We're working on getting our website set up, and here are a couple of machines we're building. Let me know what you think about price and what you get for the money.

I had someone on my friends list recently get a new AlienWare Area 51 system, and paid like $5,200 for it and is happy as hell about it. The Asus system we offer is almost the same machine for like $1,700 less and comes with a 22" wide screen monitor. Read the ad and specs to see what you can get for the money. We also offer choices and can build any custom machine you want.

Anyway, check it out and let me know what you think about the machines and the ad.

This is the big Asus system, Here.

The other system is a nice Gamer system too.. Here.

Both have Blu-Ray and HDDVD drives & DVD burners. And come with different options for you to chose from.

Nothing I'd ever buy, as it's still way overpriced for what it is, but I'm hardly your average consumer.

Two things that stick out to me are the fact that you're using a Q6600 for the CPU, which has become a budget CPU for high-end PC's nowadays. If you're throwing a pair of 8800's in it why only a $200 CPU.

The other being that you're using a power supply brand that I've never heard of and can't find any decent information on, which is a red flag for me (but again, probably doesn't matter to your average consumer)


Your ad layout is fine, all of the important information is there. The first paragraph has noticeable spelling and grammar issues though and isn't as clearly written as you'd like it to be. I'd rewrite it.

Skimming the rest of the ad, all of the paragraphs you have written could use a bit of a rewrite to be more concise and clear.

As Example, the following paragraph:
This is the System, check out the extended warranties from the manufacturer. Ours is a 30 day DOA then 1 Year parts and labor and then, thru the manufacturer where extended warranties apply, such as the Motherboard, it carries a Lifetime warranty, how much better is that???

Would be better off looking something like:

Below are the system specifications. We offer a 30 day DOA guarantee, meaning (insert DOA policy here), followed by a one-year parts and labor warranty. Be sure to notice the extended manufacturer's warranties where available, such as the lifetime warranty on the motherboard.

Anyway, that was just a quick example to make my point. If I were actually writing the ad, I'd probably rewrite it 4 or 5 times before I came up with something final. The more professional you can make it sound, the more likely somebody is going to risk a significant amount of cash on your ebay company.

Feel free to disagree or completely ignore anything I've said.

Wow, that's a serious gaming machine.

A couple of advertising pointers I can offer though:

1. A picture of the motherboard is bad news. People see that and go "eek, a $3,500 motherboard!" Get a pic of the CPU and the monitor together, (maybe with the monitor kind of off to the side) so that people see 2 things immediately: Price, and the picture of the *complete* system, not just a tower. Mr. Average Dumbass needs to understand that his money is going to a beast of a gaming system, not a semi-murky looking piece of computer hardware.

2. Man, don't make me scroll my ass all the way down to see the specs. Put a row of pictures of all the crap you have right at the top, and places where a potential customer has a choice just put the most popular one in there instead. Try to get something of each component in it and make them easily recognizable. Then, slam out the specs in the second paragraph - be like, *BAM* HERES THE BALLS, BITCH! THEN you can move into how cool your choices are and your burn in policy and how it works right out of the box (very cool by the way).

3. When I'm considering dropping 2 months worth of my hard earned wage on a gaming machine, I don't want it to be built by "techy persons". "All components are assembled by certified Techy persons then the OS system is installed..." I would swap this sentence out for, perhaps, "All components are assembled by our certified technicians! The operating system is installed, and we perform a 48 hour burn in while using benchmark tools..."

3a. Also, it helps to be specific about your certification. When you vaguely say "Certified" some people might look at that and go, "yeah, right" If you can say "A+ certified" or, "MCSE Certified" or really, for the random dumbass, any kind of acronym would do. "WTFOMGBBQ Certified" It just looks more professional, and in my opinion you would come off more as a small company that does tech REALLY WELL and has problems with their marketing / advertising because they're tech people, not people people.


I think Spyder is right about your power supply. 2 rails isn't as efficient as a giant, single rail, and the fact that it's modular makes it less so. Maybe offer people another power supply as a choice, like the OP1000 from Silverstone. Single rail, wired connectors - no power loss at the modular plugs.

Wow sorry this was so long, I didn't expect to type this much. Otherwise, it looks great. I especially like your burn-in policy, it's good that you explain what it is because random nubbly #4 might not know, and not having to install shit and set things up is a huge plus to some people.

Looks good

--Locane

Thanks guys, I appriciate the input. What did ya think about the other system? We'll work on the ad some more and work out the bugs. The 2nd power supply option is nice and we'll check some out to offer. We know we didnt offer the "best" cpu, we used the Q6600 to keep costs down. We can offer an upgrade for more money I guess. Also, we just got set up with our vendors, so we're not getting the best prices on stuff yet. This is a new venture for us. I'm sure our pricing will go down as time goes on, but we're stuck where we're at for the moment. The Q6700, our price is $558, the Q6600 is $288, our cost.

Please, let us know what ya's think. Feel free to make suggestions. It's our first time at building "serious" machines for sale.

We're still working on all these and we're also going to offer a AMD/ATI high end crossfire machine as well.

How bout those Blu-Ray/HDDVD roms, I think those are cool, especially when they come with a 22" wide screen & the 4Gb of Corsair RAM. We're just trying to give the consumer the biggest bang for their buck and stay affordable. Like I said, if you look at the AlienWare Area 51 machine, it's almost the same as our big one but ours is $1700 less.

Ok, here's the AMD Crossfire machine.

If you guys would be so kind as to let us know what you think about the machine and the ad again, it would be greatly appricated.

We took some of your suggestions and applied them to this ad. One of the things we've done different was try to make the ad itself shorter so you dont have to scroll for days. By doing that, we linked a "specs" page to our website as a .doc viewable online. The link is going to be a big scroll page because we want to put pictures in with the specs cuz we feel it has a better "bling" effect.

The website still isnt up yet, it is hosted and we do have our domain name but we havent really found a template for the store that we're really happy with yet. I've seen one that I really like but I dont have the cash to get it yet, however we should be able to deal with that by this weekend or sometime next week.

Anywayz, let us know how you like the format of the new ad, any suggestions/feedback is welcome.

Looks much cleaner overall to me. Having detailed specs in a doc format is handy. Might also suggest putting it on a website for people wishing to avoid a download.

Bluray/HDDVD rom is a nice selling point, seeing as the player is still ~$350 by itself. Though if you can save yourself some money by going to a strictly Bluray rom drive I'd do it as Toshiba announced a little bit ago that HDDVD lost the format wars and it was ending production effective very quickly (no more units built within a month, sold within a year memory serving)

Didn't realize the cost jump was that high between the two CPU's, so yeah, 6600's are fine


If you're going to offer options, just list them as different builds in different auctions, or mention something about customizable builds available e-mail for quote at the bottom of the ad, rather than giving them options within the auction, excluding basic options like OS choice. Have to watch out for builds looking too similar if you pre-list. If you custom quote, you'd still probably want to run them through ebay as either a private auction or a one-shot listing so that everybody is suitably covered.


Nothing to say about the build techwise as I'm not as up on AMD's hardware level as I used to be.

Ya, I thought it worked out better that way, as for just putting it on a web page, I'm trying to learn how to do that very thing. I have absolutely no idea how to make that page tho. It was easier for me to just upload a .doc file beacuse I know how to atleast ftp to my server. If anyone can give me some advice on how to make even a blank webpage, it would be a great help. I dont know how to write code. I would imagine that once I have the HTML code to make a page all I would have to do is c&p from that word doc with my text and pics. A little help please? =]



Thanks for the info, we thought we were being slick by offering both, it was a nice idea. I'll look into pricing, we may be able to save a few bucks. I went and read something on Cnet about Toshiba canceling the HDDVD format, and they are going to do that.



Ya, and AlienWare is offering an upgrade for the Q6850 something like that for almost and additional $1200? Those jump in price dramatically. Our distrubitor dosent even offer that Q6850 yet.




I'm trying to find a configurator where we can just list our options on the ad for the machine where they can check a box 3 or 4 different options for each catagory. And will run a "running tab" reflected in the total price/shopping cart. I'm way over my head with this website stuff and dont have the cash to get it started so I'm trying to pick it up as we go, so any help that anyone can give is appriciated. We're the little guy trying to compete against the man! Hopefully we can actually make a living off this is what we're shooting for.

Anywayz, thanks for looking and thanks for your time. =]

I'll post more ad's/systems as we get em set up. Check em out please. let us know what you guys think. We'll only make this better with outside help/input.

Thanks again.

Wow, that looks way, WAY better. Like night and day. Shit, reading it has gotten me excited, if I didn't have a gaming rig already I'd be trying to think of where I could get $2,500.

The spec list looks really good, but I felt like they could be done better. The order you chose to list the components in was a little wonky, so I took the time to do my own:

http://65.18.161.202/test_spec_list.html

[code]
<P><center><font size="5" color="0000FF"><b>INCREDIBLE PERFORMANCE AND INTENSE

MULTITASKING</b></font></center></p>

<p><b><font color="0000ff" size="5">></font>&emsp Viewsonic 22â€

Ya, that one worked out better I think, but I still have the prob with the "detailed" specs page.

Go to the bottom of the ad for the AMD machine and click the "click here" link and you'll see what I'm talking about.

That link will take you to a word .doc file I have hosted on our website. When you click it, you have to d/l it to read it. I want to make that exact page, pics & all into a HTML so it can just be viewed rather than d/l'd. Those are the specs I was talking about.

I read a tutorial earlier today and was playing with making HTML, but I messed something up when I tried uploadig to my server. It showed the specs page but didnt include the pictures. When I created the HTML it also created a filename_files folder along with the filename.html. I needed to create a folder to put them both into and then ftp to my public_html folder. The filename_files folder that was created contains the .jpg's. I have to figure out how to get everything directed right, I think, I'm not sure, I got frustrated with and and stopped working on it earlier. Maybe I'll revisit it yet tonight if I can figure it out. If not, I'll get back at it tomorrow.

lol here's my pathetic little first webpage ever! www.uberwerkz.com

http://www.docudesk.com/deskpdf_pdf_wri ... agodIBI9WA

You could try this software and make a pdf, or you're probably looking at using html tables to accomplish what you have in that .doc file. I don't have ms word installed, but I can imagine that it would be a huge pain in the ass to get working right.

--Locane

We'll see, I'ma mess with it again tomorrow. I think I'm just having a problem with how I need to upload it to the server.

I'll keep ya informed. I want to try and keep it in HTML format. I think I got it, I'm just too burned out on it today. Had to deal w/ my 2 yr old son, ebay, shipping out parts, the website and everything else today and it all just got too distracting.

**edit**

I did actually figure it out and got it working as a HTML file.

I was having a problem with the path and where I was putting both files.