Behavior & Marketplace

That wouldn't really be fair though, I mean that would then be us taking away peoples freedom in a sense. In theory it's a good idea but it just wouldn't work.

What we need to aim to do is help freelancers in general raise their level of work, their level of professionalism and most importantly raise their level of knowledge in the industry. I mean that is why we are here after all, to help freelancers.

At the end of the day though if someone wants to sell a design for $10, $20, $50 whatever, we can't really say no your not allowed you have to charge more. Things just don't work that way, atleast not here - we're alot more friendly than that

Originally Posted by portopottey69 I think that there also should be a minimum waged limit in the marketplace. Ex, the lowest price that you can sell a 1 page design is at 50$. This sets a level of professionalism and helps us all out because no one can underprice your designs.

Half of what's posted for sale isn't even worth $5 if you ask me...

iTrader would definently help! I've just installed that on my forum too. I think it would a great addition to the marketplace.

Originally Posted by Big Zee The marketplace is top of our hit list for improvements and we are looking at numerous different things to sort it out. I do however disagree with the showing of peoples ages as: 1/. There is no way we can verify a persons age - anyone who thinks that people are going to be heavily influenced by what age they enter is far more likely to lie about it, therefore it becomes pointless. 2/. Buyers should be using a sellers portfolio, references etc to judge a supplier on and not their age - you can get great young designers and terrible older designers. Judge a person on their work and not their age (or what they put their age down as) and you should not go to far wrong.

1./ Well if someone is claiming to be 20+ and is acting like a younger person, its quite obvious...
2./ I used the sellers portfolio, it was fine for what i needed done, it was a small project. But it was still hell...

I do think prices are increasingly becoming lower and there should be some sort of restiction to how much a design/coding service should go for, maybe a standard BIN or XX amount would help.

Although it may not be fair to impose such prices and itrader will help, seller need to get their moneys worth from whatever they do whether coding or designing.

I've actually been thinking about the drop in prices even though I haven't been here long...maybe you should write up some kind of guideline on the amount designs should be sold for. Now I know that different people charge different rates depending on the complexity of the site, so maybe just set a few boundaries to the prices - like on SitePoint were you can only post a competition with the minimum prize as $100? Just an idea.

Competitions will be getting set prize limits but I don't think it's something that can be as effectively added into the market place.

We cant FORCE people to sell their work for more than they want to, we can offer some guidlines for the market place to help freelancers (not things like set minimum prices) and I do think this is something that the staff have discussed.

I firmly believe that iTrader will go along way to helping things, it will improve the buyers experiance within the MarketPlace and will weed out any duff freelancers. People getting a low rep will then have no option but to buck up their ideas and take note of how the best freelancers go about things. They'll then want to go about things in a similiar fashion to make sure they get sales, that should then, in theory, mean they raise how proffesional they are and will raise the quality of their service. With a raise in quality will come a raise in price. This way it will be fair to both sellers AND buyers.

We won't be relying soley on iTrader to improve things for the MarketPlace though as there needs to be a much more long-term focus than that. As I said earlier this is TalkFreelance and we are here to help the freelancers and thats exactly wht we want to do. So as well as iTrader we will be looking at many other ways to make the MP a better place for everybody and will be looking into different avenues we can take to help freelancers while we are doing it.

There really is no instant-fix for this I don't think, slapping a minimum fixed price on things is going to harm as many freelancers as it helps.

I havn't read all of this thread but do i take it as itrader is definatly to be implemented as a new change to the forum.

Well I think it's been said a few times now that iTrader is deffinately on the way - nobody is going to say when it will be here though because people don't seem to like us announcing things

Originally Posted by Bazza` What we need to aim to do is help freelancers in general raise their level of work, their level of professionalism and most importantly raise their level of knowledge in the industry. I mean that is why we are here after all, to help freelancers.

You are right. Though it seems that it won't happen on its own. I am going to make a few general suggestions.

1. The Marketplace should charge thread starters something in order to create threads. If you look at other similar communities and their MPs, SitePoint probably has the most successful. I believe this is mainly inpart because they charge users to create new threads. Anywhere from $5 - $20 and honestly when you are paying that much you can't afford to mess around. But if you look at other places that don't charge, such as WebHostingTalk, you see the same trend as here, not a lot of success, and still pretty minimal wages and profits being made.

I think it would be fair to charge a minimum of $1 per thread being created in the marketplace, and maybe $2 or $3 for certain areas. Of course it would be unpopular and activity would die for a bit while members adjust, but the quality of listings would greatly improve.

2. I think the Marketplace should also only be accessible to users who have earned it or otherwise veteran members. Let everyone be able to read and post replies, but only veterans allowed to post new threads and sales. This would call for a separation of offers and requests.

3. Assign a moderation team to the area to enforce strict guidelines and behavior. It's unforetunate, but I think it is vital that lurkers and potential buyers browsing the forums don't see childish discussions going on in the auction threads. If people are arguing or fighting, it doesn't represent the sale very well. I think it would be fair to allow members to even regulate their own threads in the Marketplace, allowing them to delete replies and comments that end up hurting the sale.

4. Another very important aspect: threads in the Marketplace should not be "bumpable" and by that I mean they should simply go down the line in the order in which they are created. Even with replies, auctions should simply go down the line in the order they were created. Thus everything on the front page will be FRESH and we won't have to see auctions that are already completed. It's very annoying for a buyer.

There are probably a million other things we could do too, but the main things I want to see disappear are the following:

- Full web sites being sold for under $75 (unless they are turnkey)
- Lifetime links being sold
- Coding xhtml/css designs for less than $40
- Coding WordPress designs for less than $75
- Coding vBulletin designs for less than $100
- The sale of more than one item in a thread
- The sale of text links for less than half of what TLA recommends
- The sale of banners for less than $0.75 per 1000 pageviews
- Bid increments lower than $5 or even better, $10. I hate seeing $1 increments.