[APPROVED] Rewarding buyers or sellers for vouching.

Hi there,

Letting people vouch on threads has always been a common way for website to get more exposure and thus traffic + potential sales on their website.

Back in the day we had the loophole of asking people to fill out order forms. Everytime we could let a customer or seller fill out an order form was a free bump to get back ontop of 1st page and bypassing the 8 hour bump rule.

I feel another loophole has been emerging and has been getting completely out of hand. And that is asking people to vouch in return for some free gold. I would consider this to be literally buying vouches appart from the fact that an actual sale has been conducted prior. However there are a lot of ways this could be abused.

Lets say a website offers 1M 07 for free if the customer vouches on their page after a sale (which without naming any websites, alot of them do).
A customer could for example buy 3x25M instead of 1x75M over a 24 hour period. The site and the customer both benefit. The customer gets 3x1M for free and the website gets 3 bumps instead of 1, thus putting him ahead in the race against other websites. Do this with with a couple of customers a day and u can easily stay on the first page for months on end.

Some websites are constantly on page 1 and i think the above mentioned scenario is the reason for this. The abuse part aside i think offering free money for a vouch is already a wrong way to go. A customer can always be asked and guided in the right way to leave a positive review however pursuading him to do so in exchange for money (free gp, discount rates) is a complete nono.

I have already asked a Sythe admin about this and i don't think this will get a lot of support because apparently the mentioned site 'does it the right way'. However i don't see a right way about this. If this is allowed i don't see a reason in removing the posibility of filling out an order form.

Imo asking for vouches in exchange for financial gain is just another loophole to gain easy (and cheap) exposure. Let alone the fact that on major platforms (like ebay amazon, etc) you can actually get banned if u would be caught asking for positive feedback in exchange for anything (being it a cheaper price, a discount, more units of a product, etc).

I haven't fully checked but apparently u can get extra bumps in exchange for Sythe gold? Which is a good idea and imo this should be the only way to get more bumps than the daily limit allows. It is a good idea that active Sythe users can be rewarded by bumping their threads more than the daily limit allows if they are active and contribute to the community. Website who don't use nor contribute to the community and just use Sythe to get sales (indeed like my own site) should only have 3 bumps a day.

An idea to combat this would be that a vouch actually doesn't get your topic bumped, it's just a vouch as it's supposed to be. Because let's be real. Do sites ask for vouches because they want the good review (that never gets read by anyone anyways) or do sites ask for vouches because it bumps their topic to the first spot?

- RSGM

 

Support, allowing this is no way good for the market or sythe itself and sets a very dangerous precedent for the market. We can already see more and more people abusing this, and it's very clear where are we gonna get allowing this to continue.

Imagine you're a new seller making a topic and it's getting outbumped from first page in like 2hours as of right now (How much time will it be after more and more websites starts abusing this? and yes they will if it continues to be allowed), while every bigger website is on page 1 all of the time? I don't see this fair in any way not to mention it doesn't even benefit sythe , instead it just hurts new users(also potential new donators) and their ability to grow their business which again results in less donations for sythe.

If you want to let this destructive behavior to continue at least find a way for it to benefit sythe itself like selling pinned topics like other market websites do or just rework the early bumping using sythe gold to be worth doing instead.

The reason that this is literally buying vouches alone should be enough to forbid this, and I would highly suggest to strictly keeping all vouches in your vouch topics.

 

The issue I have is that our sales section for OSRS Services is swamped with quotes. We'll be forced to do the same and offer discounts for vouches of service if this doesn't change soon.

 

If the only way to get threads to the top was with sythe gold bogla would still be at the top. The biggest sites with the most money to spend would still be at the top, what would this solve? Instead of paying people to bump their thread they’d be paying sythe.

 

That would at least benefit sythe a bit instead of just damage

 

I agree with DesireX, regardless of the technique I feel the big sites that can afford an expense of paying 1m for a vouch every purchase like Bogla offers. At the end of the day they are paying $.6 per bump, whether it be from customers vouching, or they'd just be buying Sythe gold and doing it that way.

I don't think there's a solution to this, it's just the way it is. Instead of the money going to the customer, I think the best case scenario in this would have the $.6 per bump somehow go to Sythe to further develop the site. It maintains the integrity of vouches by not 'paying for vouches' and benefits Sythe, further more benefiting the community.

Just my opinion.

 

Support but not with much confidence.

I threw my toys out of the pram about this in the past (maybe this time last year?) and it was fiercely rejected, even though most of the time the "people" vouching are junk spammy sythe.org accounts.

These said accounts often possessing less than 10 posts and originate from offsite traffic that have been sent here to leave spammy vouches all day on the market threads in exchange for 1m rs gold each time they purchase.

I'm no longer in the RS market by any means but I support your argument regardless.

 

I don’t see how this is dangerous. This is the same as offering people a reward for doing a feedback, survey or a discount on the next purchase if they leave an amazon review. What exactly is wrong with this other than “well the big sites get more vouches because their bigger and I don’t like that cuz it doesn’t benefit me”?

 

This site is already heading a direction where nobody cares about smaller sellers, how about we just get rid of them completely so big sellers could promote their own websites to each other

 

Slippery slope aside, I somewhat see your point about not caring about smaller sellers, but the same can be said about not caring about bigger sellers in reverse. Think, your argument is that this practice is unfair because smaller sellers don’t have the capital and client base to do it like big sellers do. But by restricting the practice, you’re saying the big sellers can’t do it just because they are big and have amassed their client base and capital through years of hard work? I don’t see the logic in that. They are bigger because they have put more time and effort into their business than others have. They will naturally have an advantage in the market, that’s how it works. I don’t see penalizing them by disallowing a marketing tactic is the right course of action.

 

The way i see it that "free" advertisement should be equal for everyone no matter how much money you have. I don't see a problem in buying these advantages in form of early bumps from sythe itself as it supports site development.

 

As it stands it seems to be equal. Everyone is equally free to offer this same service. I’d argue it’s not much about the capital (as a free 1M 07 per vouch really doesn’t amount to much since plenty of people choose not to), rather it’s the client base. Which, again, they’ve been around longer and worked harder to amass this client base.

You’re stating equality, yet I believe you mean equity. Two different arguments. This means you’re in favor of imposing restrictions against the bigger sites in able to even out the playing field. This means that all the time and effort that those big sites have put into building their site in order to get a competitive advantage would be diminished. I just don’t see the merit of that argument applied in this setting.

 

Then keep vouches on a vouch thread and not on sales threads. What else is a vouch good for? A vouch is a vouch, not a way to get your topic bumped.

 

Big sellers can always get the traffic by doing what big sites do = buy banners.
I have a total of 6 banners on different platform and each one of them gets me more exposure than any thread i have on any forum. Vouches are vouches and they should be used as such. What good is the vouch section otherwise?

 

Yes banners do. But I don’t understand why that’s relevant. Banners cost hundreds. Each vouch costs dimes. It seems proportional in terms of effect to me? Again I don’t see what that has to do with this.

So are you suggesting to disallow the practice of offering incentives to customers to vouch or disallowing the practice of collecting vouches any thread outside of the vouch section, namely market threads? You’re switching lanes here and I’m not really sure what you’re actually suggesting here or what your end goal is.

 

The end goal is to stop abuse of collecting vouches the unfair way, this can be done in many different ways all having the same outcome. If you read my original post u should go over the "dividing orders" part again.

Many websites let customers buy in increments just to collect more vouches. There are tons of responses to threads from same users. These are mostly low amounts and multiple vouches given over a short period of time (every couple of hours).

I don't know why everyone keeps thinking this is a bias against "BIG" sites? Any site can do this, even the smallest site. If u can't afford 0.55$ for a vouch then you might aswell close down ur site because imo you're doing something wrong. This is not a bias against big sites. This a standpoint i have that collecting vouches in exchange for money is a bad business practice.

I also don't have anything against COLLECTING VOUCHES. I have something against GAINING MORE THAN U SHOULD from vouches. Vouches are vouches and that's what they should remain. Not a masked tool to get your thread bumped for nickles and dimes. Other websites have this down to a tea. They have a feedback section and u can see the feedback number grow if you're a good seller. People who fare well in the market will have a high feedback score. Those who don't put effort in their business wont have a high feedback score. It's a simple as that. Feedback is used to show how many positive or negative trades a user has performed AND THAT'S IT. Hence it's called FEEDBACK.

I think Sythe is the only forum / platform that vouches / feedback is used for anything else than what it's used for to begin with.... Let me ask u a question, do you think sites would still offer free gold if a vouch wouldn't bump their topic? The answer no, no they wouldn't. So lets call vouches what they really are (atleast on Sythe). They are an unfair way of gaining traffic under the masked name of "vouch" when in reality we should call them bumps. The bump rules is 8 hours on Sythe and if it's that easy to collect free bumps then we migh aswell just change the bump rule to 3 hours or lower. The only benefit this has to Sythe is that i can see sites advertising to sign up on Sythe (in exchange for money) just so they can get bumps. In exchange Sythe gets a new signup but the new user wont contribute to the community anyways. He will vouch the thread given, collect his free gold and never use Sythe again.

This business practice has been used by tons of sites for a long period of time. If i look at my own business practices (yes being one of the top performing sites myself) i have never used a quick and easy (and above all cheap) loophole like this before. If so many people don't see a problem with this then i might as well just start using it aswell and offer 1.5M per vouch which wouldn't cut in my profit margin per sale at all because my profit margin is more than most sites yet i still get traffic the right way.

 

No support from me.

It's actually beneficial for Sythe. It brings new people in. And I believe a lot(?) of them don't close Sythe when the vouch is done. So if a seller chooses to "share" his traffic with "competition" then why not.

Also, @RSGM Sales, I believe other sellers would be more than happy if you asked your hard earned traffic to vouch for you on Sythe.

 

I hope you realise that people who sign up for the purpose of vouching a website actually wont contribute to Sythe at all. They just make the account, vouch, collect their free gold and never use Sythe again. You can look on certain sites their topics and see how many accounts vouch with 1-3 postcount, all of them just being vouches for that particular thread alone. Ok sure, the number of Sythe users goes up but the active Sythe user % goes down. I think it's actually contradicting to what Sythe as a community wants to achieve.

 

Yes, the are people like that.

Also, there are people that explore other services that Sythe has to offer. As you know most of RS websites don't offer "full rs package": Names, Training, Questing, Minigames, Accs & Gold sales, Swapping, Renting, etc and Sythe has way more than that. Those people might not contribute with posts but there is a big opportunity for them to contribute to Sythe's economy.


So it's a big win for Sythe if a gold seller wants to bring his valuable (already converted) traffic to Sythe. Why do you think big shops are not doing it?

 

Big shops are the ones doing it. Not that that is the issue. The issue is that it happens and whatever u might believe, people have no interest in browsing a forum that they just got linked to vouch on. You may believe they do, but they don't. As stated before u can check the accuracy of this by looking up how many low post accounts vouch on the topics of sites using this technique. Other vouches will come from users who have been on Sythe for a long time.

This all being besides the point that vouches are used as tools for bumping and not used as vouches. I mean sure, if that's what you're worried about. Why not let people vouch on a VOUCH THREAD? Sythe still gets the referred user, the site still gets the vouch and the person vouching still gets the bonus for doing the vouching. I don't know why u'r against this? Ahhhhh but there is a problem isn't there? Because u know that no website will still use this method of referral if vouches don't count as bumps anymore. So as i stated before, a vouch isn't really a vouch on Sythe, is it? It's a masked name for collecting bumps.