Suggestion Is DP a place for "Cheap" services?

Obviously no one can ignore the fact that Digital Point forums is one of the largest and busiest forums in the world. I want to share my honest feedback about the services / BTS and marketplace section of this forum.

DP is the best when it comes to fastness. I can just post a [WTB] thread and within minutes I can literally get hundreds of PM on my inbox. Most importantly the service is completely free and I love this.

However I want to emphasise the fact that most of the PMs' that we get these days + most of the [WTB] threads that we see today are nothing but crap and third rated products.

For example: I just did an analysis of domain section. I myself being a domain flipper has sold over 50 domains in DP in the last two months. When I did this analysis what I found was most of the threads out there are not so good domains. For instance, I picked up 10 PR 4+ domains and analyzed their back links. Most of them were having less than 5 or less than 10 backlinks which is very obvious that they are non-quality domains that can lose their PR in the next update.

This behavior is not just in the domains section. But it is also in Link Sales, programming and other sections of the BTS forum. I would be happy to offer small bug fixes or small changes in my website that is less than $100 or $500. But if I want to develop something new / something large of the range of $1000 or $2000, I fear to hire from DP - Because of the low quality people out here. I don't say that every one here is like that, but the percentage of low quality folks makes it hard to find real gems with amazing talents. So for these kind of mission critical projects, I just go to Scriptlance or Elance. This is just my personal way of doing business from forums.

I am not sure if any one would deny my thought process. But if you feel so, go ahead and let me know.

I was just thinking why things are like this in DP. #1 fact is 'Free'. Obviously the number of accounts being opened here and the number of spammers who are being attracted is so much high because of this 'Free' factor. #2 - $ conversion to other countries (don't want to mention it though) allows people from those countries to offer their services at low cost. When this happens ideally "quality" just disappears.

I was wondering, how this can be rectified or at least minimized. Here are my suggestions.

• Detailed Profile System - The current profile system isn't enough to pick the best guys. iTrader isnt always great to identify folks. Can the current profile system revamped with new features like
  a) Area of focus of the programmer
  b) Number of projects done in a particular section
  c) Skill sets of the programmer etc.,
• YoY progression in skills / work
• $ earned from every BTS section of the forum
• Skill tests
• Why not a escrow system for high valued projects? This is one of the reasons that I personally go to Scriptlance for hiring folks for higher valued projects.
• As I said in the first point, the user profile has to be revamped and many more judgemental factors has to be sliced and diced and shown there. The current system is so primitive to judge quality of a programmer.

Well, this is just my thoughts. So feel free to comment and critic !

 

Because most of the people on here are from India/Philippines/Pakistan/Iran/Singapore/Nigeria/whatever. Most of them find it easy to scam people hence they are here. While on freelancer sites such as freelancerDOTcom, elance, odesk there is a system in place to protect both sides from getting scammed.

 

Well,
I completely agree with you.
I used to offer my services here, but as the competition grew, people started to offer similar services at very low prices. Obviously those *low cost* services weren't something you can call quality. Therefor, I just closed my sales thread and moved on to SP, WF and other places where I can sell my products and services for the price it deserves.

Your suggestions are in fact very good. I hope Shawn listen to you for the sake of quality.
We know those are hard things to implement and might have a negative impact on the volume of traffic, but at long run, DP's reputation will talk for itself.

 

Check this and you would get to know that most are from US or UK - http://forums.digitalpoint.com/usermap.php

And OP is right. There are several members here who are like slaves of buyers. They provide or sell services in whatever price the buyer asks. And thus price keeps lowering down... And yes many, who think that providing something in less price would attract more buyers but in reality they lose.

 

No ,,But There is not control over few things here ( Payment, Service charge ) and i don't think that could be change in future.

Yes, Agree with OP too..