bryant 14/01/20 6:13 am Yeah, found some samples too. I might also
call in a favor from some people I know at
Paul Hastings under the premise that his
actions are endangering my livelihood by means
of endangering eF. If they'll do it it will
be from eF, not from me so should work fine.
I hope they will, they're some of the best.
bryant 14/01/20 6:15 am Some part of me is still carrying a Corps
mentality. I keep thinking a rifle butt to
some kneecaps would solve all our problems.
Instant collections and quiet webmasters. =)
sam 14/01/20 6:15 am i like that attitude :)
sam 14/01/20 6:16 am anyway we can work on SA? imnot sure if
jonathan fwd u my thoughts on that
bryant 14/01/20 6:16 am Not sure either, checking.
sam 14/01/20 6:16 am let me do it
bryant 14/01/20 6:16 am ok.
bryant 14/01/20 6:17 am My current plan with Lowtax is to get him on
the phone next time he's available and find
out what he needs to get by. Not this $13k
crap - the guy can live on 1/5th of that in
style.
bryant 14/01/20 6:17 am Perhaps if we can assure him that much at the
very least just until things get better then
he'll be happy.
sam 14/01/20 6:18 am yeah i know.. actually if u want, put him on
our payroll on normal salary
sam 14/01/20 6:18 am or something
sam 14/01/20 6:18 am and if things dont work out, he gets his site
back.. so he's assured
sam 14/01/20 6:18 am and would reduce the 13k
sam 14/01/20 6:18 am and also
sam 14/01/20 6:18 am we can get him to do real revenue stuff that
ill fwd to you
bryant 14/01/20 6:18 am Yeah - something. Let me work on him, we have
a decent rapport.
bryant 14/01/20 6:19 am His #1 issue is server stability right now -
how soon are we at S4R?
sam 14/01/20 6:19 am and tell him to get his forum msg down in the
meanwhile.. and if we cant work anything out,
then he can rant and rave then :)
sam 14/01/20 6:19 am s4r..i ask matt and nate everday.. they said
they're almost completed
sam 14/01/20 6:19 am w/ data transfer
sam 14/01/20 6:19 am let me ask matt again
sam 14/01/20 6:20 am if we get SA on our side, then PA ranting will
seem like its their fault
sam 14/01/20 6:20 am if he posts good stuff about efront :)
sam 14/01/20 6:20 am and they're a community type of site.. so
bellwether sort of
bryant 14/01/20 6:20 am Yeah, that's my biggest issue right now.
Everyone seems to think it's okay to rant
about this issues in open public forums. It's
not. I mean shit, they can certainly have
grievances and that's a normal aspect of life,
but these people (kids) need to understand
that when they started taking money, it
stopped being a hobby and became a business.
sam 14/01/20 6:21 am yeah i know
bryant 14/01/20 6:21 am That's my hurdle right now with the email -
make points like that while narrowing the gap
between us.
bryant 14/01/20 6:22 am Heh, the good news is that at least at the
moment, we have a lot of people coming to us
interested in being acquired. Since 1/1 I've
received more direct emails with people asking
to come aboard than in 3 months before.
sam 14/01/20 6:22 am i know..
sam 14/01/20 6:22 am if half of our webmasters leave, we can get
better contradcts with
sam 14/01/20 6:22 am 1 year terms.. and $ based on uniques
bryant 14/01/20 6:23 am lol, no kidding.
sam 14/01/20 6:23 am so i dont mind if ppl leave.. but we need to
do it gracefully
sam 14/01/20 6:23 am like sitepowerup.com i gracefully parted ways
sam 14/01/20 6:23 am (very bad clickthrus)
sam 14/01/20 6:23 am and trying to do the same w/ teenstation (too
many banners per user)
bryant 14/01/20 6:24 am Agree totally. Hey look, we can really
survive if we lose some of the 'garbage' sites
that will never be able to run anything but
RON stuff. If we're already overpaying them -
then no harm no foul if they go.
sam 14/01/20 6:24 am roy7 1/13/200 12:53 PM Argh the SA
forums box seems to be offline.
Anyway
please do pay Lowtax
(somethingawful.com) next week if possible. I
can take a
pay delay if need be. I feel really
bad for him.
He came to us after 2 previous
networks
that went under and didn't give
people
notice and he had late payments from.
sam 1/13/200 12:55 PM tell him to stop
spamming us then
sam 1/13/200 12:55 PM and encouraging
his people to stop spamming us
sam 1/13/200 12:55 PM rather work with
us and we'll work w/him
roy7 1/13/200 1:04 PM (The Ars article)
Brian -
newsletter (ICQ#346505) Wrote:
Yeah,
someone that I was working with and
wanted to
sell to us saw that and changed
there mind
sam 1/13/200 1:04 PM that's okay.. we
probably dont need acqs right
now anyways
roy7 1/13/200 1:04 PM SA makes more
than I realized, $13K/month. I
can't pay
that off my credit card. But
hopefully we
can send him at least half next
week.
roy7 1/13/200 1:05 PM We didn't take
SA's forums down intentionally
did we?
sam 1/13/200 1:05 PM no of course
not..
sam 1/13/200 1:06 PM we should
probably cut SA
sam 1/13/200 1:06 PM we cant keep his
forums up
roy7 1/13/200 1:07 PM From a
positioning point of view, if INSP
funds us, we
should pay webmasters off before
doing a PR.
Don't want them seeing we have a
pile of cash
and asking where their money is.
;)
sam 1/13/200 1:07 PM and he keeps
having server problems with us
roy7 1/13/200 1:07 PM S4R will solve
that.
roy7 1/13/200 1:08 PM I don't like the
idea of cutting someone who
has tried
their best for us but we've let them
down.
Someone like PA who hate us and wanted
out all
along, yeah, they are gone. But Lowtax
had been
pretty pro-eFront and trying to
support us.
sam 1/13/200 1:08 PM how has lowtax
been pro-efront
sam 1/13/200 1:08 PM i was just
thinking in his best interest
roy7 1/13/200 1:09 PM Well he's just
been cooperative in our reveune
stuff so far
as I know, and more patient than
most of us
would have been with the forum
problems.
sam 1/13/200 1:09 PM megagames emailed
that his srever is down hm
roy7 1/13/200 1:09 PM Any tech people
in today? SA's forum box needs
rebooted.
sam 1/13/200 1:10 PM no.. i dont see
any1
roy7 1/13/200 1:10 PM It looks bad with
the thread Ars links to
goign to a
machine that isn't on. ;)
sam 1/13/200 1:10 PM probably better
for us :)
sam 1/13/200 1:12 PM in the recap
email g3 is sending out monday,
he's going
to remind every1 of their
confidentiality clause
i mean if
infospace sees stuff like that, we
wont get any
funding
then its a
sure death
so we're
only hurting ourselves
roy7 1/13/200 1:20 PM I was going to
try paying lowtax with a cash
advance
check off a credit card but I didn't
realize how
much he made. I don't have that
much credit
available on all my cards
combined. :)
sam 1/13/200 1:21 PM we can take care
of him next week probably
sam 1/13/200 1:21 PM but he needs to
help us not hurt us
sam 1/13/200 1:21 PM even though i
know his site is all about
bitching and
whining
sam 1/13/200 1:23 PM btw,
somethingawful = 0 srunner links
roy7 1/13/200 1:25 PM Hurmph.
I wonder
what the best way to monetize
something
like SA is. It's popular (6m+ page
views),
kinda famous (Ars are fans), and has a
very loyal
following. Not sure if it's
something
you can sell branded advertising
for, like a
"real" humor site.
sam 1/13/200 1:25 PM ya .. u cant sell
advertising on it.. its all
cussing
bitching whining
sam 1/13/200 1:26 PM advertisers wont
like it
sam 1/13/200 1:26 PM however, u can do
srunner type of stuff
sam 1/13/200 1:26 PM like amd
sam 1/13/200 1:26 PM like mad
sam 1/13/200 1:26 PM and xdrive
sam 1/13/200 1:26 PM and everything
sam 1/13/200 1:26 PM because its a
community
sam 1/13/200 1:26 PM but we cant make
money if he doesnt promote
our stuff
sam 1/13/200 1:26 PM on a daily basis
sam 1/13/200 1:27 PM remember taht one
day he had srunner link (he
was whining
about it).. and it got lot of
clicks
sam 1/13/200 1:27 PM but i highly
doubt he'll do all this for us
roy7 1/13/200 1:27 PM The tune will
change once he's paid again. :)
roy7 1/13/200 1:28 PM And once he's at
S4R and forums work or, if
they crash,
someone can reboot them.
sam 1/13/200 1:28 PM
bryant 14/01/20 6:24 am "really survive" meaning, losing some of them
is hardly going to kill us.
sam 14/01/20 6:25 am yeah im sure we'll survive, i have no doubts..
its time for restructuring and streamlinging
and losing the garbage
sam 14/01/20 6:25 am our basic to cover.. rent & payroll isnt tons
(200k)
sam 14/01/20 6:26 am and some of the bills..we'll just have to make
payment plans on.. and really, i'd like to get
total 100% of our bills to 500k/month and
revenues to go upto 1 mil..
sam 14/01/20 6:26 am and glide on that for a little bit.. while
saving up $
sam 14/01/20 6:26 am with or w/o infospace
bryant 14/01/20 6:26 am ok, cool - got the Lowtax stuff. I think
there's something that can definitely be done
there. When it comes down to it he's really
quite reasonable and mature (at least compared
to many of the others). More importantly,
they almost all respect him to a certain
degree so if he's not anti- then maybe some of
them are less so.
bryant 14/01/20 6:27 am He can help us without transparently being our
puppet I suspect, and should be willing to do
so.
sam 14/01/20 6:27 am yeah just talk to him.. tell him that we think
he can be a good spokesperson for efront to
the webmaster community and we want to
completely prioritize him and make sure he's
taken care of
bryant 14/01/20 6:28 am Tim Eckles is taking a beating in the closed
discussion groups though. Gotta love the guy,
he's going toe to toe with people and trying
to bring them down.
sam 14/01/20 6:28 am i know.. tim is awesome :)
sam 14/01/20 6:28 am im feeding him info and material :)
sam 14/01/20 6:28 am if we got SA on our side, then there's more
voice
sam 14/01/20 6:29 am so thats why i was thinking forget the 13k..
have a heart to heart with him.. does he
really like what he's doing? does he want to
do it instead of getting a regular job? well
we think there's a way that can be done
sam 14/01/20 6:30 am and work something out with him where he can
continue to do what he enjoys while we get
what we want from him : revenue projects +
pro-efront support 100% no matter what :)
sam 14/01/20 6:30 am this is truly like the corps huh :) strategy &
intelligence to overthrow the opposition
bryant 14/01/20 6:31 am The salaried thing is something intriguing -
pretty comfortable with that approach? I'm
thinking if we do that he's instantly our
"webmaster advocate". That could be painted
as a real plus. "We know you all are upset,
we're trying to be upfront with you but
communications sometimes break down - so we're
appointing one of your own as the liaison for
all concerns.
sam 14/01/20 6:31 am yeah.. but he also has to position for us
bryant 14/01/20 6:31 am Heh, it's like the Corps, but even more like
my old counterintelligence work. As stressful
as it can be, it's also a lot of fun.
sam 14/01/20 6:32 am meaning in good times and bad times he has to
stick together
bryant 14/01/20 6:32 am Well yeah, but obviously we wouldn't position
it that way to the webmasters.
sam 14/01/20 6:32 am and we'll make sure he never gets evicted as
long as we're around :)
bryant 14/01/20 6:32 am Dunno, I won't go into any of that with him
until I have a good idea of where his head is.
sam 14/01/20 6:32 am thats true
sam 14/01/20 6:32 am well see what u can do :)
bryant 14/01/20 6:32 am Will do. I need to run - will talk to you
later. =)
sam 14/01/20 6:33 am if we turn his site into member-only we can
make alot from email makreting too :) ok later
bryant 14/01/20 6:33 am We'll reign the webmasters in - may just take
a few days. Once they're under control it
will be easy to separate some of them from the
flock and quietly (and peacefully) trim them
off.
sam 14/01/20 6:33 am yup
sam 14/01/20 6:34 am this is probably a good thing all this
happened.. then we can finally control them..
they were like a wild herd before :)
sam 14/01/20 9:45 am oy7: (5:42 PM) http://www.lumthemad.net
Whoa that's odd. They claim we are throwing in
the towel and fired most of our staff last
month.
sam: (5:43 PM) thats because of stupid SA
posts
sam: (5:43 PM) he blatantly violated our NDA
sam: (5:43 PM) so i doubt he's getting paid
next week
sam: (5:44 PM) before some of our other
webmasters
sam: (5:44 PM) who are in more need
sam: (5:44 PM) so he needs to retract what he
said or..
sam 16/01/20 11:05 am heh.. tim from aah wants to take over doing PA
cartoons:)
sam 16/01/20 11:05 am he said he'll make fun of lazy,
web-generation, immature whiny kiddies :)
sam 16/01/20 11:10 am iBLAMEj00 (ICQ#8906076) Wrote:
I know an artist that would probably love to
do it. =)
[another options.. kick PA guys out and we can
do the comics ourselves]
sam 16/01/20 11:13 am their email basically said they are not going
to cooperate with us.. thereby they are in
breach of the entire contract.. which means we
fire them and have no further obligations to
them
sam 16/01/20 11:32 am if you can work on restrucutirng some of the
agreements, i think that would help alot..
like SA gets 2cpm.. thats obscene and can't
last ..lot of them like that
sam 16/01/20 11:41 am iBLAMEj00 (ICQ#8906076) Wrote:
Okay, artist is all lined up
bryant 16/01/20 11:50 am Yeah, I can move into restructuring people.
Re: PA, let me have 24 hours to see what I
can do. Presuming I can get them to talk at
all. I don't have a copy of their email,
would you fwd when you get a chance?
sam 16/01/20 11:51 am Tims's saying that the first storyline from
the new artist is about PA :)
sam 16/01/20 11:51 am yes..