Geocaching Australia

Just a cacher wrote: ↑

13 April 22 10:15 am

I can see that some of these ideas could present a large administrative headache, like handling lots of small amounts of money and making the books balance, awarding, packaging, and posting pathtags, and that sort of thing. You could delegate one or more tasks, either for a specific game, or in general. These days, with instant communication at our fingertips, it shouldn't be impossible to send a message to whoever, saying, "please post a pathtag to cacher Fred, at this address", or "Fred has paid for his tag, please send it off." I would put my hand up to help out, if wanted.

If people are paying they would need to buy through the GCA shop. I'm not taking money via any other means. So we would need to add PayPal fees to the cost of the tag. $0.30 AUD plus 3.60% of the cost of the item, so maybe another $0.20 to $0.30. I also have the challenge of tax. Any money taken in the shop is taxable (profit, not revenue). So we need to factor 37% on top of any "profit" on a tag. i.e. If we make $1.00 profit on a game tag the tax of $0.37 is payable leaving us with only $0.63.

So after outlaying $3.90 for the tag, plus PayPal we're now up to around $4.50. Sell them for $5.50 to make a small amount to the site for running the game and we make 150 * $0.63 for a grand total of $94.00. That's a staggering amount of effort for such a small, small amount of profit. We would also not likely sell all 150 AND we would have losses through Australia Post. i.e. $94.00 is best case. Mind you if we don't sell 'enough', then we can make a loss as we have unsold stock which cannot be returned.

In the past we did have a volunteer who volunteered to send out the rewards tags. That ended abruptly and it ended up back with me. While I am appreciative of people volunteering to assist there needs to be some record of them being "qualified" to volunteer. It's not as simple as "I'll volunteer" and they get the money and the tags and then drop off the face of the earth either before, during or after the tags are distributed. We've all seen cachers hide 50 caches, then 2 weeks later, nothing, only crickets

Sounds rather depressing doesn't it and I'm NOT saying this won't work or can't work, but I also know that it will end up on very few people who will carry the load and financial risk. However the games are not about the money, so we can still discuss whether we want to start and run games again, whether they be for profit, for fun, for rewards being real of intangible.

Just a cacher wrote: ↑

13 April 22 10:15 am

2. Competition to design pathtag, with entry fee?
3. Donation drive before a game?

We tried number 2 with a number of free tags to the designer. Not a single response was received That turned me right off that idea.

Number 3 has been suggested in the past and I have not wanted to be involved in begging for money. Whether it's a donation drive or begging or a message at GCA every time you visit asking for a few pennies to support the site I simply don't like it. I hate HATE wikipedia and the way they beg for a cup of coffee every year. I don't use the site when that is happening or if I forget I will close if before getting what I want. I'm strange that way, sorry. My personal opinion is if you want money, you sell something either via a shop or we introduce a fee for caching and that goes against our mantra of "free and open", you don't beg and annoy your clients for it.

This is probably far off topic for this thread, but it may come down to whether we want to run a game if we can't offer a participation award.

caughtatwork wrote: ↑

13 April 22 2:03 pm

This is probably far off topic for this thread, but it may come down to whether we want to run a game if we can't offer a participation award.

I'll play! I tend to lose pathtags anyway.... I don't mind the electronic one on the profile - maybe have a Project-GC-esque levels of tag for the winners to display on their profile....
We don't find GC caches for rewards, just the fun, so I don't need tangible rewards to go for GA caches either.

On the subject of donations, I don't like banners and nags either, but an easy few-seconds way of throwing in a few bucks here and there might be useful, something unobtrusive. I always donate a bit when buying stuff in the shop, but you have to get into the shop to see you can do that....

Team737 wrote: ↑

13 April 22 2:17 pm

I'll play! I tend to lose pathtags anyway.... I don't mind the electronic one on the profile - maybe have a Project-GC-esque levels of tag for the winners to display on their profile....
We don't find GC caches for rewards, just the fun, so I don't need tangible rewards to go for GA caches either.

I like this idea.

How do others feel about no pathtag rewards at all?

Would others, like myself, like to have html image codes we can add to our GC profiles? I know you can't advertise GCA in a cache hide but I've had a GCA banner thing on my profile for ages with no argument.

I was wondering if you could piggy back a bit on the 'Snag the tag' that GC is doing, but as a GCA exclusive alternative. I find that the snag the tag is very expensive to play, however I would be happy to buy a few GCA exclusive tags (or anything else you could make here in AUS to use as a prize) to hide somewhere for someone to race out and find - that would then help maybe with some fundraising for the site and maybe promote the game to the people that love hunting for the prizes that they get to keep.

If you could give explain how that game works that would be great.

It's a bit like a First To Find race. You hide a specially designed geocoin out in the big wide world and publish the coordinates on their website. People see when one has been hidden and they do crazy things to get to it first so they "snag the tag" before anyone else.

It's something you can do within any geocache really. Produce your own pathtags or geocoins and pop them in caches and let people know they are there to be found. Dirtbags Geocaching Australia have been doing that for a while now. They publicise the dropped coin through social media though.

No_Tomorrow wrote: ↑

14 April 22 11:49 am

It's a bit like a First To Find race. You hide a specially designed geocoin out in the big wide world and publish the coordinates on their website. People see when one has been hidden and they do crazy things to get to it first so they "snag the tag" before anyone else.

It's something you can do within any geocache really. Produce your own pathtags or geocoins and pop them in caches and let people know they are there to be found. Dirtbags Geocaching Australia have been doing that for a while now. They publicise the dropped coin through social media though.

o you pay for a Geocoin, hide it somewhere, post the co-ordinates (at GC or some other site?) and then someone finds it and you're out the cost of the Geocoin? Is this actually a geocaching.com thing or something else?

I found reference to Snag the Tag in the GC forums (took me ages to even FIND the forums!!), and it seems to be an expensive game to participate in. There is a website called snag the tag, with information on it. I don't think it's 'us', really. It isn't anything to do with geocaching, as far as I can tell, except that some of the same people do both. It also seems to be rather US-leaning, like GC.

caughtatwork wrote: ↑

14 April 22 3:21 pm

o you pay for a Geocoin, hide it somewhere, post the co-ordinates (at GC or some other site?) and then someone finds it and you're out the cost of the Geocoin? Is this actually a geocaching.com thing or something else?

Pretty much. I believe what is hidden are geocoins trackable at geocaching.com, but the link ends there.... it is run by a separate entity AFAIK....

Team737 wrote: ↑

14 April 22 7:28 pm

caughtatwork wrote: ↑

14 April 22 3:21 pm

o you pay for a Geocoin, hide it somewhere, post the co-ordinates (at GC or some other site?) and then someone finds it and you're out the cost of the Geocoin? Is this actually a geocaching.com thing or something else?

Pretty much. I believe what is hidden are geocoins trackable at geocaching.com, but the link ends there.... it is run by a separate entity AFAIK....

Thanks. I'm not sure this is for us as I just can't see people paying $5.00 for something to give away. There is a possibility that a new cache type called an "Easter Egg Hunt" or similar might work, run around the Easter period with a special set of pathtags minted. I'm just not sure that will work though. More ideas are always welcomed though.

caughtatwork wrote: ↑

19 April 22 9:28 am

Thanks. I'm not sure this is for us as I just can't see people paying $5.00 for something to give away. There is a possibility that a new cache type called an "Easter Egg Hunt" or similar might work, run around the Easter period with a special set of pathtags minted. I'm just not sure that will work though. More ideas are always welcomed though.

That sounds fun, we'd be involved....
Many of us already spend a whole bunch more to just give away - trackables, cache containers, fuel for maintenance etc etc

Okay...
So let's assume there were no pathtag rewards for games. Would people still be interested in being part of a fun challenge game still? If yes, please respond to the below.

Would you be interested in:

- a moveable game with distance and number of finds challenges (with the new moveable rules in mind if course). If yes, would you like to see the return of a theme like gnomes, frogs or dinosaurs, or would you like to see something different like water themed vehicle or animal, or tigers because it's the year of the water tiger, etc?

- a themed challenge like geospotz where you find (on either geocaching site) or hide (only with Geocaching Australia) caches related to the theme. This could possibly include the original definition locationless caches also. If yes, any theme ideas? Winter for a winter game, weather themed to finally farewell La Nina, or maybe space/sky themed? Just ideas.

- something new like a geocaching twist on a board game like battleships?

- another type of game/challenge I've missed listing here?

C@W, what are your thoughts on stickers as participant prizes, rather than the expensive pathtags for only some of the participants? Not that any prize is needed at all. Just wondering what your thoughts on this are.

Do you mean real stickers, or the virtual kind?