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I disagree. RackNerd isn't the only one being charged. If we were only charging providers that make spammy threads, then that would be fine. That's not what's happening.
You missed the point... I talked about RackNerd as an example of a hosting provider (an extreme case but nevertheless, still applies to most providers) who markets towards you because you're the mark. Even without this you're already their mark.
But you know. Ok.
The process of procuring a Host Rep / Provider Tag has changed the over the past year and is now more in depth. We will be continuing this improved review strategy moving forward.
We have been playing with the idea of using this page on LowEndBox https://lowendbox.com/community-deals-on-cheap-vpn-cheap-vps-and-cheap-everything/ for something like that. Plus maybe highlighting some of the most exciting deals, etc. Yet to be fully decided.
There were 370 remaining after the cleanup. Of that 370 probably another 100-120 are from users who were no longer associated with a hosting company and/or that company while active on LowEndTalk was not an active advertiser.
Right now the uptake on the payment structure has been pretty good, though many providers are not willing to involve themselves in the heated back and forth we are getting a lot of positive feedback in the background.
This is something we are mindful of and is why we have made improvements to the Host Rep capabilities plus reduced the barrier to entry for Provider Tag holders (payments quarterly and 20% discount).
Going to do my best to make this a positive outcome. I firmly believe that we must evolve to prosper. The market is shifting some and we can't be stagnant.
The past two years have been very good for LEB and LET and I am committed to helping enable more positive years ahead.
What does ‘very good’ mean in this context?
That's fine, but the list I suggested to have was merely to show who we have left as providers after the clean up and how many of them have paid for the tag fee.
The easiest way to answer this is to point you to my discussion history where a fairly good history of all our improvements can be seen:
https://lowendtalk.com/profile/discussions/jbiloh
Haha, let's see how many comments were actually heeded from these discussions, for example: https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/166461/what-are-your-thoughts-about-let-leb-and-future-improvements/p1
Not really what I meant.
How are you quantifying the improvement? Ad revenue, page views, unique visitors numbers, something else?
In this context unique visitors, page views, new user signups, new threads. All of those datapoints are up quite a bit.
Thank you.
>
I would imagine that a lot of signups are purely to get "double bandwidth" not to actually contribute.
My point exactly. Biloh would do well to read the first few pages of "Seeing like a state" to prevent the pitfalls of optimizing for a single metric, but if he doesn't care about the forum, why should we?
When you pull out 100% of the activity related to that type of content the data points are still up significantly.
Steve, you have a lot of opinions, which is great, you are welcome to share them here. But suggesting I don't care about the forum -- because we have different views on how to build and ensure its future success -- is really ridiculous. I spend an immense amount of time supporting, building and engaging with, the forum. Whether that's defending from a ddos attack, or doing support tickets on the helpdesk, or working on the next content initiative. All of that amounts to caring.
You certainly care, just from a very different perspective to the rest of us.
Does anyone else see the humor in the implementation of this? Providers pull lowend stunts like this often, and to see the owner following suit is awesome. I love this community.
That's the spirit.
What I oppose is the notion that this doesn't change anything. It changes a lot. RackNerd is unusual in that this rule change will not affect their behavior towards us or the way we see them.
We'll lose the occasional offers from popular providers that easily sell out their stock. We'll lose the incredibly aggressive offers that don't really make money. We'll lose the new hosts with interesting products and low margins.
Those who are left will treat this more like an ad farm than it already is. To grow revenue, the site will make itself more appealing to the spammy sort of hosts that'll pay for this.
We'll watch this carefully to make sure that the variety is still there.
@jbiloh where to place colocation offers?
I believe those can and should go under the "Offers" category.
Dude, you are really hard for those colo offers, I hope you paid your invoice!
I can confirm that we aren't affected by this, as we're happy to pay the fee. We find tons of value in the LEB/LET community. For us, we find the fee as a way to support the community. We feel the same exact way when it comes to banner advertisements here on LEB/LET, which is why we enjoy and don't mind helping the community through that avenue as well.
If we can support the community, and the funds we contribute help maintain the community, help scale it, we believe that's a great exchange. On top of that, we believe that the community equally feels the same about RackNerd, as we've repeatably been voted #1 top provider, and most recently #1 most professional provider here on LET. We're extremely grateful for the community, and believe that the mods, and admins are doing a great job.
In my opinion, when it comes to providers, providers shouldn't be here expecting to take, take, take without giving back. Providers unwilling to give, most of the time are here short-term to begin with. Whether that be entirely from a business perspective or community. I understand from a community user perspective, this may be entirely disregarded, seen differently, but from a business perspective, I know that there are more pros to giving back, investing in your brand, rather than expecting to take and not help. As a business, you cannot afford to neglect your brand, plain and simple, and when you do choose to neglect, you'll pay the price.
On that note, to the providers who aren't paying the small fee to post your offers here on LET, at the minimum I'd encourage you to share your offers on LEB (it's free), that way if a user finds value it perhaps can be shared here on LET by them. On top of that, I'd encourage consideration on banner advertisements, a form of helping the community, and at the same time exposure and conversions for your brand. If by chance you're simply looking for free exposure, no problem, LEB supports you! Many free contributions you can do to help as well (which many providers aren't doing) such as contributing tutorials, interviews, giveaways.
Here's a post @raindog308 wrote covering ways to contribute that are free:
https://lowendbox.com/blog/providers-grow-your-business-in-2022-partner-with-lowendbox-for-free-advertising/
@dahartigan said:
@Falzo said:
I agree with you here.
If a provider can now just buy a tag AND get special posting rights - it would be the first thing a scam hoster would check of their to-do list.
A new host to LET or a small host growing to LET is unlikely to pay a provider fee. No one pays $200 bucks for a maybe-right to post a thread that they have no idea is worth it. The new host adoption is now effectively dead with this change.
Now, a scammer who knows they can do it for 3 months and deadpool and create a new host, will very much understand the value.
So quite theoretically this could increase scam hosts significantly.
I fully expect NerdRacks, a handful of well off hosts, and most everyone else will be a buy-my-tag scam becoming the new LET standard. With @jbiloh getting maybe a whopping $1,000yr in tag fees
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This message is endorsed by @jbiloh.
I did, hence me asking Dude
Thanks DP!
Probably wrote it for him, all part of the fee.
I'm not a provider, but I don't agree with the provider tag fee at all. I could go on why I do not agree, but many others have already shared my same sentiments.
If you really want to increase cash flow; for every "double my bandwidth" comment, invoice the purple Barney $1.00 for each of these comments. This should greatly increase the owner's coffers in no time flat.
Your metric is new users? Really? 90% of them only post invoice numbers. You can easily achieve that with a bot.
Traffic? - Same reason as above, as to why it means absolutely nothing.
Your only way of keeping this forum above water is by listening to the non-spammy, non-bot people, that come here and actually contribute to the growth of this place by engaging in conversations. And you are clearly not interested in doing so.
So perhaps now would be a good time to slowly move to a different forum, where we don't have to deal with AlphaRacks, their constant spam, weird ass invoices from out of the blue and all other things that have slowly corrupted this place.
Might as well rename LET to "RackNerdTalk" and be done with this charade.
What we need is someone who wants the ‘classic’ LET experience, warts and all, to go start something. LES ain’t that place, HB ain’t that place, but somebody, someone out there, could create something truly beautiful.