I'm a man full of ideas, mostly terrible ones. For a while I have been trying to find a good way to setup a group of internet marketers where they could help one another. slymarketing's group of "blog buddies" on Google Groups gave me this idea and I am just throwing it out there to see if maybe there is some interest in it. Be honest with me, do you guys think a group where it was a "Give-n-take" group would work? Let me break it down this way, we all have one or two things that we are really good and effecient at when it comes to internet marketing. Other things we are at best "okay" at. For example, I'm a pretty strong content writer and programmmer but i'm not a great web designer. What about a group where I offered my services completely free, in trade others would offer me theirs completely free. It would all have to be respect into how much time it takes and would have to be based a lot on trust that it wouldn't be abused. Would a small group of established members here at DP be able to pull such a thing off?
Hey Gator, Im in slymarketing's group too, the google group is great. I think you have a good idea about everyone helping each other out, but when it comes to swapping different services for free I just don't think that would work, as much as I love the idea. The problem you run into is that some things take much much less time to do than others. For example, I'm good at writing and bad at web design. I could offer my writing for free to someone and it would take me a very short amount of time to write a decent article for someone. On the other hand if someone was going to completely take over web-design and creating HTML code for my site, it would most likely take them a while, or at least it would take longer than it took for me to help them. You have a good idea, but just having free services being interchanged wouldn't work for very long, as I think some people would quickly feel like they were getting little help for how much time they were putting in.
Brice, I've thought about that and maybe the way it would work is you can gain "credits" for doing work. So for example, regardless of what you were doing it would be based on time, say 50 credits per hour. Obviously some web designs take longer than others, but given that example, we would have to sit down and discuss how many credits for different qualities of web designs. So if a web design took 3-4 hours, you would get 150 - 200 credits. You could then turn around and use those up however you wanted. You might spend 10 on an article or something. I think if it was organized and you had a group of people running it to ensure everything stayed fair and everyone got credits for what they have done then it would be great. What do you guys think of this revamped idea? I'm thinking about making a MOD for PHPBB or something that could implement the idea into a forum setting. Not sure I would want to do it unless people thought it would be something that could work.
I think it is a great idea, since some people dont have money to pay for work to be done, so they could offer thier skills in return for something they don´t know anything about, and vice versa. But there surely need to be a fair system, to compensate everyone equal for their work/skills, and a rating system !
Yes, the way it would have to work is for me to get a group of people who were committed to seeing the idea through. Then using those people to bring in other people who were qualified to be in such group. For example, some people call themselves designers but the quality of their work is sub-par. You would have to ensure everyone involved were good at what they say they can do.
It has potential for sure, I think it could work but you would need to think of the best way possible to compensate people for the amount of time they put in (not talking about money).
Brice, I agree that somethings take longer than others. But, at the same time is your writing worth $10 per 500 world article. Thats only $0.02 per word. I think that my writing is worth that. So, if someone charges lets say $10 for a wordpress design then that would be worth 1 500 word article. It really doesn't matter how long it took you to write the article compared to the time it took the designer to set up the wordpress design. Just my two cents. I think that with the right person controlling it and if everyone involved was honest then it would work. I think the issue that your going to run into is someone not fulfilling their end of the deal so you would need a reputation system along the lines of the one here on DP. Feedback is always nice to have.
You make a good point, I just think most web designers would value their time more than a writer, but than again there are probably tons of people out there desperate for good writing and are willing to lend their expertise to get it. The one problem that I am seeing now with your idea, is that any new member coming into your community would not be trusted by anyone, and if your group got big and people started coming in, than there would definitely be people who would take advantage of the system. This of course could be avoided if the group was small, or if you could only be allowed in by a referral from an existing member. You might have something here, but it certainly needs a lot of work and careful planning.
Yep, my idea originally was to keep it as a private group. Primarily invite only, but if someone really wanted in they could show their work / expertise and we would base it off of that. That way we could ensure that only people who truly were good in their respective fields were accepted in. It would also need a reputation system as you have mentioned.
Exchanging services and ideas would make a great forum or help group. Some people just don't have the money to buy what they want.
I think it would work but ultimately you get what you pay for and free is usually going to be less than what you need because beggars can't be choosers.
Yeah but ryjo you are essentially paying people by offering your services to them for free. If say, I wrote someone a quality article, they would probably want to help me out with some quality work as well. It's free, but at the same time not free.
It sounds like a very interesting idea, but before you launch it, you should probably discuss the system a bit more. I believe that a lot of people would be interested, and that you would get a lot of requests to join. If you keep the group private and small, you have a good chance of success. The credits you're discussing sounds like how the system should work, but how you keep it fair (how much credits for words vs design), I'm not sure... When I read your thoughts on this group, my first idea was a common project and a common goal, instead of each member having their own projects/goals. - Jens
Jens, I've tried something like that before. The biggest problem I had was getting people away from these forums and onto another set of forums to discuss projects more in detail. Unfortunately it didn't work out well, people just weren't that passionate about the overall goals. I have done joint ventures successfully in the past, but it only worked with people who were passionate about what we were doing. I think for something like this to work, it would need a group of people overseeing it and making sure the system was the best it could be and to handle situations that come up. That group of people though wouldn't be just hand picked people who I went and asked them to join up, they would need to read this thread and see if it was something they were passionate about starting up. I've already had a couple of PM's of people wanting to get on board. I'm not opposed to more.