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Comments
Oh boy
A lot sure has happened since I was gone and the drama here hasn't gone down even a bit...
What's next? A fee for posting anime GIFs?
Jokes aside, I wish the best for this community. Hope this all ends well...
If I had enough expertise I would've built this amazing place called "WeebsWithServers" but alas!
More than a tweak if you want to achieve your goals. Do you seriously think you're attracting your target demo with a bizarre name like that?
That sounds like a very, very niche porn website. Let me know when it's up and running.
The Host Rep Repertoire!
The Host Rape Roulette!
Not gonna lie man, I get why you're annoyed but your argument doesn't make sense and makes wild generalizations (and assumptions) that it just isn't a good reason.
The major driver behind LEB/LET and the reason (in my opinion) why it's lasted so long is LowEndTalk. Vanilla Forum is simply a medium (or a tool) used to build LowEndTalk. It's the community originally built around the concept of lowend machines (running services on 32-128 mb OVZ VPSes and how to optimize your use based on it). But the thing is, "lowend" has evolved to become a price point, not an actual hardware discussion.
The offer section is an avenue for hosting providers to advertise their services to the readers and posters of LEB/LET (again, as far as any hosting provider is considered, for free). It's the community of readers, posters, and people on this forum that is valuable to the website and, at the end of the day, the hosting companies. It's the same with any website or Youtuber you follow. Why do you think insert youtuber here has sponsor segments? They're selling something to you, their community.
Look man. If hosting companies were making a loss at selling you monthly servers, then they wouldn't do it nor would they be around for too long. Yes by offering a discount they get less profit on their services, but most/all hosting providers that advertise on lowendbox/lowendtalk sell to you at a profit (or do so willingly on their own calculation of a profit).
Look. In business there's a cost to acquiring new customers (Customer Acquisition Costs, CAC). LowEndTalk's Provider fees simply increases the base CAC for hosting companies by what many people can consider as freaking marginal/rounding error. You multiply it out by lets say 1 year and yeah, for an individual person 200 dollars could be a bit much. But for someone who is actually doing business, 200 dollars isn't nothing, but it isn't something.
If this fee isn't worth it to a hosting provider, then they just won't pay for it. It's the site's admin team's job to show that it's valuable for the hosting providers. At the end of the day, LowEndBox and LowEndTalk's customers aren't you, it's the hosting providers. The readers' attentions are simply the product they, originally, gave away for free (through the offer sections) but have now decided to require a payment to access. That puts the offer threads in the category of expense known as "an advertising budget" for a company.
Moving on from this.
If you, as a community member (and not a company) want LowEndBox/LowEndTalk to be independent, to not build these kinds of things, or to grow without a conflict of interest, then offer to purchase a subscription or donate to the website. The problem is, LEB/LET has historically tried to switch to a reader-based funding model and none of it has been sustainable. Therefore, LEB/LET's model has changed to an advertiser-based model.
If you think you can do it better then go for it. Make your own website and try to bring readers onto it. But I'll bet money on that most people won't get enough people to visit it regularly and will probably end up abandoning it. Many have tried in the past. There's only been a few that survived.
@jbiloh Thanks for making the free Provider Tag program official! The main thing is to support new providers. Now that new providers can get free advertising on Low End Box followed by a free 6 month LET Provider Tag, that's beneficial!
Sorry if I'm late to the party, I thought the invoice received was a mistake (such as for advertising), an invoice scam at worst. If you look at it closely you will probably see why:
Not only was there no communication in advance (poor), it's devoid of details and issued for a unrelated user.
I expressed my feelings regarding the creating of the fee and what it means for a large number of LET providers in the companion thread here
In our case we would be paying $200/offer (which we would pay to post loss leaders) that are mostly marketing. Sure, in marketing terms for $200/year isnt much, but for most there are better places to run a $200 campaign.
@jbiloh I'd be taking note of the number of discontent senior members of this forum. Never forget it's not the content that you produce that drives real engagement most of the time, its high quality user posted content - content that is disproportionately generated by certain groups.
My apologies for the clunky rollout of this process. I own that. We are going to do better. The initial email sent shortly before the invoice did explain what the account was and what the invoice was. In retrospect relying on the sticky thread pertaining to the the provider tag fee model in the private section of LowEndTalk was not a sufficient means of advance notice. Lesson learned for sure.
Much of the feedback already provided by LowEndTalk users and providers has been implemented over the course of the past week.
I'll investigate that. Could have been as simple as a fat thumb keyboard error. I see that the system reflects your correct forum username now.
Would love to see you publish your offers more often. X4B is a great brand.
Certainly sensitive to this and as feedback has come in, we've listened and made about half a dozen adjustments to the initial plan. We will continue to listen and adapt accordingly.
Fundamentally I believe in the idea that businesses, which gain the most from their advertising on our platform, are not being asked too much to contribute effectively $16/month ($13/month on the first payment) to help support the advancement and growth of our websites. If we don't evolve with the times we will not prosper in the future.
Thank you, @Not_Oles for both the idea and the energy you are putting into this. Happy to see it come together and will look forward to seeing who gets the free provider tags.
In New York City I knew two beautiful young women violinists. Both of them were well trained as classical musicians. Both were quite good players. The kind who could play the Chaconne with their feet while standing on their hands.
Both were street musicians while also still in music school. You know what? On the street they each made $100 an hour playing . . . Country. Both told me independently that they made a lot more playing Country than playing Classical.
Maybe I made a completely wrong choice with the name, but those players were in my mind when I picked the HR3 name.
Sometimes in the morning and sometimes in the evening, I watched the Wall Street bankers walk along the subway platform, pass by the player, and drop a ten or a twenty or even more into the violin case. Those guys with ties were Country fans! Who knew!?
Just to be clear, I also had other equally beautiful / handsome and equally talented musician friends who were nowhere near as successful playing other genres. To me the only difference seemed to be the Country.
If the Host Rep Roundup Rodeo (HR3) name doesn't work, I'm fine with changing it. No issue at all. All I need to change the name is a couple of Host Reps telling me that they are not advertising on LEB cuz the HR3 name is weird. I appreciate that @Nekki thinks the name is bizarre. I thank @Nekki for sharing his view. But other people like the name! So, we'll see.
Friendly greetings! Have a good day!
ok, can anybody just summarize in a two liner, maybe 3, if anything changed from the official statement? Provider tag is paid, host rep got some benefits for those that prefer that tag and ?
Way too much passion in these pages.
Thanks.
I get all of that and agree. I’m unsure why @jbiloh sticking his hands in the middle of that to profit has to do with the statements though. Especially when his goal isn’t to put it into LET, but the uncomfortable mess that is LEB.
I completely disagree here. That’s what the ad spaces and sponsored LEB content is already for. If that doesn’t generate enough money, adding a phantom charge to hosts for thread posting so he can grow LEB isn’t the solution. If he wants to make better content - make it - and the ad revenue will follow. Unless it isn’t as interesting as he thinks it is.
I’m unsure what exactly you are trying to argue. If he wants to make YouTube videos, he can do that without taxing hosts for posting on LET.
I don’t think I need to. There are already many better community-first and community-driven locations where some guy isn’t sticking his fingers in the pie and digging around for quarters.
You misunderstand, me saying it’s just a vanilla forum is what makes it great. Some guy trying to turn that into a $200k/yr platform by manipulating providers into paying for nothing is pretty disgusting all around. I wholeheartedly agree a less predatory platform needs to come forward, but it does not absolve @jbiloh of destroying LET by being greedy and sending overdue notices to providers who weren’t expecting it, just to keep some tag and be allowed to post sales on a dirt cheap coupon forum.
Nothing changed.
... Ads are also another method to sell your attention for someone else. You do realize that right?
This is another way to scale the ad revenue. You do know that right? They've already monetized parts of your attention by placing ads via BSA. This is another avenue to monetize it, but in a way where it directly impacts those who get the most financial benefit out of the community. If you're hosting servers, yeah early on 200 dollars a year might be a bit steep but... For most people here it's not much.
Ok? Then have fun.
If you want to be a cunt then go for it. If they're so much better then why aren't you there? Use the "rule of the market" baby.
I’m pro monetization. I’m against stripping providers of free tags, and inventing a fee for them to regain them, in exchange to post threads. Especially when the owners response is to post more threads to makeup the cost.
I don’t mind ads. My suggestion was actually to create Premium Provider tags - not penalize all providers unless they pay. And then desperately offering a 20% discount if they act now, arguing they are bad at business if they can’t pay, and pretending a 3 month subscription for a service that was free the week before is a fair deal. He is literally inventing excuses to place a fee that isn’t needed in the first place, and that should never be placed against providers. He’s tackling the problem ass backwards and without thinking through how to implement something. What that has to do with LET being what created LET, I don’t know. I think you were trying to make a point but…
Your just kind of arguing LET is great because it is LET. That has nothing to do with some ass trying to charge $200 a year to let people post their $5 a year services.
I am, of course. Working out some awesome Dedis off a provider who didn’t need pay a participation fee. Nothing about that requires someone to be a female body party though.
I would argue they're not on LET. And you may need to testify as a witness they're actually female.
As for the ads at LET, have any of you regulars purchased any servers through the banner ads? Or like me, just on special offers?
I came to LET through a LEB promo that I still have today. I have never bought full price from that provider. I don't think I ever have from anyone else, either.
I buy things usually from the exceptional deals posted in an offer thread whether or not I need them just in case I might need them and renew them for years. Based on the idling talk here, I figure I'm not alone and probably a decent minority.
And when someone has a need, they still don't really need to click on an ad, they can just request something (even custom!) and get a pretty decent offer year round.
So to me, the banner ads may be poor value and better return on removing them for better viewer satisfaction.
So switching LET to a model where there's no banner ads (I know that isn't proposed here, but still my 2 cents) will improve user experience and providers can do their offer threads on overstock and underutilized resources or marketing loss leaders which is what really brings users in and back. So a provider offer fee structure based on being able to offer those deals and requests makes the most sense to me.
As to the other problem, where some people want expanded content (and the reason for raising funds) and others just want the same discussions and deals as before and will continue to just google for tutorials as needed like we do now. I'm not in love with attracting people who come here for hand holding help, get it and then fuck off without sharing the solution or appreciation.
Nor do I feel doubling the LET user base is necessarily a benefit, there's a limit to amount of time a person can spend on LET a day and not get too behind in discussions (or end up having to reply to 10 pages at once). Scaling the community will no longer make it a community.
Woot, nice.
Everyone loves a deal! Myself included.
One of the benefits of the provider tag fee model is it avoids consideration of adding banners that are destructive to the UI experience and/or placed on the mobile theme in annoying ways.
I hate banners that change the view and create accidental clicks. So glad we don't have those here.
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).
If possible:
✔️ or ✅
Keep it simple.
I am sure that is possible via a little coding tweak.
I'd want to have this group have their own user level class so it would need to be text base as well.
"Patron" for serious talk.
"Paid" for the lulz.
"Paid"
"Patron Provider" ?
Paid provider, fancy words are not needed.
No, just "Patron" of course.
Or "LowEndPatron", another one for the lulz.
I like the use of the word patron. It's good.
I also like LowEndPatron.
I don't find the banners that are here particularly annoying (maybe slightly over animated, but thats easily ignored). Main anoyance is that there is too many of them on each page (for their size). Maybe rotate them or sell different slots (browse page vs thread).
It's particularly bad when the number of ads causes page extension. That should be avoided.
Perhaps show more ads to Guests vs Logged in Users too. Because lets face it logged in users have seen all the ads enough times already...
I'm done.