99,9% of the GPTR sites are selling Gold Memberships for nice bucks and now some of them are offering referrals auctions at E-bay. What do you think about it?

i said yes

but thats all dependent on how many refs they give thier gold members

also every program ive upgraded my only reason wasnt to get refs but the lower payouts and advertising

i reread your question is it ethical

ill support it by saying as long as they fulfill thier agreement when you sign for a gold

they are a business and have to generate funds elsewhere also
by no means is a webmaster bound to give every ref generated from advertising or refs with no dl to gold members

I say no. As this will reduce the number of referrals that the gold members would receive.

I say no...it takes away what upgraded members actually pay the money for (as well as lower payout/cheaper ads), I see is as part of their rights as an upgraded member.
I also think if a webmaster wants to sell refs..they should have upgraded member options that do not include random referrals....just advertising packages and lower payout etc.

i voted no also. if there are ever enough referrals to go around to fulfill gold member's downlines (or if the program had a rule such as "you get 5 referrals when you upgrade") i think the owner should disperse the referrals to random members or have a contest to win a referral. ptr program owner's should try to at least act like they want their members to reach pay out.

I said Dont say anything because I dont want to say how I really feel about it

I personally don't think it is right to sell referrals. Those members pay good money to get referrals, and I don't think it is fair to take away what they deserve as upgraded members.

I voted yes .. but the circumstances of how the webmaster came by those referrals and how many refs their golds get. Now in TMC's instance Glynis and I were members around 4 months before we actually bought it off the old owner so we had members that Glynis and I recruited before hand (which we trade on ebay) and those who started off with no uplines. I dont have any golds complaining so I guess I feel ok about it. I dont sell many on SCE because my golds have them all lol and I only sell the odd few I recruit myself from traffic exchanges (all paid email advertising goes to my golds.

I vote no.


Gold membership can be sold as a merchandise.

But, selling referrals......soulds bbizarre.

Hi,

I know I am curious but if you were a member before buying off ... I guess you had an upline too ... did those who were your upline lose their downline because of that or did you just take your account out and make everyone under you move up one level ?

And I voted "Don't say anything" .. there was no "other" ;-)
I wouldn't like to be sold out at all .. am not a product but on the other hand some webmasters make deals with people with downlines who agree to be sold ..so benefits everyone .. we can't know when seeing things on ebay how it is all planned.

I don't think it's just a 'yes' or 'no' answer, my first idea would be a big nono but then it depends of so many things ...

NO.
I do not think it is fair... well, you are paying to get some advantages, but the wm is selling some of your "advantages" separatelly -cause they are YOURS cause you BOUGHT them when you paid for your goldmembership
hipotetically: a program has 12 goldmembers, and the wm sells 24 free referrals... then every goldmember has lost 2 referrals! =/
it is not fair.

umm, even if those members joined way before you then became orphans?
As Sophie says it depends. If you are taking members that would legitmatly be placed in a gold members downline, it is unethical, yes.
But I think most will agree you go into rotation for the members joining without a referral (those joining AFTER you became a gold member) Now if the webmaster is promoting hard to get their gold members referrals, using redeems, buying ads, getting as much traffic as possible to the site for their gold memebrs, do they have to assign everyone who loses their upline and becomes an "orphan" to gold members as well?
If you are talking about those orphans who have downlines, how do we decide "which" gold member gets the downline of 500?
So you see my point? Do you buy a gold membership thinking you will get those coming to the site without a sponsor as referrals for gold members or every single person who ever becomes an orphan should go to gold members?
Myself when I buy a gold membership I assume it is those joining "after" me that do not have a sponsor. That is how the scripts work. ::shrug::

Like Mary said, when you have an orphan member with a large downline, would you want to give that downline to one gold member and not the others?
You can't divide that downline amongst the gold members, because you would be taking the downline from the orphan member it belongs to.

Gold members did not upgrade with the expectation of receiving downlines from orphan members. They upgraded to be placed into rotation to receive referrals from those who join without a referrer.

I for one, and I assume others do as well, DO distribute orphans amongst upgraded members as well as the free members who are requesting their free referral (all free members can request a free referral after they have been an active member for a month).

I am operating as ethically as I know how, and I have sold a total of 2 downlines (not at ebay). But I took the money from those 2 sales and ran ads all over the place to generate more free referrals for members.

In spite of all the complaints we all hear all the time about various ptr programs, I believe that the majority of us wm's are honest and really are trying to run an ethical program which will benefit the members as much as possible.

I'm not going to vote, but I did want to say that I can see both sides of the argument and both have very valid points. Glad I'm not a WM.

Do you feel good or bad about it?

I voted dunno. I really dunno which one is better.

Well, I think the whole idea of selling a Gold Membership offering "blind referrals" are exactly those referrals that come from WM advertising if you take that referrals and sell them then which blind referrals are giving to gold members?.

As a matter of fact I think that part of the money coming from Gold memberships should be used to advertise the company and the those Gold memberships more referrals.

If a webmaster feel he's very good at getting by him/herself he/she should create a member account and then sell only the referrals he/she get thru that account, other way he/she doesn't know if that new members come from his advertising out there or a new member who delete the referrer field or that new member just heard about the company here in GPF or any other but didn't want to have a referrer and went there to sign-up without referrer.