Cost of Referrals?

I want to reduce the cost of referrals i think its insane to charge more then $10-$15 for a referral. These sites go from being freebie sites to discounted sites. I would like to put a limit on the cost of referrals so im putting this out before the members. I have suggested this in the past and others have mentioned it in the post about what you think about FIPG. I personally think freebie sites should be free and people should trade refs without paying for them you just do what you can to help other people and those people do the same for you but unfortuantly that wont happen. So please respond with constructive critisism don't say stupid things i want serious responses if you are disrespectful you will get a tempban.

I voted to put the cost down....

...why [i1e0aba426e]wouldn't[/i1e0aba426e] you drop the cost down? These sites are supposed to be "free", when you have to pay $30+ for a referral for a $250 item, it comes out to only saving a few bucks (especially when you add the scammers into the picture).

Dropping the price would help us all.

i think it should be capped. however, people will just move to other forums.

[quote1c01086cc1="tracemhunter"]i think it should be capped. however, people will just move to other forums.[/quote1c01086cc1] Do you have a solution that would be better?

I voted yes reduce the cost, but not to 10-15$. It should go down slowly over time leave it at like 20$ max. And then drop it to 15$. Hell 20$ is a lot less then what some sites go for. You have to max exceptions too, like freeipods.com and allthis4free sites.

It is capitalism that brought the prices up, and you should go all socalist on them IMO.

its going to scare a lot of users away from the forums. since there are a lot of people who make quite a bit of money just from doing offers for people, they dont even care about the free site they jsut get paid for doing offers. if u cant find referals this wil hurt you but if u are pursing the site this will benifit u.

i jsut feel the users who do offers just for money not for the gift on site will just go elsewhere where they can make more money. y get paid 15$ here when u get paid 30$ somewhere else. its sad but thats how it works people are greedy. i personally pay 40$ for referals buts that to a casion/poker site where the offers actually cost something to do.

its ridiculous to pay 30$ for someone to sign up for a free trial or like a 1$ offer

[quote4bf525ede6="mrwzk"]its going to scare a lot of users away from the forums. since there are a lot of people who make quite a bit of money just from doing offers for people, they dont even care about the free site they jsut get paid for doing offers. if u cant find referals this wil hurt you but if u are pursing the site this will benifit u.

i jsut feel the users who do offers just for money not for the gift on site will just go elsewhere where they can make more money. y get paid 15$ here when u get paid 30$ somewhere else. its sad but thats how it works people are greedy. i personally pay 40$ for referals buts that to a casion/poker site where the offers actually cost something to do.

its ridiculous to pay 30$ for someone to sign up for a free trial or like a 1$ offer[/quote4bf525ede6]

That's true and since I'm a noob and have only done one site I feel like im getting the royal screwjob.... but I must say paying up to 30 dollars for someone else to spend 1 is just ridiculous....

If you're a noob you would be getting the opposite of screwed. I have payed people lots of money, that if this was in place I would'nt of had too. You wont have to do that.

Get A4F and other forums in on this too.

well this is a freebie site forum not a get paid to do sites forum....and i think that most people here are actually pursuing the sites. And if they wanna leave cause of this rule then we dont really need them. I also believe other forums would follow in our foot steps like with everything else.

I vote yes to reduce the price also. I agree with Blink, once you start paying so much for these referalls you dont get a big profit in the end. Move to other forums? How many forums out there offer this type of trading etc. or are like this one? I havent found any at all. For certain offers, like casino ones, the person needing the green should decide how much he or she wants to pay for them. I think what we really need is more traffic to this site which gives us more and better people to do trades with. With such little active people on this forum, and such little "LEGIT" sites out there that people do compared to the actually TOTAL amount of Free sites, it is hard to find people to do your site but we shouldnt have to break our backs paying for refs. for them..

well I don't know, it would scare a lot of people away, I guess....especially n00bs. Not sure if there is even a way to fix the inflated referral costs, now that I think about it. x

I guess you don't study basic economics until you get to college, do you?

[quote74ae02adbc="KeithA"]I guess you don't study basic economics until you get to college, do you?[/quote74ae02adbc] i said no stupid comments keep on the subject...now as far as noobs that come here most of them come to get info about sites and to trade to finish them i dont think most come here to pay alot of money for refs or make money of refs they come to finish sites.

I think what we should do before lowering the price for refs. is take into account some of the situations that are happening between traders that you can see in the Scammers section and write rules that take those situations into accounts..revamp the site with a new skin..make it more official and get some more traffic on the site i see the same dozen people commenting on threads in the Off Topic and other sections all the time

[quote4fed929959="KeithA"]I guess you don't study basic economics until you get to college, do you?[/quote4fed929959]

Management (concentration in Marketing) and Economics double major...try me. You sure don't sound intelligent making a statement without any explanation of or evidence backing that statement. I guess you don't study basic communication until you get to high school, do you?

[quoted3c030afcd="Stroid"][quoted3c030afcd="KeithA"]I guess you don't study basic economics until you get to college, do you?[/quoted3c030afcd] i said no stupid comments keep on the subject...now as far as noobs that come here most of them come to get info about sites and to trade to finish them i dont think most come here to pay alot of money for refs or make money of refs they come to finish sites.[/quoted3c030afcd]

It was on subject. The price of referrals is dictated by the demand for a smooth, reliable green. Bear in mind that there is more value in a green than just $x (where $x is what the trial costs) since there are a finite number of offers and a finite number of free sites, and you can only do each offer once, you are not only giving up $x by completing an offer, you're giving up the opportunity to do that offer and that site again. In a shallow pool of users, the demand for someone who a) hasn't completed the site you need and b) hasn't completed the offer you needs may dictate a price as high as $30.

If you arbitrarily cap the price of referrals, the number of trades--and, therefore, users--will diminish. Interfering with price in a market without influencing the key determinants of price (supply and demand) rarely does what it is intended to do. If you really want to decrease the price of referrals, INCREASE the supply by increasing the number of users trading here.

By the way, it may be worth browsing around RefAuction before you decide to cap the cost of greens. I think they would stand to benefit directly from a price cap at FIPG.

Yea, a steady flow of new traffic would definately help us out.

It is basic economics and the cost is determined by supply and demand. If people aren't willing to pay $30 a referral then people won't be charging that much. It's just capitalism. If someone can be paid $30 for performing a service then why only charge $20 for it? For sites that are hard to find referrals for like freeipods.com then the people willing to do it for cash can dictate the price since the supply is limited.

If you set a ceiling on the max ammount someone can charge here then the people will just trade somewhere else since there are many alternatives. By no means is paying for referrals the only way to get referrals. If it is too expensive then look for cheaper alternatives. True capitalism eliminates those that are willing but unable to purchase something.

[quoted2f5a51f33="KeithA"][quoted2f5a51f33="Stroid"][quoted2f5a51f33="KeithA"]I guess you don't study basic economics until you get to college, do you?[/quoted2f5a51f33] i said no stupid comments keep on the subject...now as far as noobs that come here most of them come to get info about sites and to trade to finish them i dont think most come here to pay alot of money for refs or make money of refs they come to finish sites.[/quoted2f5a51f33]

It was on subject[/quoted2f5a51f33] Now its on subject earlier it was not on subject it was a comment that sounded like you where being a ass. Now that you have clarified its ok.

FON and Stroid, I apologize for my tone in that first post. I should have explained what I was thinking before making a snide comment. I agree that the price of a ref these days is too steep, but I think that an arbitrary cap will have unintended consequences.

I think the site needs to be more concreate to keep everything in order to prevent lots of problems we have here to make the trades go smoother and quicker. It just seems too not serious enough when your dealing with your own cold hard cash, credit and debit cards and personal information

[quote1cc99d78ec="Matt8789"]I think the site needs to be more concreate to keep everything in order to prevent lots of problems we have here to make the trades go smoother and quicker. It just seems too not serious enough when your dealing with your own cold hard cash, credit and debit cards and personal information[/quote1cc99d78ec]

To your point, I still think an escrow service would eliminate a lot of the issues that arise with PayPal trades where someone with a lower TR is paying for a green. When a trade is entered into, the person paying would transfer the agreed-to amount to a trusted third party (either a mod or a professional escrow service). Then, when the person with the higher TR greens, the money would be transferred from escrow to him/her.

I dont think if we put a cap it will drive that many people away some maybe but not that many. I think people will be affected positivly by it and it will get more sites done. I clearly understand the principles of economics but i think the positive will outweigh the negative in this situation. But keep the suggestions coming.

I think a big factor is how dedicated are you to the site to make some big changes? I know many times where iv set up trades with Newbies and since my rank in TR is much higher than theres, they go first and MANY tiems they sign up and i loose contact with them and i have a yellow sitting on one of my sites i thought i had a trade with. I agree with KeithA a third party institute would be a good thing but you would have to adjust the rules and guidelines on the site with that..as well as adjust to the problems that would come with it and make the right rules accordingly

A couple things
What if a user sends a PM to someone offering more than the cap (they may really need it.) Would this get them in trouble?
And like mentioned before, casino sites and some others require high amounts for the risk and amount of money being deposited. I am paying between $25 and $40 for my evenmore4free. I do not necesarrily see it as too high.

i think on casino sites we can have a different rule accordingly in response to those sites.

well its not that we are taking the 'free' out of free sites.
when people trade for cash.. like $30 for freeipods, then the person who is doing the referral gets $30 free. It is like the person doing the cash trade is running a free site, while his customers are still getting money for free

Obviously reducing the price has to be subject to exceptions such as OOD. I couldn't agree more with reducing the price. Even if you get scammed you'd only be losing 10-15 rather than 25-30. Also everyone benefits more from the prize when it costs less to pay for them. It brings the concept of "freesites" closer to its true meaning.

the cost of refferals are starting to get a bit insane....
we should set the limit to 20$
th idea of a third party handling cash exchanges sounds nice but if you really think about it bringing a third party means bringing along a new set of problems.... EX What if someone greens 3rd party sends the cash to them and they go red?
I think the fair thing to do would be tro set the CAP ON ALL FREEPAY sites
except for freeipods.com to 20$ D

[quote6d6499af8b="JUNIOR6886"]I think the fair thing to do would be tro set the CAP ON ALL FREEPAY sites
except for freeipods.com to 20$ D[/quote6d6499af8b] Thats not a bad idea i would like it to be less then $20 but thats a good suggestion.

no it cant be less than 20$ that would be unfair to the people who need the cash..... 20$ is definetly the equilibrium price. If we could get the A4F to agree to this also that would rock.... im not 100% about FIPG going it alone with a cap....

I guess I'll be the one to go against the grain and say that I don't think there should be a cap. I think it's ridiculous that there would be a rule in place that tells you how much of [b2bafcde12a]your own money[/b2bafcde12a] you could offer someone. There's a reason the prices are so high, it's because others offer it. It's not like nobody is willing to pay those prices b/c obviously people are.

And people talk like they know how much someone will be spending on an offer. Just because there are free and $1 offers doesn't mean that they will be able to do them. So if someone does Tickle IQ for $13 they're supposed to collect $15 from you?

Some may not like the prices because they can't or don't want to pay it and that's their choice. You just have to move on and try to get your referrals another way. That's like me being mad that everyone can afford Gucci except for me and I ask them to lower the price because me and a couple of others don't want to pay their prices. Everyone should just offer the amount of money that they can afford and hope that someone takes them up on their offer and leave it at that.

Retro has it right. I refuse to pay more than $20 for a referral, and I've been quite successful. Putting a cap on referrals would drive people away, without question. Rather than forcing a cap, we should encourage people to do sites for less money, and refuse to pay so much.

Plus, if there's a cap, then what distinguishes people's offers. If everyone can only offer $15, then those with the highest TR will always get refs, and those who have to pay but don't have incredible TR, like me, will suffer and leave the site.

I think at every trade offered in the Trading Post a list of offers should be given before the person does the trade..that way the person can know what the offers are, how much, and if they are able to do them. Thats one of the things that you should do to make this stuff more concrete and practicle

I personally voted to put a cap on things, as when I first started I could do trades and was able to get referrals that way (but I still spent money, but its minimal compared to the cost of the actual 360). Now I have tried paying for referrals and no one seems to want to do it for $20, which to me is a lot, as it really doesn't cost someone much money to sign up for an offer, at the most it could be like $6 on average, but there are many free offers or even $1 offers that people could do. If people did the referrals for only $10 I'd appreciate it, but then again if I say I will pay only $10 someone else offers more than that and I can't afford to get into a bidding war, so getting the last few referrals costs me a lot. I have just about decided that once I've finished this site I'm done with free sites as it is becoming more trouble than it is worth, and also a bit ridiculous to have to pay $20-$25 for someone to do a free trial of something......but that's just my two cents, but I think a cap would be beneficial, and it would also keep those without deep pockets from having to worry about being outbid for referrals....

autiger, how do you expect to get a ref for whatever the cap is if several other users with +3X your TR are willing to pay that cap as well? People would go with the people with higher TR, and you'd have nothing more to offer.

[quote208ddfca44="ilanbg"]autiger, how do you expect to get a ref for whatever the cap is if several other users with +3X your TR are willing to pay that cap as well? People would go with the people with higher TR, and you'd have nothing more to offer.[/quote208ddfca44]

Thats why we need more and more traffic to the site..revamp the site with some new skin, some changed and added rules and guidelines, some new options that can give everyone an equal chance to get their refs.

Supply and Demand, people.

If someone is willing to offer $30 for a site, I don't see why someone should be forced to only accept $20 because a rule is in order.

If you absolutely HAVE to make this a rule (I am going to vote against it), just do it with one network, not all of them, and don't make it official. An experiment is necessary.

I think the Freepay network would be a good network to test with
(with the exception of freeipods of course) freepay has a bunch of free/1$ trials and 20$ is a fair ceiling price for it.

Here is my stand on it... its all self sufficent. If you pay $30 for a refferal, chances are you could do a different site for $30 as well, therefore its the same as if you paid $15 and they charged $15. I think it all evens out in the end.

[quote276c46d200="ilanbg"]autiger, how do you expect to get a ref for whatever the cap is if several other users with +3X your TR are willing to pay that cap as well? People would go with the people with higher TR, and you'd have nothing more to offer.[/quote276c46d200]

I see your point...and it is a good one. I agree that most would go with the person with the higher TR, I guess we'd have to find a way to work things out like that, but the biggest complaint I have is with having to spend almost $30 for one referral.....but I probably shouldn't add much to this discussion as once I finish 3604free my free site days are over and if I don't have the money for something I will just go without....

I really don't see the problem at all. I've only had to pay $20 once, and that was highest. Everything else I've paid has been around $15 (sometimes $17, sometimes $10).

And some sites are worth more than others. Why should people pay the same for free360xbox or flashipods4free as freeipodfrenzy or a less legit site?

This could be the greatest mistake FIG could do. It's perfect the way it is, and enacting a policy like this will really hurt it.

The best thing to do, as before stated, would be to get more traffic to the site.

well this is just a idea i think the cost is to high....this is why i made the poll. plus alot of people have mentioned this already

Not to shit on the parade here but I don't really think that this is a reasonable, enforcible policy. If you have a problem paying $30 for a referral, I have a simple solution for you don't.

I hope to roll out some new features, as well as a new look for the site in the near future. I might even run a contest to try to get new users here.

As for an escrow service, the idea is great, but I'm not exactly sure how to make it work. Someone (eg. me) could sign up for a merchant account and then people could pay via credit card, which could then be sent from a bank account via PayPal, but that's a lot of work.

Another option would be to have some members considered "trusted escrowers" who would take payments via PayPal. I guess it would work something like
E - escrow
A - trader a
B - trader b

A $20 -> E
trade completes
A $20 -> B
E $20 -> A (refund so fees don't eat it).

That way there's a guarantee, but it also requires that trader A have twice as much cash on hand than he's spending on a trade.

[quotefe0bfebbd0="Stroid"]I want to reduce the cost of referrals i think its insane to charge more then $10-$15 for a referral. [/quotefe0bfebbd0]

I vote no. Someone mentioned economics. supply and demand would suggest that we're currently at the equilibrium point. $25 is the average because that's what people are willing to pay. Logically, the best thing to do would be discourage people from paying that much. If the buyers (people wanting refs) refuse to pay $25, then the sellers (me) would have to reduce our prices.

Also, you have to look at the cost of a referal. There's the offer itself, which, if you've already done rhapsody will cost you $5-8. That means you're now only making $7 a ref. Does 7 really cover the time of going through the signup, doing surveys or whatever, then the time you would have to spend to deal with the "C" word, should you choose to end your trial offer for whatever reason. $7 doesn't really make it worth it for me. I know, it would probably push me into other forums. Right now, I have no reason to go to any other forums.

The other thing it will do, and this is worth considering, too, is push people into making deals on AIM and email. People will use the boards to find desperate people (who now cannot find referals because it's no longer worth it for people to do trades) to answer PMs saying "email me,a nd we can work something out" or "IM me and I'll do your site for $20"... This will push a lot of newbs into getting scammed. It will sour people to the idea of trading, and I think it will lead to a reduction in the number of people trying to get finish their sites. While this might be good for gratis, it's not good for the traders.

You just have to put it into perspective. People willing to pay $25 for a ref accept the fact that they are getting a "discounted" item, not a free item. I mean, $25 x 5 = $125, for a $300 ipod is still very good.

Also, no one is forcing these people to pay. They could probably go find people to sign up, if they wanted to. I finished several gratis sites without doing a single trade. It's a time vs money situation. No one is forcing anyone to take the easy way.

Edit Didn't see the Admin post before I wrote )

I think the idea of some escrow or holding would be a great thing. I do agree that fees could be a problem. Even doing all refunds will raise some eyebrows with most merchants.

well i agree with many of you on the issue of this is supply and demand and we cant really control that but like you said i suppose we could discourage high referral costs. I just wanted to put this out there to get peoples thoughts the forum seems to agree that we want lower prices but there are to many downsides to it. So everything will stay as is...but if someone does come up with a good suggestion please let us know. Thanks for all your input FIPG.

The Solution

We could make a separate trading forum for the lower prices. If someone wants to do it, great, but they can always stick to the regular one. Perhaps we could make it so that you would need to sign up for someone in the lower priced area in order to get referrals in the lower priced area. This would prevent abuse of the system.

Everybody wins. D

Like I have said in the numerous other threads that have been made about this subject I think price capping will only make it harder to find refs and I think we need to focus on recruiting new members I am not going to go into details as I have spent large amounts of time writing the same response in great detail many times before and am not going to bother again....anyways supply and demand and all that jazz

I agree it's getting redicolous. The cost keeps going up when it needs to be reduced. I am paying 20 now for dvdrecorders4free and if i finish it im paying 200 to get 400. Thats not bad, but its not great either. But if we are all only paying 15, then why is a noob going to trade with another noob as opposed to all mods, and highly ranked traders? Because of this reason I can't back the idea proposed, I think it would kill the system.

Also Admin what are you trying to establish with the escrow? to stop noobs from getting scammed? I am not against it, but what about time limits? If you are paying 20 up front before a trade and that user is taking a long time then your money is just sitting there. Imagine if you are in many trades, you may not have the money to be able to cover everything for the people that are taking 1 month to go green.

How about a stricter scammer rule? maybe up the TR requirement to 4 instead of 2? I don't really have any good ideas, but I do think a better system for finding and eliminating scammers should be arranged. Maybe set a fair price on all sites. If said person doesnt complete said site in said ammount of days, they pay that price to the person. If they eventually go green in another said ammount of time the person pays them back the money.

Maybe we could use the escrow for those situations. If someone owes you a green for say 2 weeks, they pay the escrow, if they don't go green in another 2 weeks the payment gets transfered to other user.

I really like admin's suggestion, but you'd have to find some reallly trustworthy people because hey, its the internet.

[quote572d940e22="tmberwolff"]People willing to pay $25 for a ref accept the fact that they are getting a "discounted" item, not a free item. I mean, $25 x 5 = $125, for a $300 ipod is still very good. [/quote572d940e22]

And I paid you $30 and you still haven't greened??? I feel ripped off now (

This convo is from a long time ago in a galaxy far far away
[quote05e4abe4fe]
[quote05e4abe4fe="wood"]
as much as i enjoyed "the old days" with $10 referals, times have changed my friend.

setting a rule saying no payouts higher than $15 only benefits one half of the people here.
The other half would get shafted, and probably leave. Ultimatly making the price ceeling a bad thing for EVERYONE.[/quote05e4abe4fe]

I totally agree with wood <holy shit>

Most people are just going to leave to go other places if there's a rule instituted banning high payouts for referrals. I'm not immune to it. I've been asking for $30 a site for popular Trainn and FreePay sites I haven't done, and I've had no shortage of people willing to pay me. Funny thing though, I was looking back at my excel spreadsheet from January, and there's wood, at the top of the list - he paid me $16 for ipodshuffles - if only I'd known to wait till now...;)

Further, this is collusion, and is very frowned upon (and illegal) in the real world, so I don't know if it's such a good idea to do it in the Trading Forum either.[/quote05e4abe4fe]

Oh yeah, even though I don't care that prices are going up. I don't think that someone should go into someone's trade thread telling them how much they should pay for a ref

like this
http//forum.freeipodguide.com/viewtopic.php?t=23705

[quote054c5db8ec="Retro"]Oh yeah, even though I don't care that prices are going up. I don't think that someone should go into someone's trade thread telling them how much they should pay for a ref

like this
http//forum.freeipodguide.com/viewtopic.php?t=23705[/quote054c5db8ec]

I absolutely agree.

This basically benefits everyone who has already done most of the sites and hurts all the new people who are still getting paid to do sites.

[quote5058d8fcfb="Daggoth"]This basically benefits everyone who has already done most of the sites and hurts all the new people who are still getting paid to do sites.[/quote5058d8fcfb]

No, it basically hurts everyone. If it hurts the newbs, it hurts those who aren't.

I dont think so since the older members get refs cheaper while the newer members get paid little to do refs that usually cost double or triple what they are getting paid.

While I agree with the laws of supply and demand I think some people have goten out hand with prices.Someone on the trading post a few weeks ago posted they would only do a ref for $35 on any non-casino site.That is just riddclous I mean im doing get5friends right now and I will certainly not pay $35 for a ref on it...I refuse to offer more than $30 for a ref and that is even sickening to me.I think that $20-$25 is a good number to cap ref prices at.However a hard cap will just scare people away so what about a "suggestion" of the max price being in that range.My cost basis for get5friends assuming no one scams me will be $100 to make $225 not bad but not great either and can be damaged if i got screwed by scamers.