Linkspun Paid Feature Poll.

[jdoughs]

I've been discussing some high end features with Drocd the last few nights and are thinking of instituting them as paid features. Nothing will change with the tool as is now, all functions and features will continue to work and in unlimited form. These addons or extra would be just that, extra to the tool we already use.

So to get to the point, a few of the features we'd like to implement for paid status.

• Update PR/PageTitle/Domain Info with a click from manage pages page.
• Specific data on domains like total backlinks (from 4-5 sources), alexa, archive, server location, whois etc. We plan on tying into a couple very strong SEO API's for this data (seomoz for example, mozrank, domainauthority, keywords, link reports etc.
• Domain pages showcasing all the data mentioned above, basically little mini profiles for each domain added listing alexa and SEO API data.
• Domain profile comment box, leave messages or rules on your pages profile page.
• Trades get pre-spidered for duplicate trades, so you request a trade with a page and it spiders it and prompts you if you have any other links on that site not in linkspun. "We've found "3" possible link trades with this domain, would you like to add them".
• Trades/Domains API. Allowing you to export trade data and be able to work with it, build importers for your other tools.
• Private Message/Inbox and ability to message users beyond the normal trade comments system.
• A refined and tweaked trades search page. Be able to search out and filter results by tld, server location, subdomains, negative/positive (+ asian - teen).
• Enhanced user control for favorites and blocks, allow certain favorite users to see certain hidden sites or not. Block a user from requesting trades but NOT from you seeing them in search results (in case they have something you want).
• Ability to get alerts when pages are added to your categories.
• Allow multiple categorization of domains (up to 3-4). So asianschoolgirlteenblowjobs.com could be put into Asian-Schoolgirl-Teen-Blowjobs.
• Stacked or Multiple Requests on trades search page and profiles, allowing you to send multiple trade requests out to different users, different domains, and different anchors.
• QuickTrades. - A combination of QuickUrl's and QuickAnchors that allows you to save a URL and ANCHOR and quickly 'Request Trades' using your url and anchor as the trade details but saving all the input pages/time.
• And More!

This isn't the actual final feature list or anything, but an idea of what types of things we have planned, have looked into and/or spoke at length about.

It basically boils down to this, some of the coolest things we can do, and the best data we can collect isn't free, so if we want to step down that road and have all the data at our fingertips here instead of using elsewhere (after finding the sites here) then we need to go this route.

Thanks all, feedback is needed!

[Hincapie]

Looking at the feature list, I would definitely go paid. Of course, we all prefer to get everything for free - but with those sort of extras I think there is incredibly good value for money in going paid, and if thats what it takes to get such a range of yummy features I would certainly be there.

All of these are extras in comparison to today, which I consider extremely important - so that the paid option adds thing without deducting from the free option.

Just my 2cents.

[jdoughs]

Completely agree Hincapie, everything that is here will continue as is and nothing will be limited in any way, there will still be upgrades to the free version as well.

So I'll just repeat it here in bold so everyone does understand

As I've always said, the tool we use now (linkspun) will always continue to be free based and anything you can do now for free will never be taken away or limited.

[shakey]

If you added to that list 'copyscape search' (I'm pretty sure they've got an API) then I would definitely be willing to pay for the service.

I'm not sure how financially viable that would be at the pricepoint you've suggested as copyscape checks are $0.05/each.

Maybe check all sites once a week? Maybe integrate it as an added feature whereby the 'premium member' can, at the click of a button, perform a copyscape search within linkspun for any given site, and be billed extra for it?

[jdoughs]

If you added to that list 'copyscape search' (I'm pretty sure they've got an API) then I would definitely be willing to pay for the service.

I'm not sure how financially viable that would be at the pricepoint you've suggested as copyscape checks are $0.05/each.

Maybe check all sites once a week? Maybe integrate it as an added feature whereby the 'premium member' can, at the click of a button, perform a copyscape search within linkspun for any given site, and be billed extra for it?

Wow copyscape checks is a bad ass idea, it never even crossed my mind, .05 is rough, but I guess it would depend how many times we ran it/checked them, and what type (if any) deal they got for mass requests.

[webdanger]

20$ seems a bit too much, 10 is more acceptable. Make everything work, give 1 month free trial to everyone and see how it goes. I think this is the best strategy to follow. If it pays off to users you will get more signups with 10 rather than 20$ and if it doesn't cover you can increase it, but you know best.

Some of the features can be added for free now, it will improve the website and attract more users do not go paying so soon, wait gain trust and your business will flourish in time.

[jdoughs]

20$ seems a bit too much, 10 is more acceptable. Make everything work, give 1 month free trial to everyone and see how it goes. I think this is the best strategy to follow. If it pays off to users you will get more signups with 10 rather than 20$ and if it doesn't cover you can increase it, but you know best.

Some of the features can be added for free now, it will improve the website and attract more users do not go paying so soon, wait gain trust and your business will flourish in time.

I'm really not doing this to get rich, and the site is flourishing fairly well I think. So far we are far ahead of any competitors and continually add feature and function, and we do it all for free.

I'd like to step that up as well but I don't/won't/can't front a monthly bill to fuel features concerning data that I have to pay for (for 40,000 and growing pages) from sources like seomoz and alexa etc, and over above the costs already for such things incurred. I'm not hurting, nor is the site in anyway, this is all forward thinking for doing what I always wanted, building the best tool/community out there.

This is about growth and expansion of the functions and not having to wait for me to decide to throw a few thousand dollars at the site (yet again). Many have said right from the start they would pay for a working, solid solution, and I don't think the base system needs to be pay based, but again to take it to the next level it's the only real way.

[shakey]

Maybe a more enhanced search, e.g. only return results that meet the following criteria:

- Keyword
- Niche
- On (or not on) a specific tld (.com/.net/.org/.info/etc...)
- Root of tld, subdomain, subdirectory
- Is PRx or higher
- Has x or more backlinks
- Has x or less outbound links
- Added within the last x days
- Are a specific type of site (blog/tgp/directory/etc...)
- Pass copyscape
- Are indexed in Google/Bing/Yahoo
- Don't already have trades with

I could prob think of more, but you get the idea. Basically being able to quickly filter results based on criteria you would usually spend (a lot of) time checking before requesting a trade. The amount of time it would save would far outweigh the cost of $20/month.

[clickxnet]

Maybe add the poll option, Yes, but with a different price. I would go for a paid option, but not sure $20 is the right price point.

[jdoughs]

Maybe add the poll option, Yes, but with a different price. I would go for a paid option, but not sure $20 is the right price point.

I paid that for so much less at t-ball before getting fed up.

I'm not the only one here who did or still does.

For me, I would pay it, I would still pay it at the other place if there was anything worth doing. I would pay 20 a month, but I'm not sure I'll pay a few thousand for it.

[elegantmedia]

a tool that I would love to see is a visual representation of my trades.

I'm thinking a graphical representation with circles representing my domains and incoming connections, by ip for each of them. I would like multiple ways to view the data, by site, by tld, by ip etc

I would also need the ability to add any 'non linkspun' trades to this

And of course, I'd like it designed by someone who has a lot more knowledge than me, as that person would know what data needs to be available.

I'd pay for that

-------------------

I like that you are looking for ways to give us more data. PR is becoming more and more unreliable each month we go without an update. I'm beginning to wonder if google will ever publically update it again.

Please add domain age as well.

[jdoughs]

I was playing with graphs and pies and most likely will be going that route but as you say, with someone that has a clue about design (lol).

The stuff available from api sources is amazing.

Domains, domain authority, age, hosting, whois really lots of data, a lot covered on other ones below.

Backlinks (sorted by authority with most important sites up top, Backlinks sorted by IP, keyword etc. Backlinks on Google/Yahoo/Bing.

Keywords, density, rankings, full break down

Anchors, phrases, anchors to a page, anchors to a subdomain, to the root etc.

[blogstargirl]

I would go for a paid option, but not sure $20 is the right price point.

I'd go for $10 a month for the enhanced features.

[attila]

For 19.95 I am not sure
For 9.95 I am very sure I would pay for the monthly premium.

[jdoughs]

For 19.95 I am not sure
For 9.95 I am very sure I would pay for the monthly premium.

It's looking like this may be the case for many people, but I don't think it would be a smart move for the site at that level, the cost to do this is going to be about $700 a month (minimum commitment without development/programming costs). So doing $10 a month features would basically equal into a lot of work, to just break even, and it's not really the time in this industry to do stuff like that (working for free).

In reality I suppose, if 20 bucks a month is tough for people to commit to then I certainly don't want to commit myself to 700 a month (over and above existing costs already). At least not at this point and with this months ratios..lol

[123anddone]

i think all serious established webmasters will go paid, all other new and new to adult webmaster will say 10$ for month and so on, i voted for 100% payed, because there are few ides that i told too with other or they are unique
also 10$ is too low value for all things you mentioned here, and i think there would be much more in that list

also all other things that others will say i would say go for it to payed.

20$ per month i would say best amount to pay, also it can be some discounts on going for 3-6-12 months (after some time i would raze that amount )

P.S.
You can always add few features from paid to free and add better new one to paid, so free members are also satisfied, but i would say don't limit free members, like thunder-ball did

[kapxxx]

I probably would, especially when the amount of possible trades keeps growing.

[deejay]

Just do it!

Access to this site is worth a whole lot more than $20 per month as it stands at the moment. It's also managed ethically, something that has always been sadly lacking at TBN.

[redwhiteandblue]

$19.95 at the end of the day is the value of one good signup on revshare.

I too would like to see some sort of graphical representation of the trades I've done, something that shows me what trades I added to what sites by date, so I can co-relate them to any increase in SE traffic. Also something that can tell me what anchors I've used in each trade per site and how many times.

But it sounds like there will be enough already to justify $19.95.

[tropicool]

Just a suggestion - why not have users pay for each site they submit to their pages listing.

Make it a nominal fee - like $1 per site. Then charge a per trade fee of 10 cents per trade.

This would make the site affordable, while at the same time increasing the quality of potential trades.

Tropicool

[PornGuy]

For now as things stand yes I could go the 19.99 With the way things have been though in adult and the economy if things take a turn I would have to drop the service, and continue along with the free one.

Let us know what you decide.

[elegantmedia]

Many of us allready pay for something that gives us access to several of the API's that you've mentioned.

I pay for domain samurai and copyscape, others may pay for different programs.

I have tools to help with backlink analysis, seo competition, etc

I would suggest that you dont incorporate APIs (that cost you anything) that many of us have satisfied by other programs. While knowing the number of backlinks someone has when setting up a trade MIGHT be something I would like to know, where they are getting them from, what anchors they are using etc is something I can get somewhere else if I really need it.

I wouldnt have a problem paying you, but perhaps you can keeps costs under control and hit a 10-15.00 target price by thinking more about what paid API's are REALLY needed for trading data at a glance and target those things more closely instead of broadening the scope of LS

[domainary]

I like the idea but the price seems a bit of an issue.

If not $10 maybe do $15 and meet everyone in the middle

I would certainly pay for tools that will make it easier to find quality trades thats for sure.

Other features I would like to see:

1. The anchor text on the trades page to be plain text not a google search link.
2. If the site is a blog or static site
3. Domain or site age
4. A map sounds like a very interesting idea but not sure how you could make that happen, like some kind of spide graph.

The big one:

Being able to manually add trades, I have people contact me for link trades and I have no way of monitoring them effectively. Being able to do a personal trade or manual trade would be a feature I would definately pay for.

[sammel]

sure i also would pay now 19,99 for this great service.
this site helps me to increase very easy links.

[RickDiculous]

Before I read the posts, I was going to vote for "not sure", but after reading, I'm definitly going for paid at $19,95.

One feature I would love to see is if the site I'm linking to or that is linking to me is linking to badneighborhoods or distributing badware.

[willwank]

Many of us allready pay for something that gives us access to several of the API's that you've mentioned.

I pay for domain samurai and copyscape, others may pay for different programs.

I have tools to help with backlink analysis, seo competition, etc

I would suggest that you dont incorporate APIs (that cost you anything) that many of us have satisfied by other programs. While knowing the number of backlinks someone has when setting up a trade MIGHT be something I would like to know, where they are getting them from, what anchors they are using etc is something I can get somewhere else if I really need it.

I wouldnt have a problem paying you, but perhaps you can keeps costs under control and hit a 10-15.00 target price by thinking more about what paid API's are REALLY needed for trading data at a glance and target those things more closely instead of broadening the scope of LS

I agree with this. I already pay monthly, quarterly and yearly fees for a few services and tools that suits my strategy and workflow. However, I would be willing to pay for a cpl of enhanced features internal to Linkspun.

I think a one step at the time approach is a good way to go.

[toplists]

$720 for three years? that's a lot of money

[GirlsLinked]

I'd pay that and more but only if you made a tool that would automatically find all sites matching predefined criteria and request a trade from them. For now I'm thinking about making a bot "employee" to do these trades for me but I'm not sure that project would be worth the devtime considering it would have to use this human API but for you it would be easier to do.

[rastan]

I think JD does agreat job and is running a good ship here. Nevertheless, I need to keep a tight ship too. Whether for me personally another $20/m outlay will improve my business I dont't know. Sitting on the fence on this one Im afraid!

[matuloo]

Absolutely, go for it without a doubt.

If you keep the current functionality as is and for free, nobody has the slightest reason to complain. Those who want more functionality would pay. If you would move to fully paid model that might weed out certain % of users, which would probably hurt the service but charging for extended services is absolutely acceptable by all means.

[vrocks]

I'd pay less for the features... Perhaps $9.99 a month. I think most users would take a dip for months at a time for $7.99... At $19.99 a month I think the paid user pool will be much smaller and therefor the experience will be lessened.

[venril]

The stuff available from api sources is amazing.
Domains, domain authority, age, hosting, whois really lots of data, a lot covered on other ones below.
Backlinks (sorted by authority with most important sites up top, Backlinks sorted by IP, keyword etc. Backlinks on Google/Yahoo/Bing.
Keywords, density, rankings, full break down
Anchors, phrases, anchors to a page, anchors to a subdomain, to the root etc.

Unfortunately most of this is covered by a couple scripts and/or browser plug-ins, some of which are free and are packed with features (Seoquake plug-in is a good example).

I'd see it worth paying for something like mass trade export into popular scripts such as Links Organizer, QuickAnchors etc. or certain other features, but definitely not $20/month. However $10 would be fine.

[LipshtickLady]

$10 yes easily - but $20 for the number of sites I have is just too rich for me.

maybe base it on number of sites - like some twitter apps -
Free for up to 15 sites, $10 for 15-100 and $20 for 100+

would really like to a way to link to LO
its not just about the link checking that LO does, but the ease of adding links to sites - all my blogs have LO widget or the code so just click and add to LO and added to site

[deadmoon]

These are what i would use/my comments on them...

* Specific data on domains like total backlinks (from 4-5 sources), alexa, archive, server location, whois etc. We plan on tying into a couple very strong SEO API's for this data (seomoz for example, mozrank, domainauthority, keywords, link reports etc. <-- firefox extensions do this already, and id never approve a link without checking the site out, so im always gonna see backlinks, etc anyway. would only be handy if you could search (eg only return sologirl pages where the domain has > X backlinks.
* Domain profile comment box, leave messages or rules on your pages profile page. <-- would be handy. as long as it is quite prominent. would be handy to only allow backlinks from a certain niche (or disallow certain niche sites)
* Private Message/Inbox and ability to message users beyond the normal trade comments system. <-- only handy if you actually send emails for each pm (comments don't get email notifications).
* A refined and tweaked trades search page. Be able to search out and filter results by tld, server location, subdomains, negative/positive (+ asian - teen). <-- v handy.
* Enhanced user control for favorites and blocks, allow certain favorite users to see certain hidden sites or not <-- this would be very handy too.

could also be handy if you indexed every page and allowed a search of the page content (so i could get a backlink from pages with words "interracial lesbian teen". kinda similar to searching via the categories, but rather than what the webmaster categorizes it under, its what words are on the page. of course this probably wouldn't work for a lot of pages (ie homepages) but could be handy. right now (i think) you can only search by whatever is in the URL, or the category.


also i think $9.99 would be a better price than $19.99. I already use js bookmarklets to export the data (and automatically put it into my links db), so for me $20 a month isn't worth it for some extra search options really. also basing it on number of sites wouldn't be any good - i might have loads of sites in here but most hidden + most i don't use at all on linkspun.

also another great api is http://www.majesticseo.com/. they offer a free api as long as you link back to them. shows total amount of domains that link to another domain (not number of backlinks like yahoo's backlink, just number of unique domains linking to a site), pretty handy.

[deadmoon]

Before I read the posts, I was going to vote for "not sure", but after reading, I'm definitly going for paid at $19,95.

One feature I would love to see is if the site I'm linking to or that is linking to me is linking to badneighborhoods or distributing badware.

hard to work out if a porn site is linking to "bad neighbourhoods", but the malware thing would be handy. but then when you visit the site in ff or chrome, if it is currently listed as having malware you get told about it. of course, some sites get hacked from time to time and give it a bad name so gotta take it with a grain of salt tbh.

[Relentless]

Paid bonus features are fine with me and I'd be glad to help support the LS community.
However, I'd be very careful about making any 'essential' services paid rather than free.

One that jumps out from the list is the PM box.
Every user should have a PM box, not just paid users.
PMs allow greater interactivity, less misunderstandings and strengthen the LS community.

So that being said, id make PMs free for all users. Though you could have bonus PM features, like a larger capacity so paid users can save more messages than free users etc...

That's my 2c

[freepornonline]

I voted no and here is why...

I absolutely support you on this program because it's made trading possible for me where it was a difficult and time consuming. You also put in a lot of work and this should be worth your while otherwise, what's the point? It's not a charity.

I hope more creative ways will be figured out for you to bring income in so you wouldn't hinder the growth of the site or shy away current webmasters. There could be another service popping up offering the same services for free.

With all that being said, I would need to take a closer look at the features that would make this service a paid service to justify the cost. Looking at the features you have listed, most of them can be and are handled by my toolbars or should be a part of the program anyways or they don't have a significant benefit to me.

Much love.

[hunkyluke]

Honestly, I am using this service to find new trades, not to do all the other research for me. It would be nice to have additional features, but its not worth paying for.

[kimnguyen]

Everyone likes service - nobody likes the bill!

Scrounge around long enough and you will find most stuff for free. But how much time has that cost you VS the small fees here and t-ball??

I used both linkspun and t-ball. both save me time to the point where I pay(and would pay) for them.

[venril]

Well on T-B the only real useful feature to pay for was an ability to block users with shitty spammy requests. It was sad really.

[AmateurFlix]

I voted 'no'.
The features suggested are obviously well thought out, however I would rarely take the time to analyze trades to such an extent that I'd use very many of those features. The only ones which really do stand out as being consistently useful for my trading methods would be reporting of domain age and (possibly) backlinks from unique domains.

Regarding the PM idea, we already have a place for email & ICQ contact info in our profiles. I leave mine blank - those who need my ICQ already have it - and I'd prefer not to have a new way for lots of people to message me and get offended if I don't reply

The idea of an API, however, may be interesting. If I could set up something so that when I accept a trade on linkspun, linkspun connects to my script which then issues a command to set up the link on my end, that would be great. Or perhaps it would be better for our scripts to ping linkspun every few hours and look for new trades which are ready to setup on our end.

Likewise, if an API were available which would allow my script to search the linkspun database for and request potential trades, I'd surely make use of that. I myself would use very strict search criteria and not just generate 1000's of requests, however it would be inevitable that someone else would just mass-spam link requests and annoy your human users. So maybe that's not such a great idea - just thinking off the top of my head here

[_Xarty_]

the only feature from that list i would pay for would be the stacked trade requests which you should add ASAP if you want higher PR people like myself doing link trades over here. it is a feature as basic as essential as PM which should also be added for free users
however, all of it not 20 bucks a month.

[camsites]

you should make the stacked try more sophiosticated: for ABCD link trades.

also:
can these additional info:
alexa rank
# of incoming links to a domain
info: on google = to see if the site is not faking PR
#of indexed pages (site:)
domain age

if most of these will be enalbed, i'l be happy to support you guys at $19.95/mo

[diablom]

just do not make it too heavy. Too much features might be tricky to use.

Also, never forget free users as TBN sent them to hell.

[malaka]

Linkspun is so much better then thunder-ball , worth paying for now as is.

[Hincapie]

I must admit I was hoping more people would vote yes - as I would really love to get all these new features (and obviously, most of them are probably too costly to ever be implemented without a paid system).

An idea might be to do a couple of scenarios - one suggestion as is, 1 cheaper option without the seomoz for instance

[12links]

maybe we can pay to ban the fucking idiots who run 100 pr0 sites, then spam every single one of your unrelated domains with the same site and the same anchor?

seriously, those people ruin the business and need to leave.

[willwank]

maybe we can pay to ban the fucking idiots who run 100 pr0 sites, then spam every single one of your unrelated domains with the same site and the same anchor?

seriously, those people ruin the business and need to leave.

Top 50 block list

[sweetpartners]

I run sites ranging from PR0-PR2, we all want to improve our Page Rank, when I request trade, I also consider Alexa Rank, it is not just Page Rank it is also visitors, I look out for. Some of my PR0 sites are fairly new also, remember Google only does Page Ranking every 3 months. There are probably also members of Linkspun that have brand new sites, and they will not have a Page Rank yet.

I have had some very nice members on here trading links with my PR0 sites, especially when they are stacked.

I know this reply has nothing to do with the Feature Poll, but just a little explanation about the comment of PR0 sites that was made.