Make Buy, Sell or Trade forum members only

I dont like the idea...

The main idea is also to get in more members...And the BST area of DP is attractive and hence it would bring in more customers when they see the different kinds of offers that are being put over there...

 

There are options for thread titles to be seen, but not thread content. That would allow guests to see the base offer, but not the offer itself. Though, I'm unsure how that would effect the recent news from Google & the like.

Though, personally, I don't like the idea of having my sales in search engine listings, and worse then that, I dread the notion of needing to PM my URL to 30 people (yeah, that's just laziness). A half dozen clicks in the Admin CP and most of my woes are a thing of the past

GoogleBots can't see I'm selling links
Humans can't see I'm selling links (unless they actually put some effort into it)
I'll not need to PM my URLs to 30 people.

So for me, it's a win/win/win situation. Yeah, guests can't see my sales pitch, but meh...they can register

 

they will still see who posted it if they see the title, so then if they really want to do it, they will register. Reporting links is a pain in the a-- as it is, so if they need to register to report your site or something, they will do it. It's not like it takes long. Those that won't register are even too lazy to report you.

 

If your super paranoid you can attach an image with the URL, PR, Traffic Stats etc.

While i agree blocking the bots is a good idea, at the same time it will knock around 1/4 Million indexed pages out of the site.

 

I find that a lot of buyers are just guests browsing and register to buy the name or site so I like it as is

 

I would love to see the section cut off for bots in particular, and if that isn't possible without demoting guess access too, I say demote both of them.

 

If you think about it, guests are also some of the members that buy stuff. In my last sales thread, I think i got at least 10 guests that bought my ebook. if we cut off guests, it means we cut off extra revenue, and i don't think that would be good.

 

It is funny how all th people with low itrader want it removed

 

Just make link sales forum for members only..
Saad

 

I do not recommend. A lot of isitors on DP come through search engines while trying to sell/buy/trade for something, so probably bad idea as DP will loose visitors.

And Google will remove all those dead pages, so backlinks count will go down as a person falling from Taipei101