Getting a site listed that doesn't meet the DMOZ guidelines

I am interested in submitting my web site 2-tickets.com to the http://dmoz.org/Shopping/Entertainment/Tickets/ category.

The submission requirements won't allow my site because I use a popular plug-in to display my inventory. I fully agree that this is an important measure as it prevents a single broker listing 100's of sites, but as it would cost an enormous amount of money to develop my own software, I wondered if there was a way around this.

My site has a great deal more content than most. In fact I have some venue information and seating charts only found on my site.

I also stock a large number of english premier league tickets , formula 1 tickets and rugby tickets that no one else does.

With the plug-in, consumers don't know if the tickets they are looking at belong to to that broker or if they are just marking up someone else's tickets.

Short of trying to develop another way to display my inventory, how can a site like mine get listed in dmoz?

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I appreciate your input.

What do you understand by 'plug-in'? On the Internet this usually means a browser plug-in which is an additional component used to display specific media (i.e. Flash, QuickTime etc.). Our guidelines don't prohibit listing sites that use such plug-ins, we have plenty of them listed.

If you are talking about Flash, we don't disallow sites with Flash, it is just that many editors have made the personal decision not to open up their machines to the vulnerabilities of Flash, and thus decline to review Flash sites -- but they are not deleted, just left for another editor.

By "plug in" do you mean something in the visitors browser? or do you mean something to do with the shopping cart on the server that processes transactions?


Confused.

By "plug in" do you mean something in the visitors browser? or do you mean something to do with the shopping cart on the server that processes transactions?

You're correct. The plug-in is my shopping cart and what displays my inventory. In the submission guidlines for this category it states "We will not accept sites that are resellers of other sites selling the same tickets (e.g. Eventinventory.com,"

I actually have my own inventory - I'm not just reselling tickets, nor am I an affiliate, but do I use the Eventinventory.com plug in - If you view a page http://www.2-tickets.com/tickets/formula_1/belgian_grand_prix/ - you'll see my inventory is displayed using that plug-in.

I 'm hoping that even though I use this plug in I will still be able to submit my site. There are not many choices out there for ticketing companies short of about 3 different programs and as i mentioned before developing my own would be costly.

thanks again for your input.

Hello,
just checking in to see if anyone had anything else they could add to my questions posed here.

Thanks

What you're saying is there's no straightforward way to tell the difference between your site and the millions of event-inventory affiliate doorway spammers.

Aargh!

Given that you have your own inventory, I don't understand why any e-commerce shopping cart system couldn't be used.

What's different about tickets as a product?

hutcheson said:

What you're saying is there's no straightforward way to tell the difference between your site and the millions of event-inventory affiliate doorway spammers.

Aargh!

Click to expand...

Unlike an affiliate we're actually a licensed broker. I realise it's hard to tell the difference which is why I enquired about my situation in this forum.

With regard to the question about using my own shopping cart, to develop my own cart is very costly, (as i stated above) as is the POS system I would need to and so using event-inventory is the only way right now.

I noticed that there were other sites in the directory that used the same plug-in and so hoped that if you took in account my unique situation there might be a way to add another site?

thanks.

One reason you're not getting more answers is that you're asking very hard questions. A lot of people avoid that area because it is such an affiliate-spam magnet: or go there only to clean out the kinds of spammers they can spot easily. The results is: hard-to-spot spam and legitimate sites pile up.

I don't know the answer: I only know there will not be a quick one.

Yes, I asked my question simply because I believed that the editors in the previous posts to mine might have misunderstood your question.

I have avoided the answer, like Hutcheson, simply because I am not qualified or experienced enough in that area to discuss it further.

I have left it for someone else, someone who does feel so qualified; and my guess is that there are only a handful of editors that might fit the bill.

giz said:

Yes, I asked my question simply because I believed that the editors in the previous posts to mine might have misunderstood your question.

I have avoided the answer, like Hutcheson, simply because I am not qualified or experienced enough in that area to discuss it further.

I have left it for someone else, someone who does feel so qualified; and my guess is that there are only a handful of editors that might fit the bill.

Click to expand...

Would you suggest perhaps that I contact the editor for that particular category? If so, how would one approach that person?

Is there some way that you could draw attention on your site itself to the unique products you offer?

I'm not familiar with this category either, but in other areas of Shopping, if there's a site which offers a lot of affiliate stuff but also clearly directs a visitor (or an editor) to the unique products, it's more likely to get listed.

Theoretically we ignore all affiliate content and evaluate only based on the unique content, but in practice, the more difficult a site's design makes it to tell the difference between affiliate and unique content, the less chance the site's going to have at a listing. For some shopping sites, it's feasible to explain the unique products of the site on the About Us page and/or add an Our Products menu linking directly to the unique products. Not only does this help ODP editors to evaluate the unique content, it must be good for business. I shop online frequently and skip right past sites that seem to be selling things I've seen already; as a shopper, I dig for new content *less* than I do as an editor.

I don't know how any of this applies to the ticket world. If you're selling tickets which are not available anywhere else, and there is some way to advertise this fact and make it easily checkable, that might attract the attention of both ODP editors and jaded shoppers. The mechanics of such an idea I would have to leave to people who know the field better.