DP Adds Phone Verification

Posted on October 14th, 2009 in DigitaPointing by admin

DigitalPoint has recently added a new feature: telephone verification.

For $50/yr, an automated script will call you on the telephone give you a 4 digit PIN.  Once you enter this PIN on the web site, DP will mark your account as being phone verified.  This should help serious sellers differentiate themselves from both small-time vendors and scammers.

This is one good step in cleaning up the mess that the B/S/T forums have become.

Some DP members are worried because the system publishes their geographic location.  This should not be too much of a worry, because only a rough idea of your nearest telephone office can be published.

You can signup for phone verification here.

Popularity: 7% [?]

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DigitalPoint Adds Paid Accounts

Posted on October 13th, 2009 in DigitaPointing by admin

Shawn has added a new option for DP members — paid accounts.

The new paid accounts come with a few privileges:

  • A new private forum
  • Storage of up to 5,000 PM’s
  • Storage of PM’s for up to six months
  • Bold usernames
  • Bold usertitles
  • Editable usernames
  • The ability to continue to have 4 signature links
  • Customizable user profile page
  • Automatic sticky-status for B/S/T threads during their first and last two hours
  • Special colors for threads in the B/S/T forums

This is a great start!  vBulletin has a lot more features that can be enabled for premium users, but this is a move in the right direction.

Unfortunately, this move was accompanied by a sudden restriction of “normal” forum users by reducing the number of links in their signatures from four to two.  This caused enormous troubles for people who had sold signature links and now cannot deliver what they had sold.  This is costing a lot of forum members significant amounts of time to renegotiate closed sales, as well as lost revenue from refunds and decreases future sales.

The costs of premium membership are:

  • 1 month – $25
  • 3 months – $50
  • 6 months – $75 ($80 if non-recurring)
  • 12 months – $125 ($130 if non-recurring)

The signup page is here.

If Shawn can sign up only 1,000 premium members, it will raise between $10k and $25k a month in revenue which can then be used to improve the forums.

Popularity: 7% [?]

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