Tips For Buying And Selling At Digital Point
Chris Bibey wrote a post yesterday about avoiding scams at Digital Point. For those of you that don’t know, Digital Point is a very popular webmaster forum where people from all over come together to talk about websites, offer advice and try to fleece unsuspecting souls out of their money.
As I said in my comment on Chris’ post, Digital Point is “one of the dirtiest corners of the Internet.”
It’s also one of my favorite sites on the web.
Even though Digital Point is sort of a den of thieves there are some money making opportunities there. I spend a lot of time in the Buy, Sell or Trade section looking at sites for sale (all the time I was wasting doing this was actually the impetus for building Web Auctions Daily). There are also a lot of great opportunities to find freelancers to outsource your extra work to.
I’ve had some experience both buying and selling things on Digital Point so I’ve put together some tips for people looking to get their feet wet over there.
Buying
- First off, the old expression “buyer beware” applies triple-time at Digital Point. If you get scammed or ripped off you have no one to blame but yourself. There are systems in place to give scammers bad reviews but it’s by no means a fool proof system and it doesn’t get your money back.
- Avoid the “get rich quick” schemes and ebooks. The only people that get rich with those are the people selling them. Use your head here. If someone is really making $300 a day doing no work then why are they wasting their time trying to sell their secrets to you for $4.99?
- Do your research. This applies to buying sites, links or hiring freelancers. Make sure the traffic and AdSense stats are legit as well as the PageRank. This is especially true when buying links. Again, use your head, if someone is selling permanent PR 5 links for $5 it’s probably bogus. If you’re hiring a freelancer make sure to see their portfolio and work out payment before any work gets started.
Selling
- A lot of people post sites, templates, domains, etc. for sale by starting a brand new thread that quickly gets buried under the pile. One neat trick I’ve learned when I’m selling something is to search the particular section I’m thinking about posting in with the term “WTB” (that’s short for: Want To Buy) and see if anyone has asked in the past for something I’m offering. That’s a simple way to fish out potential buyers.
- Be prepared to be insulted. Everyone is guilty of overvaluing whatever it is they have. Your first offers on your sale will probably make you cringe. You can either ignore them or take them into consideration. You won’t get much love if you berate the person who made a low bid though so try and keep your cool.
- Chris touched on this in his post but if you’re a freelancer please, for the love of all that’s good, do not give work away for free. Anyone who wants sample work is just looking to get something for nothing. That’s how the scammers get you.
I’ve droned on long enough. The thing I want to stress is that with some common sense and due diligence you can get a lot out of Digital Point. Be smart and play it safe so you have a good chance of having a nice experience.
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Pingback by Social Networking Declining - Bloggers Yapping — February 14, 2008 @ 1:58 am
I dunno… Selling via forums seems to push prices down. I’ll use a traditional economics example as to why I think the system isn’t great.
Consider the used car market. There are some cars for sale which just aren’t worth it. They break, they probably barely even run after you’ve bought them. Say these cars are really worth $2,000 each, but the people selling them are asking for $5,000.
Now there are some people who are selling decent used cars. They might be worth $5,000, and the asking price for them might also be $5,000.
Lets say that 50% of used cars are duds and 50% are worth the asking price. If you have no (or very little) way to fathom which is a dud or which is a good car (each car salesman is going to try and convince you that the one they’re selling is exceptional) then what do you pay? Well you’re not going to want to pay $5,000, because 50% of the time you might get a car only worth $2,000. The most you’re logically going to want to pay is $3,500.
Now no one wants to sell a decent, working used car for that amount, so the only cars you find out there for $3,500 are again not worth it – they’re duds. Price goes lower. It’s circular.
Sorry for the long comment, but I think that’s why marketplaces like Digital Point (and perhaps SitePoint too) undervalue good websites. People are not willing to take a chance without any ‘guarantees’ (coincidentally how the used car market gets around these downward price pressures). If there is some way to reassure people about the sale – partly perhaps the reviews for each seller – or any post-sale support, then the price should be higher and more reasonable. People selling bad templates or shoddy get-rich-quick books theoretically can’t afford to offer real guarantees like this.
Andrew’s last blog post..Giving RocketProfit a go
Comment by Andrew — February 15, 2008 @ 8:50 pm
First, thanks for taking the time and effort to contribute the longest comment in this blog’s history. I appreciate it.
I think my current auction at SitePoint is a perfect example of the difference between that marketplace and Digital Point. And it probably backs up your theory that sites, at DP at least, can be vastly undervalued on a forum.
Within ten minutes of listing at SitePoint I had $XXX bids rolling in. I also posted the site for sale at DP and in the time it takes you to take a deep breath it was falling off the first page. What was replacing it? Sites that stream bootleg copies of anime and TV shows and sites marketing Clickbank products. No one has yet to reply to my thread at DP but the bids at SitePoint keep on coming.
So… I think you’re partly right that forums push prices down but I think it has a lot to do with the particular forum you choose to sell on.
Link’s last blog post..Web Auctions Daily Is For Sale
Comment by Link — February 16, 2008 @ 11:06 am
Digital Point needs to clean up its backyard. While it is true that you only have yourself to be blamed when you are being scammed, it is also true that we have this instinct to put trust to someone who tries to be sincere. Some people are faking their itraders and reputation. I know one who has few posts and yet his reputation skyrockets in a matter of days.
Comment by sunglasses — February 9, 2009 @ 11:34 pm
Taking care of your steps into the Digital Point, it´s a good place to make good deals. Good Article, see you in Digital Point.
Comment by transportadora — March 12, 2009 @ 1:44 pm