[Gladhatter]

You know I have not heard the word scammed in 20 years until I came to this forum and since then all I hear about from buyers and sellers is SCAMED! This is some kind of poor testimonial to the relationships being developed.

I think you first need to go the the Paid services section of the forum and to there post your request for help and then when you get 50 emails or PM's saying how many will help you, sort through them and toss the ones that start out with the cost for the job as they have no concept of what the job is. Second you hire someone first of all that is a project coodinator of sorts that may or may not be the same person you hire for the work or may be a technical writter and get them to compose your to do list for you and a technical over view of the work to be done as it will likely involve at least two different people one being a designer and or artist and another being a coder to make that art work for you.

You may wish also to set your jobs in mile stones so that it comes out in small chunks and that way you do not get SCAMMED for some larger job but insted realize that what many think is a scam is a programmer thinking his client is full of scope creep and the client that was unable to describe in detail what they wished or wishing to add to what they find is possible and deirable then wishes that work for free when it was never agreed to originally.

I would like to see your work go forward and you site become a booming success. However you have to get into reality and know it cost and cost dearly to run large active sites and requires professional managment and some times you get that for free and some times you do not and you generally get what you pay for. If you want a no selling site then break up the for sell items in a seperate area and make a disconnect between them.

First thing you do is decide what you want to do and or hire someone to figgure out what you wish to do by hiring them to bounce it off of them and that is a technical writer that may or may not be a coder but you pay for the project details first and then programmers and artist will know what they are bidding on and you decide how much they should bid on and then pay them in stages of completions called mile stones.

Check out also sites like get a free lancer and renta coder .com both have short commings but you have to shop wisely.

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Also I wish to add here without judgement if your skills are the people helping out kind and you wish to have them that do not drag it out for ages and not wishing to be scammed, are either naieve as to how things work or else you are potentially going to scam some one likely unintentionally yourself as you think you are going to get some professional level of a site from vols. Not likely at all.

Two types of buyers. One has more time than money and thus they shop wisely and get good results over a prolonged time.

The other has more money than time than they have money. If you have the more money then hire an attorney and a technical writter and a business counselor and then have them to work with a coder and artist. If you have more time than money find who on your site can help you find the solutions you seek and write up a general outline of what you need and announce to your coder at the beginning to price the job for 50 or 75 or 100% scope creep as you really cannot define with specificity what EXACTLY thier job description will be.

Then when all is done realize that there are a multitude of free mods out there and a good and honest coder will tell you about them and install them for a few pennies or free with a larger job.

Communications however is the key to success. Also realize that most of the coders on the paid service site seem to be from 3rd world economies and many of them as a result do scam due to desperation but many are honest people that work cheap by your standards but they too do not wish to be taken advantage of. Start small with one of them and build a relationship with them. Schedule the work to be done in a time specific range so they do not take the job out of desperation with no real chance of doing it when agreed to due to excessive work load already. Again break it up in chunks and go slow. The idea you do not want it to drag on forever is one that I am not sure about as during that period you call forever is going to be the same lenght of time where you are working on it of still looking for some one and if you are working on it with an optimistic attititude then you may well get it done by then and if you are still looking that time will have passed and it still will not have gotten done.

Think about it.