Special Announcement: 3 x vBSEO Branding Removal Option on eBay

I wouldn't consider this auction release "unprofessional". In fact, I can understand the reasoning behind it, which I imagine the purpose of which is to discover a price-point.

My only problem with the auction concept is that it won't reveal anything in terms of an optimal price-point to Crawlability. What it will do is show them the high point of the demand curve for this particular option (sorry - pulling out some Econ 101). They'll know what the top few percent are willing to pay for the option, but not what the masses will be willing to pay (which is probably a more profitable price-point for them).

If that's what they want to find out they are probably better off doing a simple pricing survey, which can be found in any basic business textbook.

I absolutely respect and admire the team at VBSEO and their product. They've been nothing but helpful and several of my suggestions have made it into their product. I'm an origiinal beta-tester from early on. Hopefully this doesn't lower their opinion of me and my respect for them. I purchased two additional licenses just recently.

I will be honest though because they deserve that feedback and I know they listen. Here's my 2 cents. I'm glad you are showing that you will be truly rolling it out (after all it was always just a decision not something that had to be "made.") You are making it clear it is ready to roll out and you just want to delay it for business reasons. To offer it to only 3 people will just make a LOT of people unhappy and then to add insult they have to wait a pretty long time. I think this does smack of unprofessionalism (imagine Sony doing that with the Playstation 3) and is not in the company's best interest as far as PR goes. It sort of lowers your "karma" a bit.

I understand that it will help you to determine demand (great idea), but you could have offered 50 instead of 3 if what you want is to get a picture of demand. 3, as others have suggested, is going to tell you very little. Better yet, you could have just made a poll and asked if people were willing to pay X amount (with several options). People are generally honest in that regard and you wouldn't have upset anyone.

In the end, even though I could pay more than the bids listed so far (and $$$ isn't a big factor for me), I will not bid simply on principle.

Sincerely,
-vissa

I thought this was a joke when I saw the initial e-mail, but now I see it isn't.

If a proper B/F option was available then maybe we would have looked at it - but bidding on ebay - you must be kidding. A very strange and disappointing move.

Why would anyone waist money on this? Who really notices the powered by (whatever) anyways? I have sites that get hundreds of thousands of hits a month and they display the copyright at the bottom. No one has ever questioned it.

Why not just sell a copyright removal for a reasonable fee...

Sorry if this is negative... I just don't see the point.

Wonder if they are shill bidding

totally agree.

Thank-you for your feedback everyone. After our previous eBay auctions for vBSEO licenses we thought it might be a fun way to introduce the first branding removal options. Unfortunately, it appears that several members are not happy with this approach. We will take this into consideration for all future projects.

Thank-you to all participants in our "vBSEO Branding Removal Option" Auction and Poll.

During the course of the auctions, we received over 80 bids from customers all over the world. Our poll indicates that over 65% of those who responded (33/51 votes) are interested in purchasing the branding removal option.

Thank-you all for your feedback during our promotion. Your contributions will be used to help improve our future projects.