I was thinking it may be a great idea to tackle the scams in the buy and sell sites section. I was thinking about launching an idea where people come to my website and purchase a full review of how legit there site is and then do a research on the site and then give them some kind of a graphics badge. This way in their auctions they can show to badge which will add some fairly good security to their auction. The buyer will be able to get a higher price, and the seller can have a little safety knowing that the site has been deeply checked out. I think its an amazing idea. It would take time to get a reputation for it. The only thing is the domain name is well......should have DP in it or something to indicate that its a service directly for DP auctions. My question is are you going to sue me or be mad if these badges show up everywhere in auctions and if I eliminate a lot of scams this way while making profit? While I'm here. What do you think of the idea?
You can do whatever you want as long as you aren't using our trademarks (name/logo), or claim some sort of affiliation.
when there is money being exchanged there is going to be a bias in the review. it's also pretty difficult giving a review when the merchant is offering multiple products/services. i don't think what you've suggested adds any layer of safety at all for the reasons mentioned above and other reasons. at the end of the day it's up to the buyer to do their own due diligence.
It would make you money lol. It just wouldn't add another layer of security. I may go with the idea though, just so I can listen to you complain about how someone stole one of your ideas haha.
This idea is trivial opposed to other ideas. It wouldn't matter too much to me. How could it not add security for people with less skills into researching site. A) Site that doesn't have the badge. B) Site that does have the badge, -checked and has no red flag backlinks like massive asian/porn links -has been really that site for the told timeline(wayback machined) -is the pr it says -great chance the traffic is accurate -Profit matches the Unique visitor count -Owner didn't avoid my quality verification service so he looks more serious Which do you think is more secure?, Mr. Negative! Here's a source This individual got scammed $5,000. He has not got the money back and who knows if he will. I know this guy. He's been actively watching auctions for two months trying to buy a site that currently earns money but he doesn't know enough about the game of buy/selling to feel secure enough to purchase. If he was smart and this authorization badge thing was in place he could rest in knowing that chances are great since people who have been in the game have looked deep into the site before it went for site. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=2448107&p=17555363#post17555363
Some people block archive.org's crawler. It can really be a lot of effort to verify a site. Scammers are getting cleverer with faking PR (making it less detectable through the right timings of 301, re-indexing) and getting backlinks from credible sites. As an example: I Just found a few links (hidden by CSS) to dodgy (porn at a guess, didn't view) sites from UN websites. Google improved the detection of hidden links, text, etc, but this was hidden from view with display: none. Don't know if Googlebot is that clever yet. Verification (done manually, automated it would be easier to fool) cost wouldn't be worth it. To do a thorough audit could take time and you'd need to subscribe to a service that has their infrastructure for crawling sites and collecting backlinks (such as Open Site Explorer) or make your own. You're then taking on board responsibility of saying "this site's OK" and if it all goes wrong (because your audit wasn't thorough enough, the scammer did a good fabrication or whatever) then you're going to be in a bad situation. You'd to cover the legal costs that would arise (let's face it, everyone's suing everyone else these days), compensation, etc.
No, its really easy to determine a BS site. There are a few tricky ones, but everyday I go in the buy/sell forum here and look at diff. sites, do a 2 minute research and say to myself "Oh, scam here....scam there...., scam this, scam that" It's almost too simple. Regardless everyone says its a dumb idea, so meh.
Simply do something similar in the buy/sell forum. Meaning, give a chirp or two. The poor innocent buyers will tend to believe what you say and take your advice due to your high ranking. In that way you'll frighten away the con-artists. They'll think twice before posting their site. Not good for forum traffic but indeed beneficial to buyers. And in that way you won't be using their trademarks (name/logo), you'll be using their entire website, saving you the time and money of opening one. LOL, killing two birds with one stone.
Laceygirl, unfortunately most buyers are rather clueless and won't do even the most basic due diligence before purchasing a site - google the url, username, check previous posts. Yes, it is pretty easy to spot most scams, but as far as I know DP mods won't get involved in this, so the best you can do is report the most blatant ones and warn members. Be sure you aren't doing any harm to honest site sellers though. The general attitude at DP that it's appropriate to attack a site seller in his sales thread and try to trash a site is very unprofessional and extremely annoying. Many site brokers also provide dd services, so that's nothing new and your idea can probably work too if you can get enough demand for it. But you'll be taking up some serious responsibilities there. Take it from someone who's been buying small and big sites for over half a decade, while the obvious scams are very easy to spot, there are plenty of seemingly little things that sellers may not mentioned, or may not even be aware of that can turn a good purchase into a really bad one and cause the buyer to lose money.
I agree with what cPAce said - it sounds like a nice concept. If it can be implemented well, it would become kinda impressing.