ChupR Chatter

Wow, it’s a brand new year again. Time really does fly…

Seems like for many, its also the time to lay down new resolutions and perhaps one that should hold for ChupR is to keep listening and doing well for the local auction community.

In some sense, we’ve been thinking hard about how to reach out to more people as we believe that the value of sites like this only come from the network of users who are on it, and actively make use of the site. So far, we’ve gotta admit that marketing ain’t exactly our forte and definitely an area we may need to look into. But at the same time, if you’ve been on ChupR, like the way things work and would like to help us promote the site, please do help by linking to us! =P

Well, the coming year should present more barrelloads of fun, and at this point, we would sure like to point out how much we appreciate all of our users who have been with us through ChupR’s journey!

Its a good time as any to break out the champagne and toast in the New Year ahead!

*pop*

Have a Great 2009, everyone!

Hi all!

As a way of saying “Thank you” for all the support these past few months, we’ve put up a special Christmas 8GB iPod Nano auction starting @ $0.99!

Happy bidding and Merry Christmas to one and all! =)

- The ChupR Team

Hi all,

If you have a facebook account, do hop on over and join us at the newly setup ChupR Facebook Group:

Too be very frank, we haven’t really figured out a specific purpose for the group but thought it would be cool to have a place where everyone can just hang out and interact a little. And as always, to hear more from everyone on feedbacks and ideas for ChupR =)

So, don’t be a stranger, join in and say “Hi!” to us there!

- The ChupR Team

Actually didn’t want to write about the ad removal (lest we sound too bitchy) but the more we thought, the more curiously bemused we became about the whole matter. =P

So, what happened was that as part of ChupR’s outreach to have more people know about us, an ad was posted on ST701. What? You can’t find it now? Oh yes, that’s because it was removed. Got this email after that:

ST701 Warning,

You have posted advertisements that violated our Terms & Conditions, and the contents has been removed.

Regards,
ST701 Team

Strange, we were pretty sure the ad was reasonably ok ( you can see the screenshot of it below). As with all our marketing efforts, it was just done to spread the word about this new community platform we are offering, free of charge, out of pure interest. However, the email made a vague reference to having ran afoul of the Terms and Conditions. Just to be sure, a quick check of the Terms and Conditions was in order, but no paydirt there.

Curiously, an email was then sent asking for more details on the infringement. Sure, we understand it was ST701‘s right to decide what to allow to be listed and that they can remove stuff at their discretion. That’s something we totally respect. Free services doesn’t mean you can just run amok on others’ website. But the curious cat in us just wanted to find out how exactly we had stepped on their toes.

Perhaps, we thought, we can glean some idea of what is allowed and what is not be looking broadly at the other listings in the category. However, it brings us no closer to a definite answer as the listing show advertisments for variety services both online and offline. So no clues there.

Maybe we got ST701 spooked for some reason? Are they fearing their platform being over-shadowed by our growing community? Kind far-fetched as we don’t really see it that way. For one, we don’t blow money on massive advertising campaigns.

Still waiting for a reply (Almost been 24 hours, at here at ChupR, we try to keep response times to under a day ). We hope we at least know what’s happening. =)

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11-Dec Update

Turns out its a “conflict of interest” issue rather than an infringement of terms and conditions. Geez…

Hi,

There is a conflict of interest between www.chupr.com and ST701.

If you have any feedback, you may write to Mr Dennis Tan, Vertical Manager of ST701 Shops at XXXXXX@sph.com.sg.

Thank you for choosing ST701.

Kind regards
Team ST701

This tutorial covers the steps involved in enabling and setting up a Web Store on ChupR.

(You can click on the images to enlarge them)

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Step 1 - Enabling your Web Store

Step 2 - Setting up the Main Settings for the Store

Step 3 - Editing the Information Pages for your Web Store

Step 4 - Editing and Adding the Categories for your Web Store

This short tutorial covers the basic way one can bid for and buy an item on ChupR.

(You can click on the images to enlarge them)

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Step 1 - At the page of the item you wish to bid for

Step 2 - Confirmation of bid

Hi all,

Over these past few months, we’re pretty glad to see that the community here has grown quite a bit. However, we still think that there may be others out there who are still looking for a well-designed, easy to use auction platform but have not heard about ChupR just yet.

We’ll love to reach out to these folks, but we do need your help in this! so, if you have a website or blog where you can help spread the word about us, please do! We’ve also created some web banners and their codes which can simply be cut and pasted into blogs or websites. They work great in emails also!

The web banners can be found here.

Thanks a gazillion and have fun buying and selling on ChupR! =)

- The ChupR Team

Part 2 in our tutorial series will bring you through the main steps in creating a basic listing. While it does not cover all the features you can add in, the help text by the sides should guide you along =)

(You can click on the images to enlarge them)

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Step 0 (If you have a store set up)

Step 1 - Selecting the Category

Step 2 - Filling in the Item Details

Step 3 - Auction Settings

Step 4 - Setting the Shipping/Payment Settings

Step 5 - Preview and List your Item

In order to make ChupR even more user-friendly, we’ll be releasing a series of Tutorials to help guide everyone through the main processes on ChupR

We’ll start off with the registration process and move on to other things soon (we promise!)

So here goes nothing:

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How to register as a User on ChupR:

Once done, ChupR will send you an activation email which looks something like the one below. Once you get it, just click on the link to activate your account and you’ll be on your way!

Well, that’s about it. Except, of course, in the weird cases where somehow the activation email never arrives. In those cases, do check your spam folders first and if nothing’s there, do drop us a line at admin@chupr.com and we’ll see if we can sort it out.

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Next up, how to sell on ChupR ….

Ok, this is another one of those why-you-should-learn-from-others’-mistakes-so-you-don’t-make-them-yourselves thing. =P

As some of your may recall, the way this website was named awas pretty much a random thing. Wanting to hit the road running at the point of time, we quickly settled for a a short name, whose domain was available. Well, all was fine and dandy for a bit and we went on into the technical aspects of setting up the site, making sure it runs well and then spreading the word.

It was only till a little later that the magnitude of the linguisitic short-sightedness (in some sense ) in the choice of domain name was revealed by Google (Singapore). Cos you see, being one “a” away from the Spanish word “chupar”, the ever-helpful search engine tries to check if it was an unintended typo. More unfortunately, the Spanish word “chupar” means “to suck”. Or it could be the Mexican slang for drinking beer. (At least it’s not ALL negative :P)

So there, two lessons in one post - (1) Check domain names before you signup, and (2)now you know a new spanish word, and knowledge is power.

Oh well, at least thanks to this, we can always change our tagline to become “With a name that sucks, we got to be good” or something~~ Heh heh