Welcome to the official feedback and suggestion box for the SitePoint Marketplace. Let us know what you’d like to see, and vote for your favorite ideas, as submitted by other marketplace users.
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1,062 votes
Don't allow owner to delete member comments
Don't allow auction owner to delete member comments in his auctions. It should at least apply to certain auctions like domain sellings where experienced members are warning about fake domain PR's of fradulant sellers. Even if you allow them to delete the comment, at least people should see owner deleted XX comments in that auction.
We’ve been discussing this at length here. Right now, comments as an anti-fraud measure always lead us to a no-win situation. If we take the side of the commenters, we see abuse of the commenting system. If we take the side of the sellers, we see abuse of the comment deletion system.
Our approach in the short term will be to enhance the Marketplace with additional anti-fraud features that enable buyers to better gauge the legitimacy of listings (e.g. domain name ownership validation, site traffic verification, etc.).
As we do this, we will continually re-evaluate our policies on comment moderation. If it becomes practical and sensible to remove the 'delete comment' feature for sellers, we will.
Keep those votes and comments coming so we know your opinions on the subject!
- Kevin Yank -
198 votes
Adult sites should also be allowed for buy/sell
Every user watch porn/adult whenever he has time and i think sex is also a necessary part of our life like food, air and all. so i dont think there is any harm in allowing adult sites for buy/sell section. it will generate more business for all buyers/sellers + business for SP. (though i think they already have plenty of it. lol)
One of the primary reasons we don’t allow adult sites (even hidden from users who don’t want them) is that SitePoint staff would be required to moderate those auctions. We do not currently have any staff willing to work with adult material on a regular basis.
- Kevin Yank -
193 votes
Integrate an escrow service planned
I suggest that Sitepoint integrate an escrow service into the marketplace. Something like the way rentacoder has. For a Buyer, they would have to deposit funds before they could bid on any item. This requires alot of think, but it's just an idea that I think should be considered.
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94 votes
Restore listing view counters planned
Marketplace 1.0 had a view counter associated with every listing. Users have asked to have this feature restored to Marketplace 2.0.
Bringing back view counters will be a technical challenge, but it is a very high priority on our list. We currently hope to have this feature back within the next few months.
- Kevin Yank -
94 votes
Improved Search Functionality started
Allow searching by category, site name, allow sorting of search results by end time.
We recently introduced an Advanced Search feature that provides some of the functionality requested here. We’re not done yet, though!
We are currently working on a major revamp of the Marketplace, where you will be able to filter your view by any aspect of an auction/listing. Additionally, you will be able to sort you view by many different properties, and end time will be one of them.
- Kevin Yank -
57 votes
Verification of AdSense income under review
Many sites are sold based on Google AdSense income; however, it is difficult for buyers to verify claims made by sellers about the amount of income being generated through AdSense.
The Marketplace system should (with seller’s permission) reach into the seller’s AdSense account and pull out income information.
As a few users have pointed out, automated verification of income may not be possible. We may instead provide a “SitePoint-verified income” upgrade that the seller could pay for, after which a SitePoint staff member would contact the seller and work to verify the stated income.
Let us know what you think!
- Kevin Yank -
57 votes
Let sellers require bidders to make a deposit before bidding
since multiple account making is not new on SP or on any other popular webmaster forum, its just useless giving -ve feedback to anyone as he is free to make a new id anytime he wants and as regarding calling and verifying through telephone number, i feel this will also not work out. for example say i am in UK and some buyer is from say Australia and he is verified by phone by SP mods or admin or whatever. he bids on my auction and doesn’t pay. what do i have to do with his cell number? do i make repeated ISD calls to him and ask him to pay?
i suggest SP should make initiatives like only those bidders can bid who deposit say like 20% of their bids to SP account which SP will pay to seller in case that particular bidder wins the auction and pays the rest to seller and in case any other bidder wins, he is liable to get back his money from SP. this is the only way to weed out fake bidders or it can be like CC verification wherein SP people should charge his CC in case he don’t pays the seller.
if some workable measures like these can be workout, SP would be the best place to work with. SP charges sellers for putting up their auctions but with no surety of being paid by bidders. Like in e-bay, if a bidder doesn’t pays, e-bay don’t charge its fees for that particular auction as seller is at no fault on that occasion.
I also ask other fellow sellers to put their valuable suggestions to counter this increasing problem. -
37 votes
Show current bid price and BIN price in lists
Follow eBay's example. They list the current bid price and BIN price in the search results. For buyers, this would be very helpful in helping to narrow the results based on the price I am willing to spend.
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32 votes
Provide a list of Auctions Ending Soon on the homepage started
Sellers have reported that their auctions only seem to get noticed when they are first listed, because once they slip off the home page of the Marketplace they are much less visible.
By providing a list of auctions ending soon on the homepage, we can give prominence to auctions as they near their end.
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31 votes
Allow people to gift Marketplace Credits!
Say someone helps you in one of the coding forums, you can reward them with some of those sweet sweet marketplace credits.
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29 votes
Let users search for listings by username started
Currently you must find a user’s profile page in order to see a list of listings they have created. A link to this page is not always easy to find. It would be better if we could just search by user name.
This is actually already possible! Just type user:"username" in the search field on the Marketplace. We‘ll add an advanced search form to make this easy to discover.
- Kevin Yank -
24 votes
a way to get notified of new listings
a way to get notified of new listings in categories of your choice ( maybe keyword related as well )
We provide feeds for each category, as well as for search results, that you can subscribe to. Let us know if these do not meet your needs.
- Kevin Yank -
24 votes
Show a user feedback/trust level icon next to every username started
Calculate the trustworthiness of a user based on their feedback profile and past Marketplace activity and show that as an icon next to every username.
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21 votes
Don't Force Sellers to Sell to the Top Bidder
Right now there are a lot of auctions that have to be relisted because of deadbeat bidders who don't follow through. This wastes the time of the seller who is forced to relist and of other legitimate bidders who lose out on sites because someone outbids them and doesn't follow through. Let's go back to the old system and allow sellers to decide - it will work out best for everyone.
Currently, sellers are able to reject any bids they don’t like. So you aren’t forced to sell to the highest bid, just the highest bid you have accepted. Is this not working for you?
- Kevin Yank -
18 votes
Proxy bidding like eBay
Then I can set my maximum bid price and go away and the Sitepoint system can keep raising the bid automatically as and when needed.
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17 votes
Lower prices for marketplacte credits
The marketplace gets to be very expensive for small business owners and I can not afford to utilize the services very often
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16 votes
Website link opens in a new window / tab
The link in website listings should open in a new window / tab, helping everyone analyze the facts in the description. I always open the website link in a new window cause I like to compare what the seller says with the actual content in the website. Maybe others feel this way also.
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14 votes
Add Monthly Revenue AND Profit to the search listings planned
It would make it easier to find sites that are of interest if we could see the Monthly Revenue and Profit in the search listings. So if we are looking for sites with certain levels of revenue and profit, we can easily see it. I look at too many listings only to find that they are making no money or too little. It would be great to be able to sort the listings by these values as well.
We are currently working on a major revamp of the Marketplace, where you will be able to filter your view by any aspect of an auction/listing, including revenue and profit figures. Stay tuned!
- Kevin Yank -
12 votes
Buyer & Seller profiles should show date joined sitepoint
In marketplace when clicking on member profiles it should also show date when joined sitepoint so we can know how new or established the member is. .
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12 votes
BBCode or HTML option for formatting auction descriptions planned
Everyone time a seller lists an auction they have to reformat and recolour their listing text. This is incredibley wasteful.
Allow us to use basic BBCode (color, italic, bold) so we can roll out new listings without duplicate effort.
A work-around that is currently available is to disable JavaScript when creating a listing. The rich text editor for the auction description will revert to a plain textarea into which you can type (or paste) HTML code.
- Kevin Yank -
12 votes
Change the feedback system
I received negative feedback from someone that clearly wasn't very bright, he was in the wrong and has admitted so via PM. I was told that the only way I could have the feedback removed was by getting him to agree to it, however now that I've helped him and given him what he wants, he no longer comes here. So I'm stuck with negative feedback for future auctions. I think the system should be improved.
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11 votes
Add an "Invite to Bid" tool
There needs to be a way to Invite potential buyers to your auction.
On the SP Marketplace you will find hundreds of other users who are commenting & bidding on auctions.
If you are a seller, you will particularly be interested in those users who are participating in an auction related to yours.
As a seller it is in your best interest to find qualified buyers. Currently you're free to contact users via PM so it may be an advantage to use PM's to contact users who may be interested in your auction. This is successful (I know because I received new bids over $10,000 by meeting people this way) however some people will regard any unsolicitated message as spam.
There needs to be a way to facilitate this process in a more effective way.
Invite to Bid
My idea is a "Invite to Bid" tool which streamlines the process of contacting qualified buyers who may not have seen your auction. Similar to Elance's "Invite Tool" which allows you to invite providers to your auction.This way the potential buyer would receive an automated PM saying "(SP User) thinks you may be interested in his auction and has invited you to bid".
Since it's formalized, to the Seller can find qualified buyers and send them an offer to bid without the risk of being reported as a spammer.
There would need to be some restrictions of course. In fact, probably the easiest way to ensure Sellers are only sending Invites to those users who really might be interested, is to charge 1 credit per invite.
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11 votes
Factor in previous marketplace transactions for Trust!
So users that have used the marketplace before the trust feature was implemented still have some feedback of some sort.
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11 votes
PM: Should have the reference and link to auction
Private Message: Should have the reference and link to auction in question
The seller often gets confused and pm’s back “what website or auction are you righting about?
The buyer also could get confused if he is inquiring on more than one auction. -
10 votes
Allow auctions/listings to be published as drafts
Could you insert an option to have threads within the marketplace to be published as drafts. This way I can have my friends and co-workers check over everything. Good because I often make errors.
Interesting idea! So, as I understand it, a draft listing/auction would not be visible to users of the site, but you could provide your friends and co-workers with, say, a preview URL to see it?
- Kevin Yank
