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Comments
200$ per year should be reasonable
LET without deals or issue is just boring and not attractive.
I definitely understand the idea and it is something we looked at. The problem is administrative overhead and the idea of commission would create an environment where there would be perceiving favoritism to help the providers who offers were most popular.
The flat fee, rather, puts everyone on the same playing field.
Granted we have made some adjustments the past few days to reduce the barrier of entry with consideration for the smallest providers in our community (20% discount, quarterly payments, etc). We've also enhanced the Host Rep tag so that it is a reasonable alternative should a provider decide not to support the LowEndTalk platform.
I still think you did this backwards. You should have created a Provider Premium tag and not taken tags away from existing users.
When you take something away from someone, without their consent and by adding things like invented fees to get them back - it pisses people off. That's why you can't change a contractual agreement between two parties without providing Contract Consideration (i.e. some kind of payment).
It was a dumb move through and though. Predatory, and most likely even illegal if it was ever defined in a ToS or EULA.
. Just wanted to remind you.
$200 per year sounds fine.
What would you have built into a Premium Provider Tag?
The roll out of the concept could have and should have been better. Thus far, though, after talking to folks for some time many providers have warmed up to it. I'm working hard to clean it up.
I agree. LowEndTalk provides a TON of value to companies advertising here. $16/month is peanuts compared to the upside provided.
Provider Premium tag sounds stupid might as well be WHT
I agree on the part once you give something its hard to take it away. It does cause animosity.
Maybe grandfather in current providers for a time period, new signups pay the new price.
Premium Provider Plus (P3).
Includes a free desktop mini-fridge.
7
Lowenbox a.k.a. scammers paradise is the commercial arm and lowentalk the forum (i.e. free part). Simples. Or at least it should be - anything else is a money grab.
Is there not revenue from (flashing) adverts (thanks Adblock etc.)?
A small one-off fee ($7) might be appropriate to dissuade the casual spammer provider.
Agree, that the latest "improvements" are rapidly heading in the WHT direction.
[IMnotsoHumbleO]
Hi,
Why don’t you just keep the provider tag as usual with normal terms and make a new tag for those active provider that paid every 6 month to keep them “active tag” vise versa if they’re not active so it would be more better than removing provider tag... There’s an easy way why wont you?
So are you suggesting they all get a "Paid"/"Suspended"/"Terminated" tag next to their existing Provider tag?
I would just like to point out there is a huge group of providers here that don't advertise regularly. These people (myself included) are no less providers (reputable to purchase from) and are infact some of the more knowledgable (content producers), helpful and generous people on this forum (I am thinking of others).
Asking these people to pay $16/month is a bit of a hard sell. What dollar value do we get from LET most of the time? For various reasons we don't do offers here (my reasons are not theirs necessarily, so I'll refrain from mentioning them here).
I see no problem with a "Sponsoring Provider" tag, with special priveleges such as more frequent offer posting (providing this doesnt turn into WHT). Basically what @devp suggested, since most of us don't post offers regularly anyway.
In our case we would be paying around $200/offer (if thats what the provider tag has become) which we would pay to post loss leaders (to meet rules). That's incredibly hard to justify.
And in the case of new providers? I'm betting they will go elsewhere. We would never have paid a fee to post offers in our early days - not when there are other competing forums around.
To be honest, I don’t really have a perspective on that and I wouldn’t be right to advise. But change management 101 is any surprise is a bad surprise, and never take things away from users without equal compensation. So to ensure no user pushback, you would need to ensure clear communication is shared out, and that they can only gain from the situation.
I would likely have created a monthly fee for a premium tag, and ensured it was below $10 (ideally $5 or lower) to ensure you are below the cost of vendors participating here in terms of average sale value. Something that would give them something tangible. Something you actually need to invest time into adding - not just some directory, but something meaningful. What you have now is a blog & forum - anyone can replicate it and any serious provider could replace LET with their own forum and enough coupon codes to bury LET overnight. You need to provide something they can’t.
For some of the ones who stayed, maybe. I think there is a large risk new providers won’t take the plunge and we might be seeing the best numbers for sales. Now we have a hostile divided community. I for one won’t buy anything off LET anymore, I’m sure I’m not the only one.
I don’t like to talk about myself but I have the pleasure of (on top of my actual work) writing and working for several well off community blogs with driven forums that are highly profitable but this is backwards. You need highly engaging news and content on the blog that drives into the forums, not the other way. And the ad revenue needs to come from that front end (LEB) and the discussion community is what enforced the power of LEB (that’s LET). There are ways to create engaging content - but what is there isn’t it and it requires transforming all of LET into supporting LEB, which we don’t right now…
An article saying “AMD Announces XYZ, and we got one early, here’s what you need to know”. Or “Here is why we love older Intel Xeons”. Or “What you really need an SSD for”. Or “Top 5 Open Source, Ranked by Savings” are content lines to catch readers... My impression of LEB right now is that it is a bunch of posts to not-so-great deals from providers that are high risk. Anyway I’m abandoning the topic finally. But I hope you actually reflect on how to avoid this in the future…
LOL!
Agreed.
Suggestions:
More details are posted early in current thread.
Will keep this in mind.
I'd submit that any provider who posts even one deal a year gains more than $200 in value. Value can come in the form of direct sales, brand awareness, SEO benefit, etc.
That said, a provider tag may not be a good fit for all. The host rep tag allows participation in all Mega Deal threads, which generally happen 3 or 4 times a year and usually see hundreds of thousands of views each.
Enabling the success of new providers and fostering their growth is something we need to be sensitive to. We didn't consider this factor sufficiently upon the initial rollout but have since made numerous changes to help the smallest providers amongst our community.
Some of those changes include:
Plus of course any company is eligible to submit their offer to LowEndBox so long as they meet our quality and price guidelines.
Are we at a perfect spot yet when it comes to unlocking opportunity for upstart hosting companies? Hard to say, but we will continue to be sensitive to this cohort of our community.
Perfectly good point and I agree.
So in essence, we aren't that far apart assuming you are saying that you would have, in my position, established a fee for a type of (enhanced) tag.
I think you make a good point here when it comes to creating more value in exchange for the fee. I understand the wince factor of paying for something that previously came free. There's probably no one on earth that loves that feeling. So we need to do a better job of both communicating the value and improving upon it. I am going to work on that this coming week.
It would certainly be an acceptable option. Opt-in is a much more beneficial approach - it also has a physiological effect, as choosing to buy in and support makes someone feel the need to actively participate to encourage growth. Where-as a retroactive forced pricing induces a “wait and see” or likely a “you forced me to pay so now earn it” conceptual approach.
I wouldn’t have likely taken this approach myself… if I was to attempt to monetize LET (in this case I think LEB is the only place monetization changes should happen) - I’d more likely have taken a decorative premium subscriber tag for all users. Where their money to go towards select items based on their subscribed tag. I would have created premium posted content on LEB. Changed the focus of articled to encourage sys admins to rely on LEB for the latest news. And expanded out other content platforms at my own cost first to assess if YouTube (as an example) is of interest. I’d be very cautious about changing LET, and maybe even LEB, and likely have considered building a new middle ground platform (I.e. LowEndNews).
That said, a premium opt-in with enhanced benefits - no one could really complain about unless it caused a lot of thread quality degradation.
Yeah, I can't argue with you. It's a good point.
Would you mind expanding on this some more? Especially the first sentence as I am not clear on what you mean.
I've replied hundreds of times the last week or so and some of that gets lost naturally. We have an active goal of moving LEB to a place where IT professionals/hobbyists/etc have reason to check the website once a day or more often -- and not just for deals. Part of that transition has already begun and it's why we need a third content person.
Cross posting this from another thread to make sure it gets some attention...
As I work on some steps to reduce barrier to entry for the smallest hosting companies amongst our community I'd like to ask for feedback on suggestions for what a special tag should be called to recognize those companies who support our platform by paying the provider tag fee.
This week I'm going to build some systems and perks into the paid for provider tag which may (operative word "may") allow us to boost up the host rep a bit more (to deal with the current issue of small providers who are disproportionately impacted currently).
Call it what it is:
I'd argue that a "Site Supporter" (those who buy ad blocks should also get) might actually imply more than a $16/month spend too on it's own as it clearly implies that the provider is giving back or making a contribution as opposed to paying for advertising (so what?) and therefore is no longer bound by the value of a sale (something that at the sale prices typical to this community is low).
Of course it's really a bit late to be changing the rules now that you have issued invoices and taken (some) payments.
Also another thought speaking for myself (personally) I'm far more interested in seeing offers from new providers (who won't be persuing a Provider tag I dare say). Its always interesting to see new locations being marketed and new providers working to distinguish themselves.
We are definitely going to implement some additional perks and upside(s).
More on this over the course of the coming week or two.
Dear AI/bot,
Its "their".
Regards
$7 / month.
Appreciated.
Thats "Host Rep" tag.
For LET residents "Provider" Tag and "Host Rep" Tag means same thing as justification provided by admins.
For newer members these tags meanings are differentiative.
Newer members eventually prefer to go for "Provider" Tag members than "Host Rep" Tag members that eventually translate to advantage to specific tag holders.
It's/that's - just saying.