Buy, Sell, & Trade... Money Walking Out The Door

I have to agree on most of whats said here.

I came across dp about a year ago,lurked for 3months before signing up in april. Back then website templates/skins would easily be sold within a day or two at bin. I thought wow,here is a cheap way to earn a living putting my skills i was planning to aquire to work.$50-75 per template was a great figure,especially if I could make one or templates day. Fast forward 3months,where I teach myself photoshop..not being confident enough to offer my services and photoshop trial running out at end of july..I didn't really post in dp until november when I really and still needed to make money to survive.

Basically I'm s**t creek. I posted template skins..no wanted them..eventually I decided maybe i wasn't good enough,so i asked for reviews. Got excellent reviews..wow!

So I have proceeded to post 3 templates all with excellent reviews and members wishing me luck..
not one has sold. I keep lowering my prices..

I've been pretty depressed over this. Surely out of 3000 members +..someone would want to use my services??
I've now got some MRR for some ebooks..which i'm desperately trying to sell..so I can put into action a better way to make money online. I've resorted to article writing @ 1c a word..logo and header designing@ $5..offered 5 for free..but got no more takers after the 5..so stopped that becuase it was depressed offering my services for free when I didn't really want to.

It hasn't helped that i'm flat broke.(well my savings are dwindling..I've just got enough to cover my board money and 1 bill for 3 months). I refuse to sink to begging for money. I've tried so hard to make an honest decent income here ....it just seems you'll be rich if you lie,cheat steal and scam.

I've even considered doing directory submissions..

I'm so glad i'm not the only one whose annoyed by all this.
I'm sure i have more to say..thats the end of my rant for now..

 

I'm in a similar situation as you Arcanus. It's pretty hard here now to do something like make 10 templates and sell them for $50 each to earn $500. Even if you sell them at $1 each, they might not sell. But I think with the templates there may not be a big demand for them at the moment. I know a couple of months ago when the WordPress craze was about, there was a big demand and you could easily sell the WordPress themes or sponsor links.

Ebooks can be pretty hard to sell. Many people ask for review copies, and post reviews, but you might not sell any ebooks. Also if your ebook isn't titled Make A Gazillion Dollars A Day, it may not get a lot of interest.

Everything else is either saturated, not in demand, or simply not notice because it gets bumped to page 10 or so in no time.

The big thing I am bothered about is being buried to page 10 or so in no time because of bumps and so many posts posted in one category in a short amount of time. I know DP is a big forum, but if the BST was organized more it can greatly help.

 

Great thread!

Visit:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=605380

to make your voice heard!

notting

 

That makes sense. I put it down to perhaps it being close to xmas..people don't have the money to spend.
I found out earlier today.. I decided to buy a domain name..(I've got a turnkey site I want to set up and sell)..I only got $7usd in paypal...it will take 5 days-7 for any money to transfer from my bank account..
I don't particularly want to use my debit visa(internet security)..but it's desperate times..and i won't be selling on dp that's for sure.

lol..I've now forgotten for the 2nd time a point i was going to make..oh well..

 

As far as turning paid like Sitepoint I agree with this but Sitepoint's pricing is very, very high. If it was a better value I would support that here.

Arcuanus A bit off-topic but when I click on "My portfolio can be found at www.coroflot.com/designfushion" I get:

In a competetive market that type of thing puts you at a huge disadvantage.

 

Dunno where you saw"my portfolio can be found at??
and you misspelt it. it's DesignFuschion not Fushion
try
http://www.coroflot.com/designfuschion

the name i wont be using forever..

anyway back to topic..on the other thread..there have been suggestions to price it at$10listing..

 

LoL, I found it by following the link in your signature to your DP post. Mystery solved.

When it comes to paying I think $10 per post is way too high, I think more like $1 a post. Especially if there is a free option, I can't see folks paying such a high price. Many of the things I sell are $8-$12 each, so paying $10 for simply making the advertisement would be unaffordable.

 

btw,thanks for pointing it out. I've now made a post correcting the problem.
If you hadn't let me know..I would have gone on thinking no one wanted my services.-Thanks. green rep

Yes good point.
I'll make a suggestion..How would (forgive me i'm tired,headachy yada yada)...a % tier based on the category of goods or services..like how ebay does it?

eg. (just an example..not a concrete thing..i'm just illustrating) take a product you selling at for between
$5-15 range listing fee of 5%
15-25 10%
25-60 15%
etc
something like that..paid upfront. so if your selling say a "service" and you charge $15 for it..you pay 15% to list. If you list an item for $20 you pay the 15%.If your listing an item that may decrease in price or rise..(BIN) listing fee perhaps could be worked out on BIN price.

Basically the BIN or highest price your listing at is the % listing fee will be paid on that. eg.E-book final price is $15. but you start at $7. Your listing fee is $1.50 (the 15% on the $15).
%'s are guidelines only. It might be better if the %'s were less..who knows..this is only a suggestion.

perhaps nothing under $5 should be listed in paid section..
and the tier rates might be better at
$5-15 2.5%
$16-25 3%
$26-50 3.5%
$51-100 4%
$101+ 5%

 

Waiting for admins/mods to wave the magic "fix it" wand will never happen. The members of DP set the tone, not the admins or mods.

Report posts that violate the rules, that's the best way to get rid of junk.

 

I have used Sitepoint and have paid. It isnt always a guarantee your items will sell. Even so one would have to make up the $20 to break even. With the possibility afte making the $20 the well running dry. So you recreate and reinvest and break even all over again. Yes indeed great for competition. Just make sure to sell the products at $21 to at least bring in some pennies.

 

Like yours? you have 25.47 posts a day and going through it looks like you just post to look like you have been there and to pad your post count.

That could totally be looked as being deceiving when someone 6300 posts but they haven't been here not even a year. I have seen alot of "high posts" asking for reviews. I then started realizing that they just made posts that were one liners that had no place anywhere but the trash.

I tend to lurk and if I see something of interest to me, as in a job or a business need. I PM the the thread owner.

They don't need me writing it in the forum that I pm'ed them as they'll see the mail.

I think people are so used to trolling and immediately once they see something of value, they want a review copy. It's been said awhile back to those people who have high posts, look through their history and it's mindless garbage.

I really have to seek through the garbage to get through anything good these days. I have to take it to the extra mile to make waves. Which is good because that's what needs to be done.

Jim

 

Obviously I don't agree with you.

Moderating a forum is work. Hard work sometimes. It's much too easy to throw this in the air and say, 'Leave this to the mods to sort out'. In my view they do a stellar job already and while they will definitely tackle the problematic stuff and any junk that breaks forum rules, it is unreasonable to expect them to keep picking through the daily avalanche of reported posts when implementing a better system would take care of it.

 

That is all way too complicated and would turn this forum into an auction site not a forum. I think that is one of the things Shawn has to be very careful of, it would be a big change and might scare away a lot of folks. I think something simple like 1 credit per post and you can buy 20 credits at a time for $20. Something simple like that would help and give some of the more serious buyers and sellers their own platform for business within DP. The forum could simply be titled "Premium Buy/Sell" or something like that.

 

I agree it would keep out a lot of the junk and if people were sensible would be good for the majority of people in the long run, but I don't think it's really nescessary. Just needs some restructuring I think, perhaps change the rules around a little bit, i doubt it would need much more than that.

As for Arcunus finding stuff hard to sell at a decent profit Id have to agree, Im finding it hard to sell on here too, domains in particular it's hard to eek out even reg fee on most, and as for profit we'll that's virtually impossible.

Perhaps a minimum offer rule for products/items would help make things fairer, such as Reg Fee minimum offer for domains. I'm sure something could be worked out.

 

Forget the notion of $1 per sale - it wouldn't make the slightest difference to the overall quality. I think it's going to have to be minimum $10 listing fee should a paid BST become a reality.

 

the fact is, there will always be more people who post crap stuff for sale that reject this paid BST notion, there is a smaller percentage of people who actually want to sell proper products, so they invariably get drowned out by the "other" people...