News has just broke out that freelancing behemoth Freelancer.com has purchased the internet marketing forum Warrior Forum for 3.2 million dollars.
The Australian company Freelancer was launched in 2009. In just five years it has become the largest freelancing service online. This is no doubt due to their aggressive acquisition strategy. Over the last few years they have snapped up GetAFreelancer.com, EUFreelance.com, LimeExchange, Scriptlance.com, Freelancer.de, Freelancer.co.uk, Webmaster-talk.com, vWorker, and Fantero.
With over 700,000 registered members and around 20,000 members online at any one time, Warrior Forum is one of the largest discussion forums online for internet marketers. Unfortunately, it is also the most unsafe environments for website owners to operate. Their own business is built upon members selling crap information products to other members.
Their staff allow this to happen and go to great lengths to ban anyone who tries to complain about the unethical practices that exist there. That is why I deleted my Warrior Forum account last year.
The founder of Warrior forum, Allen, announced this statement yesterday:
Hi everyone,
I started Warrior Forum back in 1997 with the goal of creating a community of like minded internet marketers to share ideas, learn from each other and build their online empires. In 17 years I am proud to say that our community has grown to over 732,000 members strong, making us the world’s largest internet marketing forum.
Today I am happy to announce that Warrior Forum will become part of the Freelancer.com family. I’ve spent a long time thinking about what the best next step should be and I feel certain that Freelancer.com will be able to provide Warrior Forum with the resources, energy and time required to continue the community and improve it to make it even bigger and better.
Freelancer.com is the world’s largest outsourcing and freelancing marketplace with a community of over 10.8 million skilled professionals from all over the globe. They are growing quickly and have participated in forums just like you and I.
Warrior Forum will remain independent to Freelancer.com and will have a separate dedicated team to better support you. I know they are excited to be joining our great community and will be working alongside us to take Warrior Forum to the next level. You’ll receive an introduction email from Freelancer.com shortly.
I look forward to this exciting new phase of Warrior Forum and hope you can join me in welcoming Freelancer.com!
– Allen Says
My hope is that Freelancer.com will clean Warrior Forum up and make it a safe place to meet other website owners and trade. For this to happen, they will have to completely change the business model that makes Warrior Forum profitable. Are Freelancer.com willing to do this?
Time will tell. I have not used Freelancer.com myself, though I have read a lot of negative comments about their service today (in response to this news), so it is unclear whether they will take a hands on approach to the forum or not.
Look on the bright side. They cannot make Warrior Forum any worse :)
Kevin