PLEASE READ: New Advertising Rules

Nathan

Hey Guys,

First, I want to thank you all for giving me so much great feedback on our advertising rules. It's amazing how attitudes have changed over the past few years and I think it's time for us to adjust.

I took some time to really think this through because we are changing some rules that have been in place for almost 7 years now. But in reality we have slowly loosened up on our rules over time so I don't think the end result of this change will be as dramatic as it seems. We are just finally making it official.

First, some quick history. ContractorTalk.com was started to be a Pros Only community and that meant if you weren't a professional contractor you couldn't join the site. Over time we all saw the need to have input from manufacturers, vendors, and service providers but our rules never changed to officially allow anything. The result has been a lot of confusion and hopefully today we will be able to fix that. Here are the changes.

We are adding a new set of rules that officially states who can and cannot join ContractorTalk.com. You can read these rules here: Who's Allowed to Join ContractorTalk.com?. Notice that we are still a "Pros Only" community meaning we don't allow homeowners to ask DIY questions, but we are now officially allowing people who work full time in the industry without working directly in the field. This is one of those changes that has slowly taken place on it's own but I think putting it in writing will help.

Now for the big change. We have updated our ad rules and you can read them here: Advertising Rules.
Right away you'll see that we put members into different groups and have different ad rules for each. Some of this is due to past abuses and some of it is just a test that we will learn from. There is no doubt in my mind that we will need to make some changes to this going forward. Please just bear with us and give us feedback as we go.

Please take a moment and read through these rules and let me know what you think and any questions that you may have. Thanks.

__________________
Nathan

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot