New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Comments
LEB / LET and wht is already a business so I guess it would not really matter
Whenever I post ads on WHT for VPS, it offers the option to upgrade to a sticky for $600/week I believe (but is always sold out).
$600 a week. Total ripoff there. Comes out to like $14k a month if 6 spots at a week each and sold out.
Know plenty of providers who get little to no purchases from WHT. So can't see investing $600 for that outcome.
Yeah. Sad part is they are always sold out so they must be doing well for the ones frequently sticky'ing their ad. I have never once seen it available, I bet there's a huge waiting list .
They're probably purchased for months by the providers, it's not a rip off to those providers because they usually sell high end services eg. $60 mo fully managed VPS will make a good return as your more then likely to get over 10 orders.
Pretty well done, not for the low ballers here / different segment of the market.
Question seems hard because ads are displayed on the LET forums, which kind of makes it a business? But at the same time we the users/people make it a community?
Aww... In any event, it should be a community and I think of it as one already so I am kind of dumbfounded about this topic >_<
I think the recent drama is because Chief hasn't been making posts or clearing up issues "publicly" which isn't a big deal in my opinion but I can see why others are a bit upset about it, hopefully the boss will chime in.
@joepie91 my reasoning behind this is the community needs to be generating an income to be paying for good servers, it also should ideally generate income to employ at least a few staff who can then really care about what goes on here etc.
+1 for what @httpzoom said:
"it also should ideally generate income to employ at least a few staff who can then really care about what goes on here "
But they are all volunteers.
I think the best way to run a community isn't to have it owned by 1 person, but an actual committee.
To those comenting about WHT's stickies.
Yes, the dedicated stickies have been sold out for years and there is a waiting list. It is locked up at all 6 for 52 weeks a year, easy $187,000/yr just on dedicated stickies.
We, for COLO@, have a perpetual sticky in the colocation section. We tried to get a dedicated one but nobody will give one up
LET is just another forum installation without it's users, providers and content so if someone created a viable alternative that was community run then I'd definitely give it a shot
I voted for community when came to see the post yesterday.
Anyhow earning something is not bad.
But the main root for this problem is still not fixed i.e. THE THANKS BUTTON and TRANSPARENCY.
This and the other thread related boggle the mind. What hilarity.
"Should" doesn't factor in here. We are all the product here. Props to @Chief for whatever he did to to put it together and have 100k/yr of easy money flowing in. If he plays his cards right, maybe iNet will buy LET for a couple mil and he can relax on a beach.
If you don't like it, start your own and see how easy it is to get a community off the ground. Once you do and it's on mostly auto pilot the way LET is, I guarantee you'll be cashing in the same way.
FYI, Chief didn't create LowEndTalk. He just bought it and added a pile of advertising slots.
A few issues with this:
So are we saying LEB/LET were ad free prior to Chief?
LET was, LEB wasn't.
LET was. LEB was ad free for a while but then LEA put 4 (iirc) ad slots to cover the cost of running.
i vote community
There were a lot less ads even when I started joining. It only grew in masses recently.
The ads were only intended to cover the cost of running the site, no one had an issue with them.
How many slots are there now on LET? Like 36? Like wtf, 6 ads in one square!
Price for ads is fine, there needs to be a kind of barrier.
This thread is just one retarded piece of shit because it won't change a thing, I do have some suggestions:
Ideas like passing the stick on is just a retarded idea because nobody would want to give away this money cow. I do suggest less ads and more money to improve the community instead of just enjoying LEA's effort
It should be a community based business then?
Oh wait, that's what it already is, isn't it? These threads confuse me. I really don't get what the fuss is all about. You're free to leave, aren't you? If you have to go all protester on this site, leaving may be the better option here.
+1
+1
@Op ... You ever heard the ole saying, "wish in one hand, shit in the other and see which fills up faster ?" +1 the people saying it can be both. Seems to me, it already is anyway ... Community + Bizness. My understanding is LEB was sold, the new owner expects some return ... is this foreign to anyone's way of thinking ?
When comes to services for free = YOU ARE THE PRODUCT ... aka: Google Inc 20bil + a year, it's self explanatory. Imo ... what it should be vs what it iz = mindfuk nonsenese, it is ... what it is. The owner of this web property + assoc will try to monetize them, +1 the get over it people who posted, shrugs.
Barrier to the buying of ads should be that you aren't allowed to make offers on the site for free
The search is laughably busted. If that is how Vanilla forums work, they are utter crap.
Thank button, yeah, ungrateful ownership won't fix even though others submitted fix for free. Perhaps in light of this thread and general movement we need a HATE button instead?
I think communities should be non-profits. They should be member owned if cash component. Everyone participates and everyone can become and owner (after meeting some basic criteria). Total lack of member owner businesses in the world, sadly. But I am being idealistic.
It seems like all the give away promos are the providers giving freebies on top of whatever they may or may not be paying to LET/LEB.
Big a%% illusion around here that this site is some wonderstuff. It's a freaking forum and LEB looks like a freaking blog. Serious requirements are a lowly VPS or old school server, DDoS protection and that's about it folks. Just about anyone could pull these feats off in no time.
All that said I don't think the change of ownership was intended to turn this place into a commercial cess pool. The ads are limited, so I don't take extreme issue with them. But the overall provider count as active posts vs. the non providers is my big issue and apparent change that has occurred.
People are focusing on the money but they shouldn't. The question between a community and a business is a matter of management, not money. Personally, as they are, the ads don't annoy me. I voted for a community -- of course.
That would mean: rules, transparency, independency, features, reviews, articles, prizes, paid work, etc. There is a lot of possibilities. The current success of these websites are the result of the participation of the users during the previous years and the ability of LEA to federate it. If nothing is done, it will fade away, quickly in terms of quality, slowly later in terms of "quantity".
+1 @hostingwizard_net
Pointless ( +drunkenly atm) saying ...
Honestly does anyone ... think such a poll could poss dissuade the current owner of LEB + LET from trying to monetize them ? In a perfect world ... I chit rainbows and ma farts smell like chocolate covered strawberries ... However, this isn't a perfect fecking world. Though have often thought, that Marriah Carrey does in fact chit rainbows and her farts likely smell like chocolate covered strawberries ( I digress) ... this is the real world folks. :P
HOWEVER: If ya tell me Mariah Carrey's fart do not in fact smell like chocolate covered strawberries ... we are so not friends no more dammit !!!
Dude, chocolate farts and Mariah? Did we go there? Freaky.
The polls, the sentiments, etc. they are just clear indication where some of the active and/or boisterous members are on the state of the site.
Shouldn't be a surprise either. People have been moaning about the community being more diluted, less valuable posts, constant junk posts, provider heavy, etc. === at least for the past year.
Seriously. That you (refering to the people claiming this) believe that "nothing will change", that's fine and it's your personal choice to believe in that. Does that mean that you have to go to lengths to convince others to believe the same? No.
If you are so certain that nothing is going to change, then why don't you just ignore these threads entirely? Noone is forcing you to click them, read them, or even respond to them. After all, if your claim is right, nothing will change anyway and this entire topic will die out over time, no?
It's funny the prevailing like it or leave it logic that leaks out in heated conversations. Kind of like the 5 steps to Hitler entering the conversation elsewhere.
I think this thread and related are fine. It meets the revenue generation goals based on our activity.
Eventually most of the content will be low hanging and problematic like this. Well absent some time and investment by ownership.