Hi, I was a member at SP longback, their approach is good and also very strict. Thats y I lost the membership. I am unable to become member again woth SP. I tried with many ID's User Name.. DP does well. Its not just free, but the bottom line people in DP are gained alot coz of this free provider "DP". We must not alone say SP, there are some more forum sites charging from members. I dont remember now. "SP" is GOOD, "Other Changing Website" are BETTER, but "DP" is the BEST...
$20 is a lot to sell a site though. They really aren''t offering you anything in return either. This is my problem with it. Everyone that moderates for SP does it for free. A lot of the staff did not want the fees either. Even staff has to pay for their listings. Not all staff, but most. I just think that it is a bit high, if your site does not sell you don't get a refund of your listing fee or anything.
Thank you for all the comments & feedback. We provide an audience that's interested in buying what you're selling... It's the exact same thing that Monster.com, eBay or your local newspaper does. The SitePoint MarketPlace just got featured in the June issue of Business 2.0 Magazine (which has 600,000+ subscribers) as the place to sell buy & sell Websites online. I think the article, and our our 20-30%/month growth in the MarketPlace, has been due to the fees and the resulting quality of sites being listed. The fees eliminated unrealistic asking prices, sellers who aren't around to answer questions, repeated postings of the same site(s) week after week, and most fraudulent sales. It's also made moderation a *lot* easier. We've had multiple 6-figure sales through us, such as BlogExplosion.com, which sold in less than a week, for a higher price than a previous offer that fell through. I honestly believe that 90% of the time, a listing will get the highest offer/sale price through SitePoint vs. any other source. You might end up saving $19.95 on the listing fee, but how much money are you potentially leaving on the table? Since we don't store credit card numbers, nor offer a formal auction system were bids are enforced, this would be unrealistic at this point in time. However, we will be rolling out major improvements for both buyers & sellers in the very near-term, as we have several people working full-time on marketplace development right now. _________ Matt Mickiewicz Co-Founder http://www.sitepoint.com/marketplace/
Matt, I enjoy SP and think you guys do a fine job. As for the increase in price - well - it sucks. But so be it. That's now the cost of doing business over there.
I think charging fee is not only the solution to prevent some webmasters posting junk sites for sale, but there is a good chance of keeping a premium sales forum, where webmasters with nice sites can afford to list for $20 or whatever fee set. There should be chance for small players as "The Webmaster" said.
Here on DP, if someone lists a crappy site, a turnkey site, an otherwise bad site...usually the poster finds out real quick from the buyers. Now, charging 20 bucks is not much for a good site, but keep in mind, that 20 bucks is probably added to the price of the site. EG: I know I can build a site and sell it here for 20 bucks, while the same site at SP would have to go for 40 bucks. But I see the value if there are good bidders that will drive the 20 buck site up to say 100 bucks. Is there a refund of the 20 bucks if the site is not sold?
My point of view about the fees on SP is they only care about the money not the quality.If they really up to the quality they can scan every offer or sites before posting on their respective threads.Though it will took long for the moderator to do this but its really worth it to wait before your service and sites will be posted.Ofcourse provided it's free.I dont really get it when they imposed the fee.Does paying some fees will gurantee that only quality service or site will be posted? SP really is after the money obviously.Who will believe that they only imposed the fees because they only need quality buyer and seller.
I believe you have missed some of the things said by Matt Mickiewicz in his post. I've summarised what I believe to be the key ones here: I would like to know what the problem is with SP making money? Is that not the name of the game? They also managed to introduce the charges without destroying the forum, unlike some others who tried to increase their income <cough, seochat>. Sitepoint has been around for quite a while and they provide a massive amount of information for webmasters at every level. I think it was a very shrewd and clever move.
It will be interesting to know that how many people who have put there sites on sell at SP also put there sites on DP for sell. Also I have my serious doubts over the statement that they have done this to weed out low value sites DP is free, and I have never seen people spamming with there low quality sites. DP gives equal opporutnity to it's members which unfortunaly other webmaster forum don't
Higher prices cleans the marketplace of crap. If your selling a legit $2000+ site $20 isnt a big deal.
SP and DP are both excellent forums. DP is going one way, so far, by not charging to list items for sale. SP is going another way, charging to list. As a buyer, I would not care if the listing was free or paid, only that the site is worth it to me to purchase. As a seller, if I can get a quicker sale at my price on DP, then I will list it here. If I had a site that I know I could get big bucks for, I would list on SP with a link back on DP so to get more possible buyers. Why the big bitch about SP charging a fee? Look at ebay...it is not free to sell there.
They are still making alot of money, and look at there traffic, digitalpoint doesnt even compare in traffic to be honest. I really dont care good for them! and really They have had alot of sites put up for sale it hasnt even taken a hit Because if a site is worth it people will pay, that finally got rid of all the dum turnkey sites and now there is actually sites with alot of revenue being posted there.
What a lot of people forget is that SP and DP are first and foremost places of discussion and learning. The marketplaces are just a smaller part of each community.
Ok.... I disagree and so does Alexa So it turns out digitalpoint does compare... in fact it beats sitepoint. Sitepoint rank: 319 DP rank: 165 So I don't know what you're on about. Plus, SP has pop-ups. That sucks.
That just means DP has more members with Alexa's spyware installed. That's it. SP has more traffic then DP. It's unquestionable. Their marketplace gets more traffic by a mile and a lot more sales. Compare the number of sites that are listed at both forums and see how many are sold at SP vs how many are sold or DP or anywhere else. More sites listed at SP and other sites are sold at SP then all other forums combined. That's why they can charge for their marketplace. Plus doing so raises the quality of the sites listed and allow them to use those funds to improve their marketplace. In a month or two they will be launching a new marketplace that will be the most advanced available anywhere. That will make their marketplace an even better place to be listed. Oh, and the whole DP vs SP thing is stupid. They're both fine communities for what they do. Get over it.