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The blog back then was also a blog run in the spirit of finding good deals for a community. It's now an ad revenue cow. I don't think you can have it both ways.
The US $ has depreciated around 10% against a few major currencies the past year, maybe there should be some allowance in regards to that.
&&
Please open LEB frontpage right now.
Opened?
Now check ALL host names featued THIS MOMENT.
You may notice something... ALL hosts at LEB frontpage are more or less just reposted regular residental LET hosts. Do you see the real problem? There's nothing to read or discuss at LEB anymore, all what we can get are NEW DISCOUNTS from same old hosts, but that's not because other interesting hosts wouldn't exist. They simply aren't featured.
It's always easier to repost some "Ramnode" or "BlueVM" coupon than feature some unknown ukrainian "InfiumHost".
There are plenty interesting hosts within LEB pricing who never make it at LEB (just to name few from my mind... Dediserv - poland, Hitme-poland, Creanova-finland, Finalhosting-czech, Hukot - czech, VPSBG-bulgaria, Dominionhosting with free DA, D9host-china, Hosteasy-moldova, VPSPLAZA - malasya, Micronet - russia, india and turkey, Baumanninformatica -switzerland ...) but instead of them we get just new coupon from Ramnode, Iniz, ChicagoVPS, BlueVM, backupsy/vpsdime.. and all the rest hosts we all like, know and use already. (no offense meant to example names!)
So what the difference does it make if we increase price to $10 when lack of interesting hosts isn't true reason why we don't see them featued at LEB and site as it is now can serve us mostly to get new coupon from hosts we all know anyway?
Potential price threshold increase would help to our belowed residental LET hosts to easier promote also bigger packages, to offer 8GB memory, and so on... without doubt, but how can someone as a blog reader benefit from that? There's nothing to discuss about at LEB anymore. Just same old boring names with new coupon codes...
This has nothing to do with the pricing and has everything to do with the people selecting the offers. I notice the word administrator next to your name. Do you have no say over the content of what appears on the blog? Can you not promote the providers you listed to your colleagues? ChiacgoVPS are on the front page at the moment and were last listed 51 days ago? Surely that slot could have been filled by one from the list above?
Raising the the price to $10 may enable providers who offer services at the $20/$30 level to creep into the LET arena. I'm thinking of things like exotic locations, HA/Cloud setups and control panel bundles. This adds a bit of variety to the same old 1/2/3/4/5/6GB plans @ $7/mo. Regardless of price you'll always get things at the 'lower end' Look at how people fit within the current $7/mo, you see prices down as low as $12/year.
Your post comes across as very angry with how things are at the moment, the title next to your name surely gives you more power to help make the changes you so obviously crave.
@Virtovo I am just a LEB reader although at "new special offer" oriented site there's not much to read anymore. My personal opinion is that there's no reason to feature on a regular basis ANY popular LEB host and yet those are featured all the time.
And raising the the price to $20 may enable providers who offer services at the $40/$50 level to creep into the new potential LET arena.
And raising the the price to $30 may enable providers who offer premium fully managed service at WHT.
And so on....
What I am saying is that your argument does not convience me. There's not lack of interesting hosts to be featured. Price threshold isn't limitating factor for me as a LEB reader and consumer but I can imagine that it is limitating factor for sellers.
I see it like this a 7 dollar hooker has no teeth, but a 10 dollar hooker might be missing the top row but has the second row. So your going to get a little more for the price is what I'm getting at. But really it aint going to matter your going to get the same effect or maybe better?!?
The point is, $10 price point will allow the (new) providers to make more sustainable offers, there will be less deadpools and better performing offers aswell in the LE* market. Also, I find it unbelievable that all of those hosts were not featured on LEB, missing a potential costumer base here. Why is there even a blog if it isn't posting the new offers, it's like discrimination and censorship. The top10 providers (I have nothing against them) will keep intact this way for sure if there's no fresh meat in the market.
That's exactly what's wrong with LEB approach of last few years. So many hosts business depend from mercy of forum admins.
Hosts should not even think about adaptingt pricing just to be able to regulary advertise at LEB. Or have some expectations from this site. LEB is just a freakin' blog.
That's fair, what was your argument of moving to $5/mo? You've said why should you care if providers cant offer x for this. I'm interested to know how you think it will affect choice and quality of services provided.
The issue with LEB is there is no variety and that has nothing to do with price. I'm afraid that reason lands at the feet of LEBs editorial staff and ownership.
It's obvious that there seems to be a need to churn out new offers every two days on the site to generate visits and increase the ad-revenue. 51 days between a repost of a provider? Why not leave some time between providers? Give people time to leave comments etc before a new offer is posted. People seemed to like the deadpool articles that were made; however these have vanished.
I know there has been some efforts to introduce new providers that have been selected rather than submitted but that number has paled significantly in comparison to the reposts.
I understand researching offers can take time and I am not fully aware of what the staff receive in compensation for their efforts so although I say 'reason' it's really not meant to be read in a negative way. I've messaged some staff here previously when I see they have been working hard (e.g. @mpkossen over Christmas).
That was just rhetorical. It doesn't change much. $10 from other side change... but mostly for same old regular sellers able to offer us 8GB memory instead of 4GB for few dollars more. But how this make LEB content (reading, writing, researching...) more interesting is above me.
We liked to do this a lot in past, but what's there to discuss about now anyway? Just grab new coupon from this super mega awesome popular host everyone recommend... and this is it.
Well going by the poll the minority want to keep $7 which seems consistent with other discussions on the subject.
I guess my thinking on this was:
Find a new provider not listed in last x months/year. Post an offer they have listed themselves elsewhere or contact them asking if they would like to prepare an offer to be featured on LEB.
Offer is posted.
A month is given for comments etc to made on the offer. Only other articles added to blog are tutorials, deadpool maybe news also.
New offer is researched and posted.
And that's exactly how you keep things boring here. Why don't you feature more Czech or whatever country on here, It's always the same boring locations, at the same old price point. I know for sure there's a interest in Offshore locations, why not future them if they have awesome deals for us? New flesh can eventually drive the prices down in those locations aswell. Keeping the same ol' the same ol' isn't good, for example, we could lower the price again once IPv6 has been introduced, and widely spread.
That's how things worked in best years of LEB, just that we didn't call it "offer" but "featuring" of host. Often without their knowledge.
"Send us offer" in order to be featured at LEB came later - together with expectations of hosts to squeeze some money from community on a regular basis and disappointment if they aren't featured enough often.
That's what I said if you haven't noticed ;-)
Please note that I don't represent LEB and all expressed opinions from my side are solely from a long term LEB reader.
Right, well cant you take this up to @mpkossen aswell? I mean, you're a administrator here you must atleast have a bit to say in this.
Carding and hacking supporters should not be listed anywhere.
(Hint: InfiumHost, as well as GoodNet, are only existing because essentially the German carding/hacking/warez community made them sustainable)
Offer is posted.
@mpkossen @jbiloh please consider this sugestion by @Virtovo
http://lowendbox.com/blog/5-reasons-why-you-want-a-low-end-box/
When this article was posted I was a student and I couldn't afford anything above $5/mo.
I really liked LEB because it felt like it was built for me. After a few years, I now have a job and could afford a bit more but I still use LEB's because of reason #12:
It seems though that these days people are getting criticized for being too cheap and I often see "you should increase your budget" replies on a lot of threads. That's not what LEB is about, at least that's what I believe.
I think if it's still LEA that runs this site he would approach this problem by making a blog post titled: "Yes, You Can have Asian/African/XXXX VPS for <$7" similar to the popular Yes, You Can Run 18 Static Sites on a 64MB Link-1 VPS and list all the providers on exotic locations that offers w/in the LEB price. Not by "increasing the budget."
I also don't get why the authors on LEB are having problems finding VPS from "rare" locations to post when they didn't even had a post featuring DO when they launched SG. or Vultr with their JP location. Is it because they didn't send offers? That's not the way it used to work and everybody seems to agree that It shouldn't be. Is it because they are not small business? LEB was not about helping small providers either. LEA even posted about amazon when they offered such a good deal (Free trial EC2) It was even technically above LEB pricing rules.
If authors think they found a really really good pricing on an exotic location, go ahead and post it as long as they honestly think it's a really good deal I don't mind if it exceed the $7 limit. But increasing the limit so more and more host could "send more offers"
NO
Can someone explain me the point of having a VPS in an exotic location other than Asia? What are you doing with a VPS in Poland for example?
What are you doing with a VPS in America?
Dns, Cdn, Backup server.
cheap, business
What's the advantage of having a DNS or CDN or Backup server in an exotic location?
Serve exotic customers?
Their internet can't handle 20-30ms difference?
Exotic customers exotic money is worth the exotic location.
Exotic by who's standard? What defines "exotic"?
Anyway, I have VPS in places like Poland, Chile, South Africa and the like. For me it's not so much about latency but serving the content within the country it is intended for a number of reasons I won't go into here.
Well, low latency, high speed, local peering.
Backup server is for failover, not for keeping backups because storage is not cheap in exotic locations
Erm. I don't know about you but it's not 20-30 ms difference. It's 200-350ms difference.
Just one trivial reason from me: I would always prefer to have .pl VPS able to connect to local krakow.irc.pl or poznan.irc.pl above .us VPS able to connect to open (and because that often abused - unstable) ircnet.eversible.com at IRCnet.
And yes stability at IRCnet matters as this network doesn't have chanservices. Like said, trivial reason based on personal needs.
It was just random pick, but you see, things like this one come out only when host is posted. LEB was a great source of informations for me about all kind of "budget" vps hosting providers in past. Now isn't.