Do I have to pay to participate in a Poll or submit an editorial article? No, it is free to setup a basic membership account. Just fill out and submit the membership form. After you recieve your membership email use the Main-Id to submit an article or participate in a poll. Do I have to create all 12 ads? No, you can create and run any number of Ads. 1 Ad, 2 Ads, or any number of Ads up to 12 Ads. Some people choose to only create and run one Ad. They just edit/change the Ad whenever they have a new item for sale year after year. What do you mean by Edit and why would I need it? Edit means to make changes to a classified ad. If an item in a Ad is slow to sell, you may want to lower the price to sell the item. With the Edit function you can change the price and put the Ad back just as it was but with the price changed. Please Note: if you edit your ad and change the category you cannot put the ad back in the previous category until the next month. What is the Ad Status and why would I need it? The Ad Status is either Hot or Cold, it controls if the Ad is hidden or shows in search results. Lets say a person has 3 Ads running. Say a car, boat and dog are for sale. Now suppose the dog is sold and they have no other item to sale at this time. You don't want people to continue calling about the dog for sale. This is where the Ad's Status variable comes in to play. All you do is edit the dog ad, change the Ad Status to cold and the dog ad will be hidden from the search results. Then later when you have another item to sale, you can edit the old dog Ad, change the info to reflect the new item, change the Ad Status to hot and you have a new Ad with the new item for sale. What is the Membership Main-Id and why do I need it? The Main-Id is the same thing as a username. It is a unique identifier for each membership. You will need your Main-Id to create classified ads and to edit/change your classified ads. It will also be needed for future member services as they become available. Why can't I change my Ad back to a previous category? The block is to stop edit abuse. If you edit your ad and change the category your ad goes to the front of the new category. If you can change the ad's category you cannot change back to your previous category until the following month. If this was allowed other members would never get a fair chance for their Ads to be in the front part of the category. Some people would just keep editing their ads, changing their category daily just to be in the front of the category. How is my Membership's classifieds activiated and how long does it take? There are two ways that your membership can be activated. Activation is either automated or manual. If you pay with a credit card your membership is activated automatically after payment is approved. This is the quick way to be able to proceed to create and submit ads. If you pay by U.S. Mail your membership is activated manually. This payment by mail will take 3 to 5 days for activation. How does payment work through Paypal/Clydeworld? After you submit your membership form you will recieve an email with your Main-Id, password and payment instructions. When you click the link to pay in the email all we do is setup the info to send to paypal. There is no real private info passed on gulfcoastnews.biz. The only info that is passed is your Main-Id, and gulfcoastnews.biz's Paypal Id. All of the credit card info is processed entirely on paypal's secure server. I've had a paypal account for 4 plus years. It has improved greatly over time. I highly reccomend paypal. If you want to recieve payments with credit cards, paypal is definitely the way to go. It now has full merchant account capability for free. What is the County variable on the Classified form and why is it important? gulfcoastnews.biz's classified section is intended for our local area. We want the items sold to be located in the Florida Big Bend and South Georgia area. If you want to look at an item you know that it is within a reasonable drive. This makes the classified section practical. The county variable is there to let people know what general area this item is located in. What is the Review List and how does it work? The review list is used by folks searching the classified categories. It allows the people to place an ad in a list they are interested in. They don't have to write down the ads or phone numbers as they search. They can generate the review list when they are done searching. It can be printed or saved. It is a really a handy search feature.