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Want Some BilohBucks? Want to Get Paid to Review Hosts or Try New Hosts? READ ON!
raindog308
Administrator, Veteran
The LowEndNetwork is excited to announce two new programs here on LowEndTalk that will put crisp, freshly-minted BilohBucks into YOUR pocket!
Today we're opening up
- LowEndReviews: where you can get paid to review our Patron Providers and advertisers!
- LowEndPioneers: where you can get paid to try out new hosts!
We're looking to publish more reviews of the awesome Patron Providers and hosts who advertise with us, and also build an index of reviews. We're not interested in being the next TrustPilot because reviews by random people are not remotely as valuable as opinions of like-minded community members. This is also another benefit for our providers and additional exposure for them.
To that end, we're launching LowEndReviews:
Here's how it works:
- LET members are eligible to write reviews of our Patron Providers and advertisers.
- If you are interested, open a ticket on LET Support in the LowEndReviews section.
- You'll get a response either accepting or declining
- If you're approved, you'll complete our review form. Once completed, you need to also submit proof of use - i.e., a paid invoice for the time period involved.
- Once review and proof are in, your review is approved and you get paid $20!
Small print:
- Patron Providers / advertisers on LET/LEB are the only hosts eligible to be reviewed in this program
- Reviews must be honest. We are not expecting you to write promotional or PR pieces but rather your experiences with the host.
- Preference will be given to older members. We're not going to set hard and fast X age of account, X posts, etc. But we've already thought of the plan where you open 200 accounts to write reviews and then retire to Paraguay, so don't do that.
- We want to spread reviews around the provider base, so initially we're looking for a few of many rather than a ton of one.
- Payment will be via PayPal only.
When LEB started (way back in 2008!) it was the personal blog of LowEndAdmin. He would go out and try obscure hosts and report the results, and the blog was kind of a mad scientists' journal. The community has evolved but as @Mumbly pointed out not long ago, this was a fun angle of LEB that's missing today. We'd like to bring it back.
Hence, LowEndPioneers:
- LowEndNetwork will sponsor people to go out and explore VPS providers who our community is not familiar with. If there is a regional player you've been interested to try or you saw a great deal and you are dying to try it, this is your chance to play on our dime.
- All pioneering must be approved in advance. If you are interested, open a ticket on LET Support in the LowEndPioneers section.
- After approval, you can try the host for 2 months. Then submit a review (same form) with proof.
- Once approved, you're paid for 2 months hosting ($7 max) + $20! (Max $34).
Similar small print:
- Preference given to established LET members
- To be clear, the commercial relationship between you and the provider is 100% your responsibility. We operate on a reimbursement basis only.
- Payment via PayPal only
Questions? Suggestions? Tomatos? Let's get into it!
Comments
I really like the LowEndPioneers idea.
I'd love to see some more involved metrics gathered for a host, especially network uptime. I may try and code up a project that could help with that.
Subscribing in...
I nominate @dahartigan @TimboJones @stevewatson301 or @jsg - all interesting personalities respectively that appeal to different subsets of LET.
Honestly, @yoursunny might have a use case where what he installs and runs at each host would be consistent and monitored. He also has actual networking education with testing background. And you can bet IPv6 feedback.
I've already got enough torrent leeching hosts that I wouldn't have time or need to "try" others for the sake of it.
And he sounds like he's frugal enough where this might actually be worth it to him. Shit, he might even do it for pushups.
@yoursunny go for them bilohbucks
Thanks for the tag FoxySir but this is not something that appeals to me even slightly. 🐨
While this is a good initiative, I think it will be difficult to obtain truly useful reviews.
I can see participants rushing them to get $20, and people which would write an extensive and honest review (takes quite a bit of time) not bothering for $20 or less.
At least, this is my perspective as an European. Maybe the idea is to pay people mainly in other parts of the world to review western services - which gets us to my first point.
Still, probably the best initiative of the Biloh-era by far.
Yes, though we're trying to set a minimum bar by using a form-based approach. But you're right that the opinion and comments are the most important parts and those take more effort.
Hey.
Is there any initiative to have 3 top hosts, chosen and voted by the community to have a paid/sponsored patron membership for free?
To maintain that membership, the host would have to keep the excellent track record until the membership expires, where the community should vote again for the hosts that would have the membership sponsored by the community (in reality by you) for the next 6 mo terms.
Maybe we can have a leaderboard somewhere with the votes per terms (months).
It could be a way of giving back to the community, after all, what's this place without all the members?
Some hosts that are not current paid members could benefit or some of the paid members could benefit, whatever the community vote for.
The idea is just a draft, could be improved a lot more. Might even be a dumb idea.
@jbiloh @raindog308
Sounds very interesting to me.
there should be one more category: LowEndDetectives
FYI "Lowendpioners" is misspelled in the last paragraph on https://lowendbox.com/blog/lowendtalk-launches-review-and-pioneer-programs/
This sounds like an interesting idea rather than Lowendpioneers and lowendreviews
Seems like a real hit so far..
So, RackNerd gets free patron membership?
I didn't read the whole thing just due to me needed sleep but I think I am in agreement that top hosts should be re-evaluated in light of some of these top hosts now not performing as they used to.
Whatever the community vote for. The 3 hosting companies that get the most votes from legit members would qualify to get that membership, at not cost, for a defined period until the next vote.
That sound like a good idea, I think the evaluation form needs to include how long the evaluator has been using the hosting service they are evaluating.
You're looking at our WHMCS? How?
Hijacking ex-soviet satellites.
Oh noes!
Personally, I'd feel it was better if people gave reviews because of particularly good service rather than because they're paid for them.
I'm also wondering if part of this could be editorialised and so it's anonymous who's actually reviewing. While I don't mind my positive comments about a provider being public, there is at least one provider I use where the service is mostly acceptable, but I've seen so many red flags I'd honestly be amazed if they're still around in a year's time. I don't want to be that guy who said something and caused them to go out of business, but if there was a mechanism where you could report concerns and they were checked independently and only made it into the review if others agreed, that might be good.
Equally, it's very easy to receive good service and be completely happy with the provider, only for them to suddenly disappear without warning, and lots of positive reviews without balance could easily cause lots of people to end with the wrong provider.
Exactly, otherwise it will be easy to rig an empty node for a "known" member so he will have
10Gb/s yabs on all params, while the rest will have inferior experience. You should consider
abandoning this idea, and make your own "control purchases" of Patron Providers, and then
submit some own reviews, if that is really an achievable goal.
Yes.
Everyone who has submitted a ticket looking to be involved in this program has been contacted.
We are still accepting more applicants. So keep submitting those tickets!
After submitting a ticket, then got "Thanks for your interest in our Review/Pioneer program. We are looking forward to your submission."
Does this mean I am in? Boss! Please confirm, if yes, this will make my day.
/Application moved to bottom of the pile.