Guidelines for selling a site on the BST section

Guidelines for selling a site on the BST section

Over the past few days I've been getting quite frustrated with a series of incidents that have are becoming quite common practise in the BST section.

First is the fact that many auctions don't even have a link to the site on sale. Threads filled with spam are the end result with hundreds of posts asking for details and PMs that surely represent little more than an easy way to increase their post count.

The other phenomenon is the famous offers via PM. Am auction is public so why are mysterious offers being made via PM? This makes the auction process rather dishonest and in my opinion should be allowed.


I have listed a few rules that i would really like to see implemented in the BST section.

- All autions should have a live link to the site on sale
- All valid bids should be present on the actual auction thread
- Bids via PM shouldn't be accepted or valid
- Relevant information should be presented on the initial thread "Stats, earnings, etc"
- A bin price should be fixed in the beginning of an auction
- Starting threads to advertise auctions on third party sites should be banned
- Once an auction is concluded the auctioneer should contact the mods via the little "Report Post" button so that the thread can be closed and in this way a lot of spam avoided.

These are just a few rules I think necessary to make purchasing and buying a site on DP a lot easier. I would ask that the moderators reading this thread take these simple rules into consideration and maybe help create a small set of guidelines to be enforced on the BST so that conduction business can become more transparent.

 

I own a forum, and if I ever wanted to sell it, I'm not sure I'd want my member base knowing that it was for sale. Also, heh, if a site is listed in DMOZ, and the editors find out it was sold, it'll get de-listed there. The reasons for not giving the URL are even longer...

(NOTE: If I ever actually sold my forum, I'd sell it to my members first)

In many cases, I'd also not want certain people knowing which sites I own, kind of a reverse of all the reasons of the previous point.

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I do agree a thread full of "PM me details" and/pr "PM sent" threads IS a bit much.

One of the ideas was to create a public poll, so that the OP could then PM all the people that voted the correct information.

Either way, that board flies due to the nature of people not wanting to give or get details... some type of system would certainly make it easier to follow and allow the flow of the board to be a bit cleaner. So I am certainly open for change, but there are some changes that would simply make many sellers and buyers not use the system at all.

 

If you don't want people to know your URL then the best option is not to sell on DP or use one of those URL shortening services. The problem is that most of these threads are created by members wanting to increase their post count and maybe make a few cents from revenue sharing. Once again if you prefer to sell to one of your members then there is no reason to use DP...

PS: DMOZ is dead, who cares about what they think...

I didn't say the system is perfect, but doing nothing is worse. In the end if your going to sell the site people will always end up knowing what sites you own.

 

Thank you for the suggestion.