Buying/Selling of Weight

Well I agree with someone that said that new sites joining the Coop should be 'human reviewed'. If they are spammy just deny them joining, that way the quality of the Coop would remain high. I for one would donate my time to review such sites. As Shawn may set certain guidelines and standards a website would have to meet for it to be able to join.

 

I don't have any intention of selling the weight, but I feel its only fair to allow people to do what they want with their weight, as you've said in the past, Shawn.

 

Idea:
Shawn, you did mention at one point selling some of the weight to outsiders to help pay for the running costs (servers etc).

Why don't you regulate the sale of weight by saying... if you want to sell weight you nominate to Shawn how much weight, he makes it available in a pool of weight available for sale, a percentage of the money goes to the weight owner and a percentage goes to running costs / server fund.

If the running costs become well and truely paid for, we could decide as a community to give the comish to.. for example the Tsunami relief work, or later everyone's favourite non-profit at DP, our homeless work, or whatever the community decides is their cause for the month.

Regardless of what you do with DP's slice of the commish...
* it regulates the sale of weight centrally
* makes it a more secure purcase for buyers as they buy from Shawn
* Shawn can approve purchasers
* Hell, you could even say you have to be in the network to buy more weight!

Anyone found selling weight outside this central arrangement loses their account.

 

Ok, then if it is to happen, I would go for...

Can only buy or sell weight once you have been a coop member for 1 month and just keep it all in-house amongst coop members.

Other than that, forget it - no selling of weight.

 

How would that prevent anything anyway? People would test the co-op, see no really help for their website, and sell it to someone who can benefit from it after a month.

 

I think it should be outlawed.

Too many folks that are members here are taking advantage of Digital Point without consideration of the possible damage they have done or could do in the future to the programs and forum that are provided as a member benefit.

If folks do not want to remain "good faith" members I think they should be banned from the forum and the co-op.

There have to be rules and if folks are out bad mouthing the program and buying and selling weight on every forum on the internet that could do great damage.

 

possibly, but what about the people in my situation... we're just pretty much screwed?

 

Another side note on the farmers co-op...

If I bought a silo of grain from you every month, I could still use it and sell it fairly at the farmers market..

 

The coop is only an ad on to an effective marketing campaign. It will prove lacking by itself...

Perhaps you are taking your eyes off the slow, hard, realistic slog of building the exposure of your site.

 

>>>we're just pretty much screwed<<< We were pretty much screwed before we joined the coop anyway. We just have to build/maintain our sites in a constructive manner to build our weight. Something we should/would be doing anyway.....any advantage we receive from the coop is a bonus.

I agree with Anthony's comments.....and people are taking advantage.....I notice people asking subtle questions on DP with the answers being used to copy something similar to this.
Also what's to stop someone buying weight then onselling it.....it will just get out of control.

Vetting the adds does help alleviate part of the problem but that is not the point, there are other issues involved.

Cyclops

 

I’m actually surprised and disappointed at the behavior of the participants in the co-op.

I don’t mean to be melodramatic (and I’m sure I’m going to be slammed here –rightfully so) but we’re acting like the executives at Enron, MCI, Quest, HomeStore and others - personal self-interest above the good of the shareholders and employees. In this case we placed our personal self interest above the well being of the network.

We’ve been given an opportunity and a tool by Shawn and DP to gain an incredible leg-up on our competition and as soon as it starts working really well for a few individuals, greed takes hold and we begin to comprise the integrity of the system.

I hope this does not happen but I've seen similar events in the past. I will go on the record: “If we allow weight to be sold the network will fall apart within nine months.”

It’s inevitable, three things will happen:

1) Sites will figure out how to sell their weight to spammers, porn sites, and scammers – the legitimate sites will leave;

AND/OR

2) There will be so much attention on the network that the brains at G will figure out how to mitigate it OR worse penalize all of the participants. I can see press coverage for a big weight auction that rubs G’s nose in it.

AND/OR

3) Clever webmasters will figure out how to gain artificial weight which will dilute the pool for honest operators.

I personally am grateful for the opportunity to participate and hate to see it evolve in the direction that it appears to be headed.

As chaotic as my thoughts are they are mine.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to express my opinions.

-jay

BTW I’ve been in the network for a little less than a month – Weight is 27,000 - IBLs have increased by 250%


P.S. In an agricultural co-op you sell your harvest to the co-op and they set the price, package it, market it, and sell it.

 

Great post, great insight, great vision.

But this is not a food product we are talking about here.

If I owned a TV station and I traded unsold air time in exchange for print advertising (this is something that has been done for over 40 years between television and print media/magazines/newspapers), then the print media company whom I bartered with sold the television air time to Larry Flint at Hustler magazine instead of using it for his magazine or newspaper should I allow that to air on my TV station?

 

I was considering buying some weight in the Coop... it is really tempting, as the results I’ve obtained with my VERY limited weight are amazing...

But considering all the buzz that the buy-sell-weight issue has brought up in the forums, I asked my self if I would sell my own weight, and as Shawn said in the starting post... I would NEVER sell my weight, for many different reasons, not just the fact that it can be much more valuable to me than any amount of money that I could get from it, but also because the main philosophy of the Coop has always been "you get what you give", and by purchasing weight you are certainly not giving anything to the Coop… just to the owner of the weight.

That also makes the Network more tempting for guys wanting to make a few easy bucks… and that has always prove to be an excellent recipe for disaster.

So… here goes my big, unconditional “NO” (It makes the network feel spammy) vote.

***EDIT***

I have just realized that unfortunately, yesterday I voted in favor of trading weight, but as far as I know, I cannot take back that vote… so just for you to know… there is one more vote in the “feel spammy” option and one less in the “allow” option.

 

You obviously have not read everything I have wrote!

Classifieds is right though. People would find a way to do anything. but you cannot deny the fact that some situations (such as a CITY SPECIFIC WEBSITE, Dominic) purchasing weight would not be harmful. Just a month or 2 of being in 'good' rotation would do the trick for low compete key phrases. The sad thing is, no matter the outcome of this vote, if this thing gets as big as I think it will.. someone is going to try and exploit its monetary worth... it's human nature.

I would personally like to purchase a little weight, but if it turns it's not allowed... i will respect the decision of the community.

 

thats not a bad idea, what about paying a site to let you install the ad network to use their weight?

 

I still haven't voted, and I could go either way on this. Here are some observations in no particular order:

If selling/buying weight is prohibited, how will that be policed? Answer is - it would be really hard. It will also mean that more legit buyers/sellers wouldn't do it, and the more spammy operators would do it under the table. If it is going to go on, I would rather have it take place here in the forums and let other coop members at least see what is going on and raise a fuss if something is not up to snuff. I would personally never sell my weight but for some, who don't need the IBLs and advertising right now, it think it is fair, after all the whole idea is that in exchange for putting the ads on my site, I get to publish my ads on the network. Who is to say the ad I put up has to be pointing to a site I own/manage? They could point to someone else's site, and they could remunerate/reward me in many ways. I think the important thing is that ads be reviewed by coop members and meet certain requirements.

In spite of that long tirade, selling weight does have a spammy feel to it- just from my gut feelings.