What the heck happened to this place?

Yep, automation is now spam, and outsourcing a e-book to someone to wrote for a few hundred bucks - is not - and value to the customer.

All the knowledge is still there. It's up to you how hard you want to search for it.

Area 51 or the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland where they're creating mini black holes and neutrinos that travel faster than light.

Bingo...

That's what I think I'm going to try and do, sift through it all, separate the wheat from the chaff, and pick out those posts where I can prove to be useful and helpful.

In my own tiny little way, maybe I can help redistribute that signal to noise ratio somewhat.

-Mike

Mike,

Thread titles. That's the secret. Well, that and choosing the right sub-forum(s) for each thing you want to find.

The proliferation of affiliate opportunities is only part of what's driving a lot of change here. A big part, but still just a part.


Paul

Jeez...they're charging for everything in this place now!!

Quality is here, you just need to search harder to find it.

One of the joys of traveling down the road I have, is that it makes it easier to speak freely when something's on my mind. And yes, I realize that my tone is taking kind of a "get these damn kids off my lawn" approach. I don't mean for it to, and I do fully realize that everything changes.

The extent of the change in a relatively short period of time was a little jarring though.

You know, I was actually afraid that this post might get me royally flamed (or worse), but everyone's been civil, and thoughtful, and it's left me feeling like maybe I can find a way to be useful here.

You know, kind of how it used to be.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one for now. Even back when WSO's were free, the signal-to-noise ratio was still high. It's higher than ever now, even though the costs continue to go up.

I might argue a cause and effect situation has happened to the WSO's - where the increasing cost served as social proof that there was money (sometimes BIG money) to be made in that forum. It became a chicken and egg issue, and there's definitely no easy way to solve it.

I can definitely see how that could be true. It does come back to a sliding scale of business ethics and honesty in marketing though...

As I'm thinking about it more though, I sort of understand it. The sheer size of this place now means that the "social proof" one gets from being directed here is so strong you can almost "feel" it.

I have to imagine that drives conversion rates at some level.

Exactly.

So Mike jumps on the forum today for the first time in 2 years, probably buys a WSO that he didn't like, says WSOs are now crap these days, and there's no value in any threads. lol...

I quite like this place

Honestly though. I don't think it's a case of what you should listen to, but who you should listen to.

Without a doubt there are 'people' in here that are in here for the wrong reasons but from my own experience I can safely say that there are some top notch guys/gals in here that will genuinely try and help you if you need a hand with something.

As far as wso's go, I think unless you really need a particular bit of software to further your business and after your researching you come across it in the form of a wso, you should just completely steer clear of them. Don't become an information junkie!

Find out a sustainable, actual business model ( you can do that for free ) and then focus on that. Put your attention into that instead of bad mouthing the WF because you spend too much time on here looking for the magic solution and you're failing to find it :p

All the best folks,
Sean


PS. That ain't aimed at you Mike. I see where you are coming from and I know you're not taking that line with the WF. Just incase you might think I was refering to you. I was refering to alot of the 'giving out' nation in here

Mike,

Two years ago the WF had 186,000 members (source: Wayback Machine March 29th 2010). It now has just short of 470,000. That's a phenomenal increase in such a short time.

A lot of the new membership has been as a result of the affiliate programs of the WSO promotion systems which have exploded over the last 12-18 months or so. This growth has spawned a whole new breed of professional WSOers.

In that sense, it's a fair point to say that the WSO forum is now quite a different animal from the one that started out as an adjunct to the main discussion board and was seen as a useful, but hardly career-forming, side benefit of membership.

Nevertheless, there are still many long-standing members who regularly contribute. There are even (Shock! Horror!) members who have been known to go oh, maybe a week or more without being sucked into the WSO forum at all. We manage to find plenty to occupy us in the other sections.

Of course, a by-product of this recent boom in member numbers has been an inevitable drop in the general quality of debate. That's understandable, given the probable experience level of the majority of newer entrants. It doesn't help matters if successful members with much wisdom to impart decide to stop posting or go away completely.

So, welcome back. It's important that senior members continue to use their experience and lead by example.

And you never know; they might even learn a thing or two from the young turks.


Frank

You know, all of this agreement about the current state of the WSO's seems like it's just begging for a solution.

And no, I don't have one. But it's certainly something worth looking into further.

I've been here 6 years in 3 weeks time...things have changed a lot,

Pull up a rocking chair and I'll tell you a story...

I remember a time when a thread could launch an IM career, Lee Mcintyre, Xfactor etc that seems to have almost stopped now (I might have just missed the latest ones). In these threads people gave you their whole system then generally to make it easier they created a WSO with all the info in one place.

They became successful because they provided value... they were almost accidental marketers.


Now I see people with hardly any posts trying to sell "a system" as a wso.

Threads in the WSO section used to be filled with reviews by people who bought the product, now it's filled with people saying i bought 2 minutes ago and I haven't got the product yet or people ranting about a OTO in the WSO.

There was a time when WSO's used to be unique and diverse.. I wonder how many Pinterest WSO's there have been in the past month?


There was a time when people thought before they posted, they constructed replies to threads, Now a large percentage of posts seem to be either to promote Blue Felt Kettles in the signature or get enough posts so they can PM you.

I also see a lot of people posting information that is just plain wrong and posting it as fact.. ok maybe that hasn't changed!


Ahhhh I remember the days where you'd get a PM and it would be someone asking you to give a bit of clarification about something you posted... Now 8 times out of 10 it's someone wanting you to promote their WSO.

There are still some great member here who post insightful posts but the signal to noise ratio is much higher.

I do admit to being part of the problem, a few years back i would happily post a lot of my data and research here for free, now I tend to post it elsewhere.

I wish I had a solution,

No way. They're talking about stuff like puppies down there. Don't kill the good vibes!