SEO BST Rant

[WizGizmo]

Thread moved to the Forum Suggestions & Feedback section.

 

[GreenGoblin]

I couldn't agree more!

Foreign workers are coming in and undercutting everyone and then do a brutal job, making the entire forum look bad, pushing out high end service providers.

You can take a look at any niche that has popped up on this forum.
I was the first to sell micro niche sites on here, 5 years ago.
I was also the first to sell authority sites on here, probably 3 years ago now.
I was also the first keyword tool on here.
I was also one of the first to sell expired domains, last summer.

Most recently, the expired domain market has went down, like others did, as people come in driving the price to he ground, in a race to the bottom. The higher end service providers on here cannot compete with those prices with the cost of time and money they invest in their products. Personally, I've spent hundreds of hours working, and then constantly tweaking my expired domain system, I'd say 200 hours. Say my coding is worth $25/hour. How the heck is someone supposed to make $5000 or more when people are charging like $10 a domain, or $5 I think I saw. I'm not the only service provider with this issue, so don't treat it as so.

Top service providers like Leith, BassTrackerBoats, Luka, etc (I'm not speaking for them, just using them as an example) would make more money when their prices are not undercut and they get more sales. This money would spent on ads, etc. These days, there are such a small amount of services providers that make the kind of money to justify buying ads. I don't check the marketplace much anymore, so I'm not even sure if these guys sell here anymore.

If it was $250 to list a thread, and they were thoroughly tested, the quality would be so high of these providers, like it used to be in 2010 when almost no mod wanted to approve a thread.

I think I covered the pros for both the buyers, the sellers and the ownership of the forum. The barrier of entry has to change. If you don't want to 10x the price, maybe require all sellers to have proven their knowledge by writing threads in their forum section of interest to prove they know what they are talking about.

I do agree with $250.00 to list a thread that would change things dramatically.

 

[proxygo]

been said a thousand times, any thread can be approved after a mod has tried it
this will never guarnetee they wont stiff a buyer down the line, all u can do is due dilligance
if the reviews look fake and thread looks crappy avoid it.

 

[VinceC]

So we need more voices to the admins on increasing $250 for listing in BST.

 

[nanavlad]

Putting the listing price up to $250 wont guarantee the services will be better, I just means the cost will increase and poorer members wont be in a position to sell their services.

Every business has this problem, and attempting to shut out poorer service providers, Is like asking the us gov, to close down Walmart etc,

If you do this, then al your doing is creating a monopoly for the rich provides, and reducing competition,

Do your due diligence, learn your business and stop acting like you need a nanny.

Education costs, and differentiating and learning about what works and what doesn't, is part of the leaning curve.

Perhaps cutting down the size of the sales letters, would be a better way, insist on more facts about the service, and less fluff.

We all know we should never judge a book by its cover, but the fact is we are lazy and buy rather than read the reviews and the description.

 

[aprilmay]

Just my 2 cents...after all, I ain't nobody to critique BHW and it's not my purpose to do so. But all that puts me off as a buyer, and probably lots of other folks with common sense as well.

That is exactly how it is for us buyers... Not everyone is clever enough to pick a bad operator. I take months looking for honest sellers. It is so hard on BHW to just go get what you need. It is in the interest of you good guys that the system is looked at and remodeled so that we have a good/great marketplace here on BHW

 

[bigballin6161]

I think mods should randomly purchase services under aliases and do an all out review and if they would use it on their moneysites. I mean thats what everyone wants to buy...

 

[hotguy640]

i too support you..
recently i was trying new service and found there support is so, terrible

 

[Hawkster]

This is an accurate description of me personally concerning 'some' free review copies. I try to stay away from being negative and hurting someones rep. So i'll leave a positive review naming the positives only, while leaving out the negatives.

If i see no positives at all i just wont bother leaving a review.

While i type this its dawning on me how much damage i could be doing. If just one person makes a purchase because they saw my positive review and it turns out they got a bad deal, that makes me a big part of the problem.

Certainly something i'll be thinking about next time i take a free review copy.

The review system is horrendously broken. Everyone writes a generic positive review because when there's free review copies, who wants to bite the hand that feeds?

As for raising the price of posting a BST to $250, im all for that maybe even $500. Anyone worth their salt will gladly pay that knowing they will get an excellent return on their investment because their service is nailed on quality

 

[nutserious]

Basically, its you get what you pay for buddy. Don't expect to get the quality of 250 bucks product for 5 bucks. Just saying.

 

[smartboyhere]

+1 vote for $250, also moderators have to review the each service in detail instead of approving with single line"op approved". If they review the service with screenshot that would be appreciated.

 

[gullsinn]

Like it, or not. I wouldn't care less. It'd be great to see a discussion here, instead of having this thread deleted on the spot. It's about improving the community after all.

The bitter truth is BHW SEO marketplace fails big time!

Is this WF, or what? Every Tom and their dog wrote 2 articles and decided they can post them on Web 2.0 properties. Every dog and their Tom decided they can buy 2 expired domains and sell PBN links. All Toms, Jacks, and their cats and dogs decided to sell social signals or "guest posts".

Where is customer support, where's the quality, where's the strive for providing a quality service rather than pulling out some quick cash?... You guys lack the basics of marketing and sales! Mods approve sales threads based on what's been advertised and delivered. Fair enough and that's frikn lovely, but what value does a low quality service, that you approve, bring to the community?

Don't get me wrong here. There are some amazing providers with absolutely great services. My point is that they are diminishing and overtaken by these low quality services popping up every single day. And yes, I've spent quite a good amount of money on different providers here and I'm well aware of what the marketplace is like already.

And please, don't even get me even started into all the "read reviews" stuff, not me please. I can already see what's going on. My point is, have 30 quality threads approved and monitor them, instead of having 100 crappy ones. Less money short term, more value (and cash) long term. Need to explain why?

Come on, let's not turn this into WF!

Okay hard feeling or anything mate, If you really know what quality is then why the hell you are just started the thread here which everyone else know, I'm not so much active here. But I want you to start a service that will be quality. I am not gona support sellers, I know here we have some amazing sellers and some craps too but the thing is it keeps the balance. Its like a family. A town, A school full of classroom some are good, some are excellent and some are weak.

I want you to start a BST thread and I will be your 1st buyer. I have been working with a lot of people here who provides services, and I have been managing their technical stuff I know how hard it is to maintain the quality while being in budget, deadline and the other factors.

End of Thinking!

 

[Nut-Nights]

I am selling very very high quality guest post Price $0.21 per post with native content.

 

[luisk]

if the BST price rise to $250 it will be necessary that Mods choose 2 or 3 clients ramdomly from the threads that purchased the product or service and do something like a "follow up". maybe it's more work, but it's more money, so work for it. "IM is a selling job", I get that, "There are some little lies", I get that too, but sometimes it feels that there are too many lies in the BST. Most of the times (always) when I see a review, I don't believe it, not even a little, right now the reviews are just part of the thread for me. And I guess that nowadays the real customers from those threads are newbies that believe that everything in the BST is true, and I'm feeling this way because I was quite naive (100% naive) a year ago believing in some shit I thought it was possible because I knew too little, and yes, it was in the BST. Sorry for my bad english and random ideas, I just wanted to write about my experience.

 

[segitard]

What pisses me off is those fake reviews that you see on their sales thread. Some of these new accounts, if you check their profile, their first post was on the sales thread, second post was on some irrelevant thread, and after a while, their fifth post is on the same sales thread again.

 

[jacky8]

What pisses me off is those fake reviews that you see on their sales thread. Some of these new accounts, if you check their profile, their first post was on the sales thread, second post was on some irrelevant thread, and after a while, their fifth post is on the same sales thread again.

I agree the competition among vendors is too high and the market is limited, so even the better vendors are now forced to cut costs to compete with the new vendors who are a lot more ambitious when it comes to making bold claims and resorting to taboo tactics. It brings the quality of the whole forum down. I have some specific recommendations to cut the scamming but I don't care enough to offend various "big" providers. If the admin wants to hear what i have to say, he can contact me privately.

For starters, you will have to outlaw the whole culture of "not sending reports". It is a giant scam. There has to be a way to make sure that the work was done, otherwise you are just encouraging the liars and hurting the legitimate vendors, thus tearing down the quality of the marketplace. You could do it like, make every vendor deliver the actual report to a moderator who could then verify everything and confirm with the buyer, but I guess this can get extremely costly to implement and create awareness among everyone on this platform. Allowing the "no report" culture to continue will just encourage a lot more cheating and scamming. This is the blunt truth.

There are some other things like this that I personally feel can eventually repel buyers away..

 

[sahilsxy29]

• $50 for thread submission.
• $200 a month after thread is approved. (this is literally nothing and we all know this when it comes to a service thread)
• Thread goes into moderation queue for atleast 3 weeks and then reviewed, resulting in a total time span of 30 days for approved thread.
• 5-10 Negative reviews and thread gone! + seller banned if the issues are legit and are making sense keeping the seller's refund policy in mind (buyers should do their due diligence as well as they have bought a service where the refund policy was clearly stated)
• For guest posts and networks - moderators should ask for the whole list of domains of the network every now and then.
• monthly review copy to a moderator to make sure that the service is working perfectly fine.
• buyers should use itraders no matter what.
• initial review of the service (when the task is completed) and the final review of the service (after a month) should be posted in the thread.

 

[Zwielicht]

• $50 for thread submission.
• $200 a month after thread is approved. (this is literally nothing and we all know this when it comes to a service thread)
• Thread goes into moderation queue for atleast 3 weeks and then reviewed, resulting in a total time span of 30 days for approved thread.
• 5-10 Negative reviews and thread gone! + seller banned if the issues are legit and are making sense keeping the seller's refund policy in mind (buyers should do their due diligence as well as they have bought a service where the refund policy was clearly stated)
• For guest posts and networks - moderators should ask for the whole list of domains of the network every now and then.
• monthly review copy to a moderator to make sure that the service is working perfectly fine.
• buyers should use itraders no matter what.
• initial review of the service (when the task is completed) and the final review of the service (after a month) should be posted in the thread.

Removing a sales thread because of 5-10 negative reviews could prompt unscrupulous competitors to pay others to post negative reviews or to create multiple accounts to create negative reviews. However, I could see this working out better if it were a percentage of the reviews (e.g., if more than 10% of the reviews are legitimate negative reviews).

 

[4ContactUK]

It all comes down to anybody (after buying the necessary fees) can 'fake' whatever they like. Higher fees is one barrier but not enough to get the quality we all desire.

I for one have been bullied by BST owners to remove negative reviews and they can then get they payback on you in other ways if you don't comply. So the system is broken.

It's everywhere, the seo company in your town to the window cleaner - bad service or scammed, its hard to police. The nature of online business means its even harder.

From the point of wanting to be a seller here, i'm out-priced by the competition because of where I live. I tried Fiverr and the experience was just the same.

Buy using paypal and you will feel safer and choose with experience behind you.

Rules, guidelines, processes and the such, would love to see some improvements to instill some trust.

 

[soulcollector]

Psychology isn't something that is solid but it'll weed out the con artists without talent. To honestly keep open reviews to mods and other such would even up in corruption, its inevitable. You can keep a quality checkpoint though, encourage people to leave their honest review based on criteria, and then go from there. Youteach people how to read posts, what to look for, but you can even fake that or outsource the task of manipulating reviews. It'll just come down to them fixing it when the marketplace is broken and no money is to be made, or a hard reset. It is only then that you can expect it to be "fresh" without the scammers because there is no money there for them to scam.