Some Suggestions as we head into 2014

[ceosam]

While I agree with 80% of what was said here, the price of $500 per thread is not business friendly and would actually stop the huge growth of new threads and services being offered. The mods are doing a great job, at keeping the balance. That means, making sure most companies can afford to open a thread and do business here, while also making sure it's not FREE so everybody and their mama can open a thread here. Its all about balance man. If its not balanced, the forum will start to suffer just like the economy.

 

[proxygo]

some people have a lot and make more as they go
some people start small and work there way up over time

by definition schlong if u have little money to start you shouldnt
try sell something == absolute balls ...

 

[netmoney1]

While I agree with 80% of what was said here, the price of $500 per thread is not business friendly and would actually stop the huge growth of new threads and services being offered. The mods are doing a great job, at keeping the balance. That means, making sure most companies can afford to open a thread and do business here, while also making sure it's not FREE so everybody and their mama can open a thread here. Its all about balance man. If its not balanced, the forum will start to suffer just like the economy.

I'll say it again...$500 is simply just a number for discussion sake. Also, think about it in terms of cost per month....using this imaginary number of $500 that breaks down to less than $42 a month. I honestly don't think that would stop growth of solid services at all. Growth of crap? Yes, most definitely.

 

[Amsterdammer]

I like your ideas but:
The thread you are referring to is by a blue user that is a donor too. The problem with it in my eyes is the Mod approval of it. It makes people trust it more while they shouldn't.
There should be a review copy for the Mods to see if the service can be delivered, but as soon as a Mod says something is okay others are more likely to assume it is while there really is no reason to. When a Mod recommends the service that builds even more trust. Threads should be approved without visible Mod approval/opinions imho.

If you put down a deposit with a Mod, it just makes them more responsible and I don't think that is a good thing. It creates more problems than it solves. Also, $500 is too high for poor people like me to invest. Personally, I would opt for 500 posts (or become jrVIP). That way you have to invest in the account, you can only do that by participating in the forum and this takes time. Time that can be used to actually learn how to provide the intended service for instance.
Also, false claims should never be approved in a sales thread, brings down the trustworthiness of the forum. It is difficult to stop a motivated scammer or a nooby salesman but flat out untruths being posted can be avoided. The thread in the example you provided is a matter of how you understand it. Proxies are advertized as G. approved too and that can't be exactly true either. lol

But ultimately people do know what blackhat stands for so: Caveat emptor, iTrader was introduced for a reason.

Just a brainfart, hope it doesn't smell too much.

EDIT: $500 is an example, got it. Perhaps it should be a monthly subscription then as it is easier to pay 40 bucks a months than it is to fork over a few hundred at once. Don't know what the exact rules are on how long the advertizement stays up now btw.

 

[ceosam]

I see what your trying to do here. And while you have good intentions to weed out lower quality services, it is too restrictive to become mainstream on the forum. Here's why, if the price was set at $500 to start a BST ALL sellers would increase their prices alot. Because there is no guarantee, that just because you have a BST that people will buy from you. I've seen BST's get launched and after 1 month only have 3 or 4 buyers. Imagine they had to pay $500 to open a BST, + $97 to become JRVIP and only made on average 5 sales a month and their service is $20 each. Ok, now that person is not only not making ANY roi, but their LOSING money! Before you know it, it happens to enough members, they spread the word about it on the net, and before you know it, the majority of people are launching threads on competitor sites like WF, HF, WickedFire, DP and other IM forums. Which is why I said, I think the mods are doing pretty great work keeping the balance. Its not overly expensive, but its not free either. But I understand your concerns though.

 

[netmoney1]

I see what your trying to do here. And while you have good intentions to weed out lower quality services, it is too restrictive to become mainstream on the forum. Here's why, if the price was set at $500 to start a BST ALL sellers would increase their prices alot. Because there is no guarantee, that just because you have a BST that people will buy from you. I've seen BST's get launched and after 1 month only have 3 or 4 buyers. Imagine they had to pay $500 to open a BST, + $97 to become JRVIP and only made on average 5 sales a month and their service is $20 each. Ok, now that person is not only not making ANY roi, but their LOSING money! Before you know it, it happens to enough members, they spread the word about it on the net, and before you know it, the majority of people are launching threads on competitor sites like WF, HF, WickedFire, DP and other IM forums. Which is why I said, I think the mods are doing pretty great work keeping the balance. Its not overly expensive, but its not free either. But I understand your concerns though.

Remove $500 from the equation and replace it with something else. Anything else that makes sense. The point is that $30 is too low. Much too low. Whether the price needs to be $31 or $862.58 is not decided.

Really can't base something on everyone making a huge roi....just like in the real world some will do great and some will fail. The reality is businesses fail:

http://www.statisticbrain.com/startup-failure-by-industry/

Market Place threads are probably no different. Although here someone doesn't have 3 year leases and huge sums of money on the line to launch. Now, when you look at it that way an amount like $500 seems very small.

 

[EddieC123]

I like the idea of sellers paying a deposit for refunds to be paid from if needed, but instead of a fixed price which could force out sellers of budget services, how about five times the price of their most expensive service?

If combined with a better structure for the shitlist procedure this should be able to offer pretty good protection for members of the forum. One problem at the moment is that scammers stall buyers that are wanting a refund & they rack up a large number of requests before someone actually starts a shitlist thread. I would suggest that sellers are required to honour refunds within three days - assuming they agree to the refund of course. In turn I think buyers should be obligated to start a shitlist thread promptly after their refund hasn't been delivered or has been refused - say within 24 hours - or abandon their claim.

In the majority of cases a seller won't have accumulated more than five refund requests in three days, and the deposit paid will cover all those affected if the shitlist thread is proved warranted. To cover those who are genuinely having a temporary cashflow problem (happens to the best of us sometimes), the refund can be paid out of the deposit when sellers agree to a refund but can't afford it, with the BST thread suspended until the deposit is topped up to it's original level.

 

[elschlongo]

some people have a lot and make more as they go
some people start small and work there way up over time

by definition schlong if u have little money to start you shouldnt
try sell something == absolute balls ...

Why does BHW have to be the testing ground for a product or service?

Of course everyone has to start somewhere.

My point was that this is no ordinary site that people sell on. This forum is huge, and the traffic it gets is a great opportunity to expand your successful business. Will it be the end all fix? No, but it would help to decrease the chances of SL.

 

[theqavish]

My 1 cent > BST opening fee is way too low.

$100 to $500 + The highest package price added to it. Whether its $20 or $2000.

 

[WizGizmo]

Thanks netmoney1:

You have brought up some points that may be worth consideration,
therefore, I have notified my fellow staff members and pointed them
to this thread.

Cheers! - "Wiz"

 

[Toz]

netmoney1, honestly, I find these to be great ideas, and I can feel the passion that fuels your input. The way you structured your verbage -- your message is clear, and it's easy to understand your "why". It's because of these things, that I agree with you, for the majority of it.

While I agree that something needs to be done about the "Hire a Freelancer" section, I don't feel it would be the most viable option, to simply move it to Jr. VIP. I do feel the Dropshipping section would make a nice addition to Jr. VIP, but while I already feel Jr. VIP is a great addition to everyone's profile, when they can afford to invest in that part of their education, I don't feel it should be forced upon our community. All things in moderation. That said, however, SOMETHING needs to be done about that section. This, in my opinion, is really the only thing that needs to be further discussed. Everything else you listed, I'd be happy to see it implemented, tonight!

If we could still give Karma, you'd surely have earned some with this thread!

 

[CosmicSoundz]

sellers should be voted in. Becoming a Jr VIP is as easy as spending $90 bucks which is a drop in the bucket for those scammers who want to scam you.

 

[Nut-Nights]

These are some great ideas , scammer will think twice before scamming. But instead of charging money for hire a freelancer section , Moderators have to be put warning in thread "Deal at your own risk, No SL thread will be approved for any issue (scam etc) related to this section". .

 

[freezeice04]

If the BST section price gets raised, what's going to happen to all the threads that are currently open? There is ALOT of them, and a lot of low quality ones. So although the $500 price would prevent future low quality services from opening, it doesn't remove the crap ones currently on the marketplace.

Also another thing to consider is, how good will it do bhw in terms of making money? There will be far fewer services being created, so there will be less free review copies for the mods, and possible less money made overall. A lot of people probably only buy JR VIP to open a marketplace thread, so that will decrease the number of people buying JR VIP?

 

[mindlesswizard]

sellers should be voted in. Becoming a Jr VIP is as easy as spending $90 bucks which is a drop in the bucket for those scammers who want to scam you.

I agree with this dude !! this is the point that has to be noted

 

[Logician]

sellers should be voted in. Becoming a Jr VIP is as easy as spending $90 bucks which is a drop in the bucket for those scammers who want to scam you.

I agree with sellers should be voted in. This is a good way to weed out competition.

 

[prab1996]

i agree with netmoney1. (i not want to hijack your thread , but just want to share my opinion )

best way to prevent scammers is to have a system like fiverr.
(this will even be able to deal with freelance work, because many people not have money to invest when they do freelancer work on bhw)

#buyer buy $100 service from bst > amount is transferred to sellers bhw account > seller delivers work > buyer clicks work completed "button > bhw system pays him $95.
many people say that this will increase transaction costs but paying $5-20 in transactions is better than losing $100-$500 to a scammer.
# bst will have a thumbs up and thumbs down buttons. (reading 5-10 pages consumes time)
#there are many fiverr scripts shared on net/bhw , it will hardly cost $1k to admin.

this might be better idea
#charging $500 will be too much for small sellers. (charging $50 per bst + 5X cost of largest pack , will be suitable. )
if someone is going to sell $5 worth pack then it will not be too much for "him" to pay $50 + $25 as security.
if someone is going to sell $500 worth pack then it will not be too much for "him" to pay $50 + $2500 as security.

 

[kumbhak11]

I think $500 beforehand will encourage only the previous members to survive in marketplace and it will put new members away from buy sell services.

Regarding quality service... a member selling blog posts or high pr links for 150USD/month will just have to pay for his 3-4 customer orders to start a service, but a person selling 500 bookmarks for 3 USD will have to stake profit of around 170 orders to start such a service,the blog comment service providers will have to sacrifice around 50 customer orders and so on.

If we want that seller does not run away, then make the service approved for $30, then charge a token 10% (or something like that) of expected revenue per 10 or 20 sales that he got after his service went live, so that even if he runs away... the token money remaining with BHW will ensure some of his clients get the refund.

 

[Wilson Grant Fisk]

People are focussing on the $500 unnecessarily, it is just an arbitrary figure used to highlight the fact that for $97+$30 ANYBODY can open a sales thread.

Do we really want The Marketplace open to EVERYBODY?
How about a bit of exclusivity where legitimate sellers provide quality services/products.

The gist of the thread for me, is that we should focus on having the best quality we can.
Don't we deserve it?

The forum should be working to have the Best SEO Marketplace on the internet.
This will invariably mean not everybody will be able to compete.

When starting a business it is not unusual to have some collateral/assets/bonds required to business.

People look at The Marketplace as an easy way to make money, even if they don't have the knowledge or experience.

For every JrVIP who opens a BST, there are many who have no clue of what they are doing. They rush to get JrVIP status and then start offering a service, even if they haven't really got a business plan or they start reselling or re-packaging other services.
Essentially they are using us as Guinea Pigs.
Do you want your sites to be used as Test/Trials as somebody experiments and learns how to provide a service.
I don't, when I pay for a service I expect that provider to have MORE knowledge and experience than me, I am paying for their expertise.
At the minimum I expect them to understand the basics of providing the service and the basics of conducting business.


There are some services on offer here, that are low cost/cheap. They should have nothing to worry about because they tend to be pretty honest in what they are providing. They are not making wild claims about ranking or Panda/Penguin/Hummingbird approved/safe.
They state what they are offering and at a competitive price, I wouldn't want to see them go.
It is just the bullshitters and the incompetent that need to be weeded out.

Remember netmoney1, started this thread to get some discussion and debate going on how to improve BHW.
If you disagree or have a different slant on things then please respond and try to come up with your own ideas for improvements.

 

[netmoney1]

People are focussing on the $500 unnecessarily, it is just an arbitrary figure used to highlight the fact that for $97+$30 ANYBODY can open a sales thread.

Do we really want The Marketplace open to EVERYBODY?
How about a bit of exclusivity where legitimate sellers provide quality services/products.

The gist of the thread for me, is that we should focus on having the best quality we can.
Don't we deserve it?

The forum should be working to have the Best SEO Marketplace on the internet.
This will invariably mean not everybody will be able to compete.

When starting a business it is not unusual to have some collateral/assets/bonds required to business.

People look at The Marketplace as an easy way to make money, even if they don't have the knowledge or experience.

For every JrVIP who opens a BST, there are many who have no clue of what they are doing. They rush to get JrVIP status and then start offering a service, even if they haven't really got a business plan or they start reselling or re-packaging other services.
Essentially they are using us as Guinea Pigs.
Do you want your sites to be used as Test/Trials as somebody experiments and learns how to provide a service.
I don't, when I pay for a service I expect that provider to have MORE knowledge and experience than me, I am paying for their expertise.
At the minimum I expect them to understand the basics of providing the service and the basics of conducting business.


There are some services on offer here, that are low cost/cheap. They should have nothing to worry about because they tend to be pretty honest in what they are providing. They are not making wild claims about ranking or Panda/Penguin/Hummingbird approved/safe.
They state what they are offering and at a competitive price, I wouldn't want to see them go.
It is just the bullshitters and the incompetent that need to be weeded out.

Remember netmoney1, started this thread to get some discussion and debate going on how to improve BHW.
If you disagree or have a different slant on things then please respond and try to come up with your own ideas for improvements.

EXACTLY!!!!!

Guys, chill on the $500. It was an imaginary number for discussion sake. Everyone is focusing on that and missing the point. It doesn't matter if it is $100, $250, or $3,345,345.86...the point is that something may need to be done in order to improve the QUALITY.

To those saying that the forum won't make money...I disagree. Using the IMAGINARY $500 figure even if 90% of threads went away or didn't renew the revenue would still be MORE. Also, that improves the quality, bringing more people here (and keeping people here, purchasing memberships). Afterall, this is the best fucking seo forum around so shouldn't the goal be to keep it that way?

What happens when you want to open an office? (maybe this will help some see that the imaginary $500 figure is NOTHING when you REALLY think about it)...

#1) They are going to do a credit check on you and your business - and you better be flawless
#2) They are going to require you to sign a long (24-36+ month) lease - oh, and if your business fails, they will come after you because most now require a personal guarantee
#3) Aside from regular business expenses you need an advertising budget - how else will people find your new business? Better have a BIG wad of dough for this
#4) Hope you have a huge nest egg - because sh#t will hit the fan with every new business - and most fail.
#5) They will ask for assets and verification of deposit - if you don't have a big chunk of money and assets then pound sand - they won't lease you an office

So, let me ask again - does $500 REALLY seem like a lot to have access to the biggest seo forum marketplace for 12 whole months?!