Edit:
I'm simply blown away with you goats. I was expecting a somber farewell in this thread but instead you've done the exact opposite; pulled off a rally at the bottom of the 9th. On a personal note, and this may seem sentimental, but you have given me a new hope for Voat at very dark time for me.
All I can say now is: Let's do this! I think your message is clear. We have a ton of work to do, a short window in which to do it, and I fully understand I can't do it alone. We will need all hands on deck if Voat is to have any chance at survival.
I will post the plans I have for Voat as well as a status update on your contributions by Monday.
P.S. Old goats, be nice to the new kids. ;)
Original Post
As I sit here about to write one of the most difficult announcements yet, I was just reminded that my account is one month shy of three years old. Nearly three years ago I came here from Reddit when the vote counts disappeared and I felt I could no longer trust what I saw. Nearly three years ago I met @Atko and started contributing code because I believed in him, his mission, and what he was doing. So much has happened during these last three years.
I know a lot of you are new, but Voat has been through a wild ride, and never at any point was it an easy one. My memories are bittersweet when it comes to Voat. I’ve sacrificed the best years of my life for Voat, I’ve lost my business partner whom I miss a lot, I’ve lost people in my life, I’ve given up golf which was my passion, and even with all this I still believe in Voat. I still see the dire need for Free Speech in this world, I fear a world without it, and I still will do anything I can to continue providing it.
But alas, I am powerless to keep Voat running without financial support. As of right now Voat has no solid commitments. Voat has always needed a financial partner whom had balls of steel and backing deep enough to give Voat the capabilities to run as an actual business (being able to hire staff and set itself apart from its competitors), not just a one man show. Potential investors have one or the other of these traits, but we have yet to find one with both. In this day and age, this is Voat’s unicorn.
In the past Voat has been lucky enough to be part of special programs designed for startup companies which gave us free licensing on various products and significantly reduced hosting costs. These programs have since expired and we are now paying full costs. Last month was our first non-discounted month on Azure and the usage was $6,600.90 USD. Donations, ads, and merchandise only put a dent in this and this is the primary reason why we have not launched another merchandise run. And begging for donations was always something we hated doing.
I’m writing this announcement to prepare this community, and the Voat family, for the possibility of a closure. I’m not certain on timing and I have too much invested in this place to give up just yet, so I cannot provide any timelines. In the meantime, I will soon be scaling back all Voat’s servers by at least 50%. I will also turn off some features that are resource intensive.
Voat needs funding. Without it, Voat will be no more.
Voat needs an Angel
Canary
https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806
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bikergang_accountant ago
We need a better Ad system. I have some math that may be able to price it better. You are priced way to high. I've donated via add and directly before but I am far from rich and can't keep doing it. If the Ads had any chance of an ROI it could work. Maybe that's on me because I've never studied ad making but it seems most people who buy an ad don't make $55 back and the people who do it out of charity can only do it once. I know even at $55 dollars for a one day ad it doesn't meet your needs but that shouldn't matter, maximal revenue is independent of viability. We want to get you as close to viability as possible even if it's short.
Let me get some code up for a dynamic price that will weight toward whatever gets you the most revenue. Hopefully we can get some more ads sold. (it still won't get you neutral. You are going to have to drop your costs some how. Lowend box and getting off of windows?). Catalysthost and vpsrus seem to be the best bang for buck with some track record of professionalism.
Also I have some dynamic readwritecache code for sql. I know you have db costs as your highest. Would decreasing the throughput lower costs? The problem is all my code is written in nodejs, but still may be useful. Read from db only once every five minutes for an object even if writing. vpsrus has more ram than it should for the price.
Anyways the simplified price formula when there is no variable cost is sigma(ap^2)/sigma(ap)*(actual/target)^(w). Meaning you take sales from the past as input. It is a weighted average of past price weighted by how profitable it is. Let's say each sale you only get one unit sold to keep it simple. $10, $5, $3... $8.44. Then you have an adjustment that helps the system target a certain amount of volume. Let's say you want to keep three days of ads scheduled out, but you have 5 ads waiting. (5/3)^0.5=1.29 making the price, 10.90. That's where we get sales above average that can inform a higher standard price. The length of schedule you want and the degree of enforcement (w) are the subjective parts. Change the w all the up to 2. (5/3)^2*8.44=23.44 If someone does buy an ad at that price it will strongly inform the base price. The inventory targeting term will make sure that higher price doesn't lead to you never selling again.