Today's Posts Follow Us On Twitter! TFL Members on Twitter  
Forum search: Advanced Search  
Navigation
Marketplace
  Members Login:
Lost password?
  Forum Statistics:
Forum Members: 24,254
Total Threads: 80,792
Total Posts: 566,471
There are 1854 users currently browsing (tf).
 
  Our Partners:
 
  TalkFreelance     TalkFreelance Information     Suggestions and Feedback :

Minimum price for offers (all offer forums)

Thread title: Minimum price for offers (all offer forums)
Closed Thread  
Page 5 of 5 < 1 2 3 4 5
    Thread tools Search this thread Display Modes  
12-09-2006, 04:13 PM
#41
Bazza` is offline Bazza`
Bazza`'s Avatar
Status: Request a custom title
Join date: Nov 2004
Location: England
Expertise:
Software:
 
Posts: 3,515
iTrader: 10 / 100%
 

Bazza` is on a distinguished road

  Old

This has been brought up a few times before and the staff have actually looked at many ways in which to help improve and continue the growth of our Market Place.

First of all let me start by saying a lot of you make some very good points. Although some points aren't related to the original topic it does all tie in together.

That is however sort of the point. Personally I believe to raise the bar in terms of prices in the Market Place we need to first raise the level of professionalism and just improve the Market Place in general.

We have been looking at ways of doing this and I'm not going to go into too much depth on whats been discussed or on my own personal views but before we can start to drastically improve things in the Market Place we need to wait for the upgrade and new hacks.

Once this is here we will have iTrader which will make using the Market Place a lot better for buyers and will encourage freelancers to improve their professionalism and quality of service in order to reflect the use of the system.

Someone also mentioned thread bumping, the new version of vBulletin will allow us to sort threads by creation date rather than last post date - this will eliminate all thread bumping.

There is not a lot we can actively do about peoples grammar and how they present themselves in posts. However, I do believe we should look at ways in which we can help people overcome this. After all the whole point of this forum is to help freelancers and that's in EVERY aspect.

I know these seem like relatively small and simple steps and I know I haven't given answers to everything brought up but things need to be done carefully and they need to be done one step at a time. By doing little things to improve the quality of the Market Place in general (which we can all see a benefit from) we can then look at ways to target specific areas and further improve the Market Place for buyers and sellers a like.

Thats just my general view on the whole Market Place situation. The only thing holding back the development at this moment in the time is the upgrades and there is not much we can do about that at this time other than to just wait for that take place

12-09-2006, 04:38 PM
#42
Bryan Le is offline Bryan Le
Status: A legend among men
Join date: Aug 2005
Location: Germantown, Maryland
Expertise:
Software:
 
Posts: 2,529
iTrader: 9 / 100%
 

Bryan Le is on a distinguished road

Send a message via AIM to Bryan Le Send a message via MSN to Bryan Le

  Old

High five! The new era is upon us.

12-09-2006, 05:16 PM
#43
jd. is offline jd.
Status: TFL Veteran
Join date: May 2005
Location: FL, USA
Expertise: Design
Software: Photoshop
 
Posts: 3,010
iTrader: 5 / 100%
 

jd. is on a distinguished road

Send a message via MSN to jd.

  Old

nicely said bazza.

i still disagree with ever putting a minimum in for its our own work. and its what we feel or need. if i sell a forum skin for 25, then so be it, thats because i need the money, or its been semi used, or whatever the reason be it then its my business and my work. i am only bringing down myself with it so why you guys so worried.

and it was said many times when robson was admin that tfl would never go to pay to post sales like sitepoint, that the marketplace would always be free. which i feel is the best for the site, i hate sitepoint for its pay to post and it only does that cause it has a thousand members (obviously more just a figure of speech).

however i do think we should maybe have a pay $3.00 and have a "featured thread" for a day or "6.00" and have a sticky thread for 5 days

obviously prices could be adjusted but its a good idea i think.

12-09-2006, 05:45 PM
#44
Tom is offline Tom
Tom's Avatar
Status: I Code Things
Join date: Aug 2005
Location: UK
Expertise:
Software:
 
Posts: 1,998
iTrader: 14 / 100%
 

Tom is on a distinguished road

Send a message via MSN to Tom

  Old

i think the paying for a featured thread and sticky thread would be a good idea. Also nice points made bazza can't wait until the upgrades are made.

12-09-2006, 05:55 PM
#45
Bazza` is offline Bazza`
Bazza`'s Avatar
Status: Request a custom title
Join date: Nov 2004
Location: England
Expertise:
Software:
 
Posts: 3,515
iTrader: 10 / 100%
 

Bazza` is on a distinguished road

  Old

I don't think a pay-to-post system would be suited at this time either - You can't ask people to pay for something that was previously free unless there is a dramatic improvement in quality. Perhaps it is something that could be looked at long-term (it would be silly to write the idea off completely) but personally I don't believe it's something we should be looking at for the moment.

Paying for extra coverage of a thread (be it highlighting, stickying etc) though is something that I feel could be put to good use for helping with improving the quality of the Market Place as well as helping sellers here at TF.

At the end of the day the only way prices are going to rise is with a rise in quality. As the quality rises as will the prices. Prices can't rise unless they are given a reason to so improving the Market Place on a whole is the first thing we should be looking at doing in my opinion (and are trying to do as previously explained).

12-09-2006, 10:41 PM
#46
Julian is offline Julian
Status: Simply to simplify
Join date: Apr 2005
Location: Foxton, Manawatu, New Zealand
Expertise:
Software:
 
Posts: 5,572
iTrader: 0 / 0%
 

Julian is on a distinguished road

  Old

After some very lengthy discussions, and all of your input from the TF Development 2006 thread, we are doing a serious upgrade of the Marketplace. All of your comments in here have been said before, they have all been noted and we have been working on it. Bennett brought up the fact we seem to be a budget warehouse for services/products and asked how we can overcome this. We may never be able to overcome this, so we need to look to the future and understand that low prices may be a fact of life in our industry. We need to approach this topic in a different manner, and look at guiding the members towards being more professional, and looking at their industry in a more serious way, rather than trying to make a quick buck out of it. This is for ALL of us to do, not just the staff, we all need to act more professionally, we all need to work together to help guide the budget oriented members towards pricing realistically. How do we do this? I don't know the perfect answer, but creating paid posts is not the way. We have some ideas that will be happening to counteract a lot of the budget services/products, but they won't be perfect.

iTrader and the vB upgrade are the no1 priority for now. This will reduce the scammers and bumpers, and bring in some professionalism to the Marketplace. If you aren't professional in your business dealings this will be highlighted in your buyer/seller profile via comments from members you have ripped off/scammed. You will not be able to bump posts, they will remain in a timeline order based on first post date/time, not last post. These two additions will shift the emphasis to members acting more professional, as you will be visibly accountable for your actions once these are implemented. As for the time these will be implemented, I don't know. It is being worked on as you read this. The upgrades have to be seamless, tested and suitable for purpose, before they go live. Don't come back crying to me if it takes too long to implement this stuff, it is out of the general staffs hands. You all know there have been delays, but the wait will be more than worth it.

On top of the vB and iTrader upgrades, there are a whole raft of ideas we are going to implement for the Marketplace. I am not going to tell you any of these until they happen, except you can expect Marketplace Guidelines to be written up, this will include rules, expected behaviours, guidance on buying/selling etc. This will be a large series of documents, intended as a guideline to help everyone in the Marketplace (including staff).

12-09-2006, 11:13 PM
#47
thatjamie is offline thatjamie
thatjamie's Avatar
Status: Ruby on Rails Developer
Join date: Oct 2004
Location: England, UK
Expertise: Ruby, Rails, jQuery
Software: Chocolat, Sublime Text 3
 
Posts: 2,343
iTrader: 14 / 94%
 

thatjamie is on a distinguished road

Send a message via Skype™ to thatjamie

  Old

I think making the Marketplace seperate from the forum index could work to help increase more effecient and appropriate topics to be made on TF. It may, it may not, i don't know but it will make it less focused as it's the second catagory down. Maybe a forum restructure would help, merge some areas that aren't active.

I do somewhere in my crazy mind think there would be an advantage to making the martketplace seperate from the actual forum. Maybe pre written templates or a system where you put in price of template, name of template, catagory the template falls under, rights for it and so on could make the posting of the offers/requests more mature and keep a strict guidelines to those. Having a system (form) means members can't forget anything or break any rules.

Anyways, just my opinion again

Closed Thread  
Page 5 of 5 < 1 2 3 4 5


Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
 
Thread Tools
Display Modes

  Posting Rules  
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump:
 
  Contains New Posts Forum Contains New Posts   Contains No New Posts Forum Contains No New Posts   A Closed Forum Forum is Closed