[Jeff Gilbert]

Well, I think they've been doing great as they are now for years. It's one of those things that if it ain't broke, don't fix it situations. I've seen this in corporate America where a new team comes in and they feel they have to change things for the sake of change, where it doesn't make things better, sometimes a lot worse, and it was fine the way it was. So, I hope it's left alone.

Originally Posted by Alaister

Hi Mou,

We'll be keeping them as is for now. I know a lot of you guys gain a huge amount of value from those private paid sections as well as those marketplace boards.

I'd love to hear about how you think we could improve them.

[stefan007]

Lets see what will happen here now

[discrat]

Originally Posted by mattbarrie

Hello everyone!

This is Matt Barrie, Chief Executive of Freelancer.com.

Effective immediately we are making a few permanent improvements to pricing:
* All WSO listings will now be reduced from $40 to $20
* All current War Room members will have their 20 year membership extended to lifetime, immediately. Moving forward new memberships will be $20 per year.

Cool. Is there or will there be an Affiliate Program for War Room ? Sounds like an easy sell with good recurring commish.

[WarriorAllen]

Originally Posted by Craig Desorcy

Congratulations Allen.

I hope nothing unhealthy like sickness or legal issues if any were behind
selling and it is truly a win for you.

I've missed your presence for some time now.

You've helped a lot of folks with all that you've done over the years.

I have a folder on my marketing bookcase with your name on it that was
started 9 years ago :0)

The piece you wrote on "herds" was epic (still is).

Thank you.

Craig

Hey Craig,

Everything is great, just time to do other things. A new topic to focus on and a huge world of social media to dominate :-)

Thanks for all the help you have given in the War Room!

Allen

[humbledmarket]

Originally Posted by Alaister

Congratulations Allen!
It's great news.

I've been a member of the forum for years and love it.
I also work at Freelancer.com - I'll be working with the team and making sure Warrior Forum stays awesome

Don't hesitate to message me or email me alaister@freelancer.com

I'm glad to see that long time members of the forum will be integrated to the operations. This certainly settles concerns as it helps to see that there are decision makers who are aware of the culture

I think this is an excellent move for WF members and freelancer. (though we'll see how it goes)

[phptechie]

Wow thats gr8 to hear , as a Professional Freelancer myself , I would definitely appreciate the right decision made by both Warrior Forum owners & Freelancer.com Owners in bringing these 2 gr8 communities together.
But as a member of Warrior Forum , I would expect the forum to stay as stand-alone from freelancer , so we don't lose the charm & spirit of the community members who have been contributing to the forum for quiet long.
Pricing reductions for the WSO & War Room membership is definitely appreciated.

Make sure things like this continue forever.

Because generally when acquisitions like this happens , either the buyer would kill the acquired brand / brand image
Or they will leverage the brand's assets to boost their core business.

I hope Freelancer.com after acquiring Warrior Forum , does the latter :-)

I wish you all the best for both the community owners for this decision.

[jessiem]

I would love to see what's going to happen next..

[moinuddin]

I hope not much changes are made to the vibrant community

[Claire Koch]

A++++++++ decision. I know this is going to become awesome. Just like everything else that goes down for us Warriors. Best place online to be for marketers bar none.

[cousinfizz]

I've been here a while now and hope to see it stay about the same.. it's all good from here and I wish you all the best.. congrats.. Fizzzzz

[gearmex]

Originally Posted by Alaister

Hey Arnold, thanks for your feedback. You make a good point. We'll certainly be constantly monitoring this to see what impact it has. We'll also be making sure the moderation process is suitable. They've all done a great job so far!

Feel free to let me know if you have any other suggestions or feedback.

My take on this is i think they (Freelancer) are trying to get even more people join in board by lowering the prices, i think they can handle the quality with more work force to monitor it, more competition = more quality

[KhirRahman]

Great move.

I hope you will have your own WSO payment system and affiliate system. An alternative to JVZoo and Warriorplus. So we will have sales management under one roof.

And hope that will cost effective to us too

Khir

[gtt]

Exciting (for a Freelancer like me at least . We shall expect some changes by this partnership in the near future.

Wise move from these 2 great Internet Marketing/Outsourcing giants indeed!

[zapseo]

Oh wow. Just, oh wow.
This was brought to my attention last night by a client.
In over 10 years, I've seen a lot of changes. Not just to the forum.
I've seen marketers start out, blossom, spread their wings and grow.

From zero cost WSOs (but only one open at a time), to making it not possible to "bump" a WSO by commenting on, to the expansion of the number of WSOs visible on a page, to VAST arguments in the main discussion forum about WSO quality. (I can hardly remember a time where there wasn't SOMEONE who complained.)

...from Warrior Forum Friday Night Chats, to Eric Louviere hosting the the first live Warrior Event, then Jack Tackett, then Sam England and Brian McLeod...

...what a TRULY remarkable and amazing legacy.

Watching people go from asking about how to write salesletters to becoming copywriters themselves...

Okay...I am getting WAY too sentimental here ...

There's really not much to say but thanks, Allen. Thank you very much.

(And I agree about the "herds" promo ... as well as your amazing dissection of what was behind that piece of copy. I can hardly believe I paid just $10 for that. I'm sure it's somewhere in the War Room ... LOL.)

Looking forward to the changes to come (better up time would be a truly awesome start...)

Live JoyFully!

Judy

P.S. As someone who has bought MANY hundreds of WSOs, and reviewed even more... if you complain publicly about the quality of WSOs in general, and not getting in and commenting on the disappointment you've had with specific WSOs you've bought, you're perpetuating the problem you believe exists about sub-standard quality.

WSO ** threads ** are truly one of the awesome parts of WSO, because there are very few places where you can read direct feedback from buyers...see how the seller handles questions and support..and much, much more.

P.P.S. Speaking of which ... that is something I would like to see ... the ability to EASILY find all the WSOs a particular Warrior has created (whether still technically available for sale any longer or not.).

P.P.P.S. I would have given out a lot more thanks, but my quota ran out...

Right now, that's a bit difficult. That way it becomes far easier to refer back to their other products, and how they've dealt with customers, and whether people were happy with support down the road...months, and even years, later.

[gearmex]

Congrats Allen! i think there is time for everything and you know when is time to move on and do other things, man 17 years is long time, true dedication for business (same business that is) Congrats!

[G3 Creative Scotland]

Congratulations Allen - We will be interested to see what the future brings for the merger.

[submitinme]

Looking forward to the change! Would love to see the site up always. Hope this will be the first step.

[G3 Creative Scotland]

Congratulations Allen - Good luck with everything and it will be interested to see what the future brings for the merger.

[garry420]

what will be outcome of this merger ?
can anyone tell me will it be beneficial or not ?

[Al amin]

I am having mix feelings here. Freelancer were full of scamers and low quality clients. I am not sure how this will turn.

[Mr Bill]

Originally Posted by sbucciarel

No they're not giving away gifts. Works the same as before at the moment.

They just gave me a gift...a $20 bump on my WSO. Ummm Awesome much?

[avtaarsid]

Congratulations and thanks for reducing the WSO price .

[theaer]

I think this is awesome news. I know you guys and gals don't have all the answers in place for how things will change.

I do hope that the forum doesn't become overly commercialized; however, I know you need to make back your $3MM++ investment as quickly as possible.

Overall, I think the synergy in this merger will be great. Already see 2,000 new members joined today (by my guesstimate). And if Freelancer owns WF, then I suppose using Freelancer makes more sense than oDesk, etc. So, very cool move.

Looking forward to everything that is coming!

[youallnome]

Onward and upward!

It's good to see us moving in a fresh direction. It can only mean better things for all of us...
And maybe some nice discounts for warriors in the freelance.com community!

Life is sweet.

John

[khatriawais]

I am still unable to understand how this will help warrior member?

[Claudio Johnson]

It will be beneficial for Warriorforum as it will add upto the value with new people joining for selling/buying.

[chuck59]

Seems a great hand-shake. I wish best of luck to both who now have became one

[Bryan Zazz]

Originally Posted by Craig Desorcy

Congratulations Allen.
I hope nothing unhealthy like sickness or legal issues if any were behind
selling and it is truly a win for you.
Craig

Actually this is pretty normal in most ventures life:
at beginning the venture need an entrepreneur to lift the thing off the ground.
When it survived the initial years (most ventures don't) and has matured,
a new kind of person is usually needed and takes over: the manager.
This is the reason most startup stories get in the news because the founder
exits in one way or another (sells out or is kicked out by the board):
the entrepreneur couldn't / wasn't willing to transition to manager.
Hey, no problem. Life is short, and projects are plenty... good luck to Allen !
Good luck to the new team...

[Alaister]

Originally Posted by NetMan

P.S.: It took almost an HOUR for me to wait for the forum, trying to reload it several times, to be back online, or available, and post this. So, let's some hardware and network resources will be added to make this forum MORE available ONLINE than it has been in the last year or so... I guess many sales may have been lost for paying advertisers (me), because of this

Thanks for the feedback Andre. This is the first thing we're doing. I've got a dedicated team working on improving the databases and infrastructure in order to reduce load times, timeouts and improver performance. I've written an announcement about it here:

http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...structure.html

[SeoHoist]

Thats great news....I can say that this might help in bringing more traffic to forums as well as freelancer.We should see some good things coming out for sure...

[Yassine Labouch]

This will help the old members and not new members, 20$ Per Year For War Room Member.

For me they want to make back the money invested even if they reduced the price for the WSO, there is nothing special.

In another way they are saying we are Here to Make a big Profit from New members

[sbucciarel]

Originally Posted by Yassine Labouch

This will help the old members and not new members, 20$ Per Year For War Room Member.

For me they want to make back the money invested even if they reduced the price for the WSO, there is nothing special.

In another way they are saying we are Here to Make a big Profit from New members

The War Room is a great value whether it's $20/yr or $37 lifetime. Just the access to the War Room is well worth that, but for those who run WSOs, if you can't make that up and a lot more, you're in the wrong business and probably shouldn't be selling anything.

[Valdor Kiebach]

All I have noticed so far is an increase in spam, amazing how many people have joined this month.

[hdcommercialvid]

This will bring us more traffic to our products and services. I am so thrilled about this since the cost for listings was also reduced.

[Bryan Zazz]

Originally Posted by Yassine Labouch

This will help the old members and not new members, 20$ Per Year For War Room Member.
For me they want to make back the money invested even if they reduced the price for the WSO, there is nothing special.
In another way they are saying we are Here to Make a big Profit from New members

Considering the value inside the War Room,
please consider $20/year - or $1.67 a month (!!)
is still quite a bargain.

In the "seeing the glass half empty or half full" dilemma,
consider they could have just as well said $20/month.
So $20/yr is a bargain! my friend. Take advantage of it
before the new owners come to their senses ...

Note to self: Stop complaining and start DOING !!
Your focus is all messed up: Don't focus on your (minimal) cost,
focus on bringing INSANE value to your prospects - that's your path to IM glory !!
just sayin...

[Valdor Kiebach]

It seems people are concerned about the cost of posting a WSO being reduced will lead to more low quality stuff being posted.

As long as being a war room member is still a requirement then that should provide one safeguard, maybe also have a minimum post count or minimum number of 'thanked' so that the person has to provide a contribution to the forum before being aloud to benefit from it.

We can also still report scam WSO,s and call out the fakers.

Also since when did the 'main internet marketing' section become an article directory, seems there are a lot of first posts from people who joined this month posting articles with links to some site in them.

[Paxton]

Sounds like the right move at the right time and I'm pretty sure Allen hasn't jumped into the decision, so best of luck with all future endeavours.

Regarding pricings:
War Room Membership is not exactly expensive so no real biggie on way or another.

On the WSO's might be nice to see some extra measures to ensure sellers remain commited to the product and support it. Too many WSO's (particularly WP plugins) that fade away from lack of support.

Amazing thing is the sellers are allowed to come back and sell yet more plugins they won't be supporting.

Fix that and it solves a lot or problems.

[cypherslock]

Honestly if you can't scrape together $20 US/year (most other places charge anywhere from $50 to $100 a month) for access you're in the wrong business and just want to whine. WF made me my first money online ever and I've watched it grow and change. And while I'm not on as much as I used to be, I still consider this place home. And dropping the price of WSOs from $40 to $20 (like it used to be when I joined), brilliant! This allows folks on s shoestring to put together an awesome, valuable offer and jumpstart their business. Key words: VALUABLE and BUSINESS.

[sbucciarel]

Originally Posted by cypherslock

As has been said before it is either $20 a year or $37 for lifetime War Room access.

No, it's only $20/year now. That's the only option for those who have not already bought it. We get to keep our lifetime deals for those who have it, but now you buy the $20/yr membership. Still quite cheap.

[Yassine Labouch]

Originally Posted by sbucciarel

No, it's only $20/year now. That's the only option for those who have not already bought it. We get to keep our lifetime deals for those who have it, but now you buy the $20/yr membership. Still quite cheap.

Are you kidding me, i prefer to pay 37$ for 20 Years, and not paying 20$ for a single year.

And old member who has the membership they will have it for lifetime, this is good for old member but not for new members, and you will see now a lot of crap on the WSO forum.

[balikhatun45]

Useful idea. Thanks for this information.

[sbucciarel]

Originally Posted by Yassine Labouch

Are you kidding me, i prefer to pay 37$ for 20 Years, and not paying 20$ for a single year.

And old member who has the membership they will have it for lifetime, this is good for old member but not for new members, and you will see now a lot of crap on the WSO forum.

You already posted this crap. blah blah blah

Don't want it, don't buy it. Period.

If you can't make way more than $20 selling in a WSO thread or from the free WSOs you get as a War Room member, you should probably get a J.O.B. because this business most likely isn't for you.

[leningovea]

Amazing!

I'm looking forward to see all the great new changes based on our needs.

I love the fact that you're interested in learning what do we think need to be improved.

Can't wait what you can come up with, guys!

[Kurt]

Originally Posted by Yassine Labouch

Are you kidding me, i prefer to pay 37$ for 20 Years, and not paying 20$ for a single year.

And old member who has the membership they will have it for lifetime, this is good for old member but not for new members, and you will see now a lot of crap on the WSO forum.

But to get in is only $20, instead of $37. And two years in $40, so the first two years are about the same. If you can't make your investment back after 2 years, I think we've discovered a bigger problem.

However, since it's only $20 for the first year, the "risk" has been reduced. If you don't like the War Room for whatever reason, you don't have to renew.

And if you don't have much money right now, the new set up actually saves you money for initial access.

Plus, I've posted about 8-10 free reports/offers in the War Room over the years. How many have you posted?

[jverner]

Hmmm. I remember when I joined the Forum I was told a payment of $10 was required "to keep the riffraff out." Now the Forum has been sold? Wonder for how much? Not that there's anything wrong with making money - Duh! - but I'm a bit nonplussed over the whole thing. OTOH, I will say that I've been commissioning projects on freelancer.com for about five years and that it is a great operation.

[Michel_Snook]

Does this mean that with the merger, we can expect to get double the email to our inbox from Warrior Forum and now Freelancer.com?

[Bryan Zazz]

Originally Posted by Yassine Labouch

Are you kidding me, i prefer to pay 37$ for 20 Years, and not paying 20$ for a single year.
And old member who has the membership they will have it for lifetime, this is good for old member but not for new members, and you will see now a lot of crap on the WSO forum.

Again, your thought process is all wrong: seems you have your "scarcity" glasses on this morning.
You focus too much on "the grass is greener in old-timers'/neighbour's lawn".
But really ... who cares! What matters is what YOU DO with that info,
whatever it costs you or newcomers.

Second, there is a BIG advantage for YOU to pay a higher price:
it forces YOU to kick your butt into ACTION !!
Think about it: if you pay not $20/year but $2000/month (!!)
I GUARANTEE you will kick your butt TODAY/NOW into high gear
to recoup your investment ASAP. Instead of wasting your day
complaining about cents and pennies (i.e. scarcity mindset).

As I said, it doesn't matter what it really costs, all that matters is
what you DO with all that invaluable information ... but invaluable only
if you use it. If you do nothing with it, then you've just wasted $20 ...
better go see a good movie instead (will cost you about the same these days).

[David Whitfield]

I am sure some things will be different and some things better, but change is creative and we need more of that. Looking forward to growing in the new framework. tks

[Nuke07]

Great News...Waiting for how the merge would work.

[Paul Myers]

Valdor,

All I have noticed so far is an increase in spam, amazing how many people have joined this month.

Normal for this time of year. It's part of the cycle. It's a little worse every year, because so many more people are getting online, but it's not a surprise. Same thing will happen in mid-September.

Michel,

Does this mean that with the merger, we can expect to get double the email to our inbox from Warrior Forum and now Freelancer.com?

Not sure what you're asking here. You can completely control the amount of mail you get from the forum. With the exception of the broadcast emails about the sale of the forum, you shouldn't be getting anything but what you have in your settings. You can control whether you get subscribed to threads, get emails when someone sends you a PM, etc.

I'm not sure why being a member here would mean you'd get email from Freelancer.com. Am I misreading your comment?


Paul