With the consistent growth of myArmoury.com has come a recent rash of vendors and makers registering for accounts and immediately posting promotional topics showing items for sale or other business-related announcements. This behavior constitutes a violation of our Rules of Conduct and is considered spam.

Each new member receives a private message as a welcome to the site. This message contains information specific to vendors and makers and also includes a link to our Rules of Conduct and an explanation of how business-related topics are to be handled.

While we encourage makers and vendors to announce and advertise their items on our site, we ask that it be limited to those people who are eligible and have joined the Industry Professionals usergroup. This has the added benefit of keeping this type of commerce-related discussion to a specific forum, our "Makers and Manufacturers Talk" forum, and allows our members to selectively ignore these messages should they wish to do so. It is a key goal of myArmoury.com to separate the promotional-related topics from the purely informational topics. While there is often room for overlap, such overlap is appropriate only for industry professionals who discuss their items as a means to further informational topics. Blatant advertisements, promotions, links, and announcements within informational topics are not appropriate.

I do not charge for advertising on this site. I offer it free to benefit the vendors, the members of the community, and to provide a vehicle that attempts to help the market grow. In order to take advantage of this free service, all vendors and makers must follow the simple and reasonable conditions outlined above and explained in more detail upon application to our Industry Professionals group.

Thank you.

NOTE: We allow authors and educational institutions who are not part of our "Industry Pro" group to post on our forum, as this is very much in line with our goal to serve an educational function to our community. We'll also allow these same privileges to those announcing DVDs, training materials, and seminars and events related to arms and armour study, western martial arts, and the like. We do suggest contacting us before posting such things just to be sure, however. This of course does not apply to those wishing to raise money for creating such projects.

Every person that registers on myArmoury.com receives a private message immediately with a welcome and a bit of orientation. Within that orientation is information pertaining to the expectations placed upon makers that includes a very clear description of limitations based upon them. This same message links to our rules of conduct. Further, notes such as this Announcement and the Marketplace Rules topic exist to give even more clarification.

Despite this, it's been shown time and time again that people do not take the time to read any of this. I can understand that. For the most part, it doesn't really cause issues for the typical member. What I do find difficult to understand is how any person wishing to register on a site and utilize the resources of that site to promote their business does not take a moment to find out what sort of rules might exist regarding such activities. After all, the world we live in generally does not offer much for free and the services typically associated with promotion, marketing, and business growth typically cost a fair bit of money on this planet.

We've had a lot of spammers on this site recently. We've had a lot of vendors registering accounts and immediately posting "for sale" or other promotional topics lately. We've had a rash of makers responding to other member's requests for information and help with posts showing their own items. We've had a recent increase of new members from Hong Kong, Poland, and other places registering on this site with the express interest in using it to further their finances at no cost to themselves.

Hopefully, not many of you have noticed this. It takes us a lot of time to keep a handle on this, clean it up, and communicate to the best of our abilities with those who break our rules. This has not been a small investment of time and frankly I've had my fill.

Those who took the time to read the first post in this topic know full well that I already offer vendors the ability to use this site's resources to further their business. This is offered at no cost to themselves. I do, however, ask that it be done within the rules outlined to them. I also hope that these makers do more than just use this site to promote themselves but instead "pay back" a bit with informative participation on the site. To me this seems like an inexpensive form of marketing, but hey, I've only been involved in the marketing industry peripherally since 1991 so what the hell do I know of marketing budgets, anyway?

I'm adding to this topic to say this:

Any maker, vendor, or distributor of any kind who uses this site to blatantly promote their business without following our simple-to-follow rules will immediately lose the ability to post on this site. Some will lose these privileges for a short time, others will lose them permanently. This will be done solely at my own discretion.

Those of you who are hobbyist makers who still manage to sell their items to others are advised to contact me first before attempting to promote themselves or risk losing the ability to post on this site.

For the purpose of clarity, let me define "promotion" as being any attempt to share one's work with the general public; any attempt to generate exposure for one's work; any attempt to increase "mindshare" of one's brand, be it a company name or individual's name; any attempt to advertise oneself as a maker or business; any attempt to make it known publicly that items of your making or of your business are currently for sale; any attempt to discuss your involvement in activities or other venues where you are selling or promoting your items; etc. etc. etc. There is one place on myArmoury.com appropriate for such activities and it is in the "makers and manufacturers" forum only.