sell all that they do, and with more interesting fare added to it, and or are given advice to making a better one.

A great many of us have gone dark, and that is indeed saddening. However, more than a few of us survive to carry it forward. That should be enough I reckon.