sam 17/12/20 12:09 pm if you have any leads on ones who arent
cooperating or wahtever, let me know
(webmasters/sites)
bryant 17/12/20 12:09 pm Particularly with the impending demise of the
GameSPYs and UGOs.
sam 17/12/20 12:09 pm yeah
bryant 17/12/20 12:10 pm Will do. The danger I guess here is confusing
"angry and vocal" with "uncooperative". Some
are both, but a few are just one or the other.
I'll sit down with Jo and Sharon this weekend
and compare notes on the reactions we had to
the SR rollout.
sam 17/12/20 12:11 pm yeah..true.. of course, we wont do anything
to shoot ourselves in the foot.. evaluating
them on a one by one basis
like themeheaven has a 24x7 banner next to
ours.. well u know his payment will be delayed
bryant 17/12/20 12:11 pm It goes without saying I think that anyone who
still doesn't have the channelguide up by the
1st is clearly uncooperative. =)
bryant 17/12/20 12:11 pm Heh, yeah - that can't fly. Especially as we
ramp up sales.
sam 17/12/20 12:12 pm well we're changing our coutning using the
webguide now.. so it shoots them :)
sam 17/12/20 12:12 pm we'll be reasonable but firm :)
bryant 17/12/20 12:12 pm Yeah, I heard. Came across more than a few
frantically getting it up on every page.
Noone can fault 'reasonable but firm'.
sam 17/12/20 12:13 pm heh
bryant 17/12/20 12:13 pm Anyway - I better get running here. Meds are
running out so starting to feel like hell.
Good chatting with you. I'll follow up with
you and Mike after I talk to Sharon.
sam 17/12/20 12:14 pm still sick? geez:) ok..thanks..cya
bryant 17/12/20 12:15 pm Yeah, it's not getting much better. Constant
tests, and a 'spot' in one lung. Probably
nothing, but man - I better be getting
normal/well again soon. Just about sick of
being cooped up in the house 24/7. Then
again, it does allow for a whole new level of
focus on the work at hand. =)
bryant 17/12/20 12:15 pm Later.
sam 18/12/20 12:32 am probably too late to change the terms on RB
huh?
bryant 18/12/20 1:07 am May not be. Want to do it by a different
scale? Revs?
sam 18/12/20 1:07 am just wondering.. maybe daily visitors
sam 27/12/20 9:54 am hey how's it going
sam 27/12/20 12:57 pm iBLAMEj00 (ICQ#8906076) Wrote:
But you pay webmasters by page views instead
of unique visitors; it would be best if you
did by unique visitors.
[even tim agrees we should pay webmasters per
unique users, not pageviews. our sites get
low ctr% and are too sticky -- bad for
advertising (in general)]
sam 28/12/20 8:34 am hey Will .. are you there
bryant 28/12/20 9:30 am Am now - what's up?
sam 28/12/20 9:38 am Hey .. just wanted to tell you that we'll be
delaying our payroll as I mentioned before
this week unfortunately :
bryant 28/12/20 9:38 am np - how long?
sam 28/12/20 9:39 am i would say 7 to 10 days at most.. About.com
owes us 200k but it looks like they're going
to play games with us.. speedyclick should be
giving us 200k next week as well..
bryant 28/12/20 9:40 am Cool - we can make things stretch that long
I'm sure.
bryant 28/12/20 9:44 am Hey, Moviehit.com just called me. We haven't
moved them over yet (closed 3-4 weeks ago) and
they lose their hosting tomorrow. The ball
was rolling with Nate to move them, but he's
on vacation now. So they're looking for us to
pay their hosting bill so they don't go dead
tomorrow.
bryant 28/12/20 9:45 am (They're (moviehit) telling me Nate is on
vacation) - don't know if that's true or not.
bryant 28/12/20 9:45 am What should I tell them?
bryant 28/12/20 9:45 am Obviously we're not excited about dropping
$1540 on hosting for them if we're delaying
payroll.
sam 28/12/20 9:46 am nate is in Dc yeah
sam 28/12/20 9:46 am why are they dropping their hosting
sam 28/12/20 9:47 am can we tell them that it will be delayed until
we have more serveres
sam 28/12/20 9:47 am and we don't have our banners on their site
yet do we
bryant 28/12/20 9:47 am They've been taking a loss every month, are
basically out of money.
sam 28/12/20 9:47 am oh really.. and we're still paying them 2cpm +
free hosting?
bryant 28/12/20 9:48 am Yeah, but the scale is much lower than 2cpm.
bryant 28/12/20 9:49 am They're a flopped startup with a lot of
promise basically. They burnt through their
cash. The loss they''ve been taking was due
to their startup costs, not standard operating
costs.
sam 28/12/20 9:49 am maybe we can use this oppty to renegotiate a
better deal? or nah? :)
sam 28/12/20 9:49 am how do u mean scale is much lower
bryant 28/12/20 9:50 am Scale is like a 1cpm or less I think.
sam 28/12/20 9:50 am really?
sam 28/12/20 9:50 am thats ncie.. i thought it was 2
bryant 28/12/20 9:50 am I thought so, lemme check.
bryant 28/12/20 9:52 am 1500.00 for every 1750k PVs mo. So less than
1cpm scales.
bryant 28/12/20 9:53 am Anyway, they're still on the phone with me.
They're saying Nate gave them a timeline and
that's why they cancelled their hosting.
sam 28/12/20 9:54 am hm.. can they keep it alive for another 30
days
sam 28/12/20 9:54 am we're in the midst of a move from CAIS to
another provider
bryant 28/12/20 10:00 am I think we're covered. THey're going to see
about some sort of temporary solution with
their old provider.
sam 28/12/20 10:01 am sounds good :)
bryant 28/12/20 10:05 am Hey, have had a couple webmasters ask about
the availability of the horizontal navbar.
Any word on when that's going to be ready?
sam 28/12/20 10:06 am yeah.. waiting on nate.. but that will only be
available in areas where they cant absolutely
use the vertical
bryant 28/12/20 10:07 am Penny-Arcade is wondering if they can put the
vert navbar on the left too, below their nav
buttons on the new design. It's below the
fold, but right in the meat of their content.
Thoughts? It would be above the fold on the
strip pages which is both the bulk of their
traffic and their largedst exit pages.
sam 04/01/20 2:01 pm hey Will.. how are the ad sales efforts going
thus far?
bryant 04/01/20 3:54 pm Haven't made just tons of headway. I've
received a bunch of materials from Chris and
have followed up with the existing RFP that I
have out - but haven't really started pursuing
much beyond some gaming contact leads I have
yet. 'More' being local sales and the like.
I haven't made a clean break from acqs at all,
in fact there are some big sites I'm trying to
reorganize to fit our newer needs and see if
we can get them in with the new structure.
bryant 04/01/20 3:56 pm It's a juggling act and I just have more acqs
balls up at the moment than sales, but I think
I'm on the cusp of being able to divert more
time towards the sales. Managed to track down
point of contacts for some of the more
significant 'localized' companies I think
might be interested in regional sales - so
hoping to start cold calling them this
weekend.
sam 04/01/20 11:17 pm sure.. we're getting burned bigtime on
page-view counting.. we need to do
acquisitinos by daily visitor counting..
pageview is an artificial indication of
traffic. also, just fyi, i did all the
original acquisitions (30).. and all those
are/were 1year deal.. they're due up now.. and
its saved us 90%.. the 3 year was an idea
whose time has come to pass..its an eternity..
i'd like to also go back to doing one year
deals (vest their shares and case over one
yera)
bryant 04/01/20 11:46 pm Sounds good on the one year, I don't see that
being an issue with people at all. In terms
of daily visitor counting, I haven't run into
anyone yet that has really balked at that -
and to be honest, it might help the acqs
process. Webmasters are used to talking PVs
and CPMs - start talking visitors with them
and we've taken them out of their comfort zone
in terms of what they think they should
expect.
sam 04/01/20 11:47 pm i know :)
sam 04/01/20 11:48 pm and in this market, 1 year and that would be
alot more efficient.. now to just get our revs
going
sam 04/01/20 11:48 pm btw, do u know marc? matt said he was looking
for another job or something
sam 04/01/20 11:48 pm if u know him, can u talk to him see whats
going on. we'd like to keep him
bryant 04/01/20 11:48 pm Marc Frank? Yeah, know him well.
bryant 04/01/20 11:48 pm Will do. We talk just about every day.
sam 04/01/20 11:49 pm i know 3 ppl in the office needed rent $ and
we cut them checks for it
sam 04/01/20 11:49 pm and nate asked about marc needing $ for check
or something, i said not a problem of course
sam 04/01/20 11:49 pm and yesterday matt said he was looking for
another job cuz he was getting evicted or
something..yikes
sam 04/01/20 11:49 pm btw, our money is being wired today so we
should be set
bryant 04/01/20 11:49 pm Hmm, yeah - I'll definitely talk to him today.
sam 04/01/20 11:51 pm thanks!
bryant 04/01/20 11:51 pm No problem - would hate to see Marc leave!
sam 04/01/20 11:51 pm im sure we'll be able to have him stay
sam 04/01/20 11:52 pm i thought nate was going to talk to victoria
to get a check over to him.. guess that didnt
happen
bryant 04/01/20 11:52 pm I am too to be honest. He would have let me
know if he was serious about leaving.
sam 04/01/20 11:54 pm ok :) everything else is starting to look
good. working on a big deal w/ excite right
now.. getting our european arm going so they
can take over that inventory.. im still
distressed over our ad sales effort.. geting
worse.. i moved 2 ppl around to our biz dev
and have a new vp of biz dev (worklife
founder).. and they're pitching our b2b
solutions to portals now
bryant 04/01/20 11:55 pm New sales guru (cnet lady) working out well?
sam 04/01/20 11:56 pm she doesnt start till the 15th.. im concerned
about her though.. she was distressed that we
didnt take credit cards.. and she didnt want
to have a 100k/month quota.. 60k/month was
what she wanted to start out w/
sam 04/01/20 11:56 pm sales ppl bs
sam 04/01/20 11:56 pm so we'll see how it goes
bryant 04/01/20 11:56 pm Yeah - they do seem to share a common trait
with that.
sam 04/01/20 11:56 pm i mean who takes credit card payments for ad
sales
sam 04/01/20 11:56 pm she said most of her clients
sam 04/01/20 11:57 pm like.. are they small clients? she said her
clients put it on their biz card
sam 04/01/20 11:57 pm weird..
bryant 04/01/20 11:57 pm No kidding, I've never heard of that. With
the one exception of google.com who has a link
"instant advertising with a credit card".
bryant 04/01/20 11:57 pm Which is sort of cool, but I wonder if anyone
has ever used it?
sam 05/01/20 12:03 am ya..not sure.. http://206.161.202.42/
new automotive hub.. if excite buys off on it,
then we might need to buy auto sites to
backfill the inventory
sam 14/01/20 1:33 am your check amount is 'net' ..meaning taxes
have already been taken out
bryant 14/01/20 1:35 am Yeah, we saw that. It's just a different
amount than what normally gets deposited each
pay period. We were just confused.
sam 14/01/20 1:35 am really? how much is it off by
bryant 14/01/20 1:35 am May be a moot point, our bank isn't going to
let us deposit the check in my account.
bryant 14/01/20 1:36 am Mine is off $218.43, Jo's is off $53.54.
sam 14/01/20 1:36 am i told victoria to wire it to every1 friday
but she said the wiring deadline was 2 (it was
3).. any other way we can get the money out to
u fast?
sam 14/01/20 1:36 am can you sign on the back as DBA Will Bryant
sam 14/01/20 1:37 am or "for deposit only payable to will bryant
and sign underneath"
bryant 14/01/20 1:37 am I don't think so. It's not the end of the
world though. We're scrambling right now to
see if we can get a GMX account open down here
so that we can just xfer the money into our
personal accounts.
sam 14/01/20 1:37 am i used to do that all the time
bryant 14/01/20 1:37 am Yeah, we tried all that. Damn banks won't let
any of that slide.
sam 14/01/20 1:37 am :( i wonder how victoria made that mistake
bryant 14/01/20 1:37 am Actually, we might be cool. Jo's heading out
to try and open a biz account now.
sam 14/01/20 1:38 am i coudl wesetern union the funds or
something.. monday is bank holiday so no wires
allowed then either
bryant 14/01/20 1:38 am She's had a lot riding on her - I don't have
any hard feelings towards anyone. It happens.
=)
sam 14/01/20 1:39 am yeah.. we were short.. all the $ didnt come
in.. so i had an idea.. to net it out.. and
then we'd pay the taxes next week.. and i told
her to do that.. she went through adp and
figured out everyone's nets
bryant 14/01/20 1:39 am re: Western Union - whatever you think is
best. I wouldn't care at all about waiting
until next week, but we're going to get hit
with some serious penalties with the mortgage
company.
bryant 14/01/20 1:39 am Heh, that's a good idea. =)
sam 14/01/20 1:39 am i know :) she was like huh.. what u cant do
that
i said yes you dcan :)
sam 14/01/20 1:40 am how much penalty?
bryant 14/01/20 1:40 am If the bank lets us open this biz account
we're golden.
bryant 14/01/20 1:40 am Can get the mortgage in and everything.
sam 14/01/20 1:40 am ok.. hopefully they should.. do u have
gamesmatrix documentation
bryant 14/01/20 1:40 am Yeah. Just had to type up a few quick "board
resolutions" lol.
bryant 14/01/20 1:40 am Have everything else.
sam 14/01/20 1:40 am heh been there done that :p
sam 14/01/20 1:41 am was roy's check send to u?
bryant 14/01/20 1:41 am Anyway, thanks for asking about it. Hopefully
the 'crisis' has been diverted. If the bank
gives us a problem I'll let you know to see if
we can find another solution.
bryant 14/01/20 1:41 am Yeah it was - I'm priority mailing it to him
now.
sam 14/01/20 1:41 am sure no problem
sam 14/01/20 1:41 am thanks for sticking it out.. kinda rough week
:)
bryant 14/01/20 1:43 am We're all in this for the long haul and for
the company. eFront is preferable to
something a little more secure but not as
exciting. Will make it that much better when
we come out the other side. =)
sam 14/01/20 1:44 am yeah i know :) ill fwd you a good news email..
hopefully something comes out of it
bryant 14/01/20 1:44 am Great!
bryant 14/01/20 1:44 am Hey, did Jon send you that gamers.com article
re: UGO and its affiliates?
sam 14/01/20 1:45 am yeah he did..
bryant 14/01/20 1:45 am Woops. Jo says I have to go with to open this
thing. I'm off. Will talk to you later.
sam 14/01/20 1:45 am k talk to u later
bryant 14/01/20 4:39 am FYI
Lowtax (ICQ#19629905) Wrote:
Will, I'm probably going to be giving up SA.
I can't wait until February to be paid, and
I'm sick to death of all this network crap and
never knowing if I'll have enough money to pay
rent at the end of the month. I'm broke and I
can't take this any more..
sam 14/01/20 4:42 am have hiim send an email to g3 outlining his
needs .. g3 is collecting all of those and
we'll be allocating some funds to take care of
the webmasters who are struggling
bryant 14/01/20 4:42 am Will do.
sam 14/01/20 5:11 am in the recap email g3 is sending out monday,
he's going to remind every1 of their
confidentiality clause
sam 14/01/20 5:11 am i mean if infospace sees stuff like that, we
wont get any funding
sam 14/01/20 5:11 am then its a sure death
sam 14/01/20 5:11 am so we're only hurting ourselves
sam 14/01/20 5:34 am roy & i were just talking about SA
sam 14/01/20 5:35 am we wanted to see if we can try a new concept
with him
bryant 14/01/20 5:45 am Sorry back - seems one of the PA guys is
continuiing to shit on us in public - and is
being specific about myself and Jon in the
process. Trying to diffuse that through the
other PA guy, but with no luck.
sam 14/01/20 5:46 am what do you recommend?
bryant 14/01/20 5:49 am I think we need a cease and desist letter from
the lawyers.
sam 14/01/20 5:49 am and shut their site down?
bryant 14/01/20 5:50 am I think that needs to go out as soon as
possible. If he continues, I think we need to
take some action.
sam 14/01/20 5:50 am do you recommend shutting them down
sam 14/01/20 5:50 am to get their attention?
bryant 14/01/20 5:51 am No, I think we fire a warning shot with the
letter. If that doesn't work I think we come
down hard and furious in every way we can.
bryant 14/01/20 5:51 am If Mike manages to impair our ability to
operate we have legal recourse, but what good
does that do us if we go under because we miss
out on some big deal?
bryant 14/01/20 5:52 am Shutting them down now would just fuel the
fire.
bryant 14/01/20 5:52 am The letter gives him enough rope to either
hang himself, or climb off his soapbox.
sam 14/01/20 5:52 am do you have a sample cease & desist letter
sam 14/01/20 5:52 am i'd like to get it fired off today
sam 14/01/20 5:52 am im looking on my hard drive to see if i have
any
sam 14/01/20 5:52 am we put specific evidence, etc. and quote laws
sam 14/01/20 5:53 am and fire a warning shot..
sam 14/01/20 5:53 am and using his letter he sent us also as
evicence of breach
sam 14/01/20 5:53 am and violating our confidentialty policies
sam 14/01/20 5:53 am as well as defamation
bryant 14/01/20 5:54 am Yeah, we have to do something. It needs to be
Mike 'Gabe' Krahulik to, and not Jerry 'Tycho'
Parkinson. Jerry isn't being vocal.
sam 14/01/20 5:56 am im seeing if i can find a sample copy of a
generic c&d .. then we put specfics in there..
and fax it to him on efront letterhead
and on the bottom we can do
cc: Melody Dapp Williams,
[full title, esquire, etc.]
that way it makes it seem intimidating that
the lawyer is ccd on it
sam 14/01/20 5:56 am and we can send it to our lawyer as well
sam 14/01/20 5:56 am but it brings more credibiilty
bryant 14/01/20 5:56 am Yeah.
sam 14/01/20 5:56 am and we order eerything to be ceased in 24
hours and retract everything they said
sam 14/01/20 5:56 am and delete their postings
sam 14/01/20 5:56 am or we will take action
sam 14/01/20 5:58 am do you guys wnat to prepare it and ill review
it then you can fax to him?
bryant 14/01/20 5:59 am Yeah, have a template?
sam 14/01/20 5:59 am still searching :)
bryant 14/01/20 6:03 am Is Greg writing a letter as well? Or is that
the one Jerry is having me do the first draft
of?
sam 14/01/20 6:04 am oh thats probably you.. not sure who was doing
it
bryant 14/01/20 6:04 am ok cool - just wanted to make sure we weren't
overlapping.
bryant 14/01/20 6:05 am These people kill me. They're so short
sighted and immature. I've been trying to
talk sense to Tycho but I'm not sure I'm
gettomg anywhere.
bryant 14/01/20 6:10 am So naive.
bryant 14/01/20 6:11 am I might have talked some sense to Tycho. I'm
going to watch the messageboards closely this
weekend to see if Gabe persists. If he does,
we'll get the C&D out.
sam 14/01/20 6:11 am http://www.creditmania.com/Letters/cease.htm
sam 14/01/20 6:12 am one sample :)
sam 14/01/20 6:12 am looking for more
bryant 14/01/20 6:12 am In the meantime, I've got a lot of issues that
I want to try and work into the letter to try
and diffuse all of this. I don't think pissed
of webmasters is the end of the world, but
better to have them on their backs wagging
their tails than snapping at us.
sam 14/01/20 6:12 am yes i agree