$7 ... part 2, with an actual Poll !! (Re-post, Sorry) - Have your say.

AnthonySmith

Repost because I edited the last one to add clarity, and it deleted the poll.

Part 2, as promised, I think Part 1 has run its natural life.

I have to admit, I started this with the personal feeling that the price had to go up, my mind was changed. It's good to talk

What became obvious is that the price is not the singular problem, $7 must stay, it is meaningful, but it may not be fit for the original purpose it was supposed to have.

Having thought about it, I believe this is a rare case where we can actually cater for everyone, here is what I propose based on the collective comments from Part 1.

Rule and small platform change.

1. $7 stays exactly how it is in the regular offers section (not a change, just for the avoidance of doubt).

2. We add a section for $15 p/year or less offers. These are real LE* Spirit offers for those of us who still have it, and we add a perk for hosts that can offer these (Perk to be decided)

3. We change the existing LES Exclusive offers section and rules, the new rule is that they don't need to be exclusive , but you can only post in here once every 2 (maybe 4) weeks, they are still for logged-in users only, we pick a meaningful name that clearly indicates the intent and make it known these are for logged in users only and not google indexed no other limitations

This caters for allowing hosts to be able to show off some of their higher-end plans; some of the community wants that, clearly, hosts do. This allows the general weekly $7 offers continue. This puts some real spirit back into LES.

If carefully executed, I really do not see a downside, unless you feel more offer posts are a bad thing, in which case I just have to kind of suck in some air and bare my teeth and shrug.

Not_Oles

@AnthonySmith said:
Rule and small platform change.

1. $7 stays exactly how it is in the regular offers section (not a change, just for the avoidance of doubt).

Seems okay!

2. We add a section for $15 p/year or less offers. These are real LE* Spirit offers for those of us who still have it, and we add a perk for hosts that can offer these (Perk to be decided)

Seems okay! I think you mean $15 p/year or less yearly offers. So the proposed new section is the place for those who want low priced yearly offers to look.

3. We change the existing LES Exclusive offers section and rules, the new rule is that they don't need to be exclusive , but you can only post in here once every 2 (maybe 4) weeks, they are still for logged-in users only, we pick a meaningful name that clearly indicates the intent and make it known these are for logged in users only and not google indexed no other limitations

This caters for allowing hosts to be able to show off some of their higher-end plans; some of the community wants that, clearly, hosts do. This allows the general weekly $7 offers continue. This puts some real spirit back into LES.

If carefully executed, I really do not see a downside, unless you feel more offer posts are a bad thing, in which case I just have to kind of suck in some air and bare my teeth and shrug.

Probably I am way too clueless™ but I am having difficulty understanding how dropping the exclusivity requirement from the LES Exclusive offers section and further limiting the number of allowed offer posts benefits LES.

A random provider might think: "Well, LES now allows my company to post this higher priced offer everywhere, but if we also post it to LES, we can post only one offer on LES in this higher priced category every two weeks, our offer on LES won't be indexed by the search engines, and our offer only can be seen by logged in LES users. LES doesn't have sufficient logged in users volume to attract enough customers for us! Everyone already will have seen our offer everywhere else, anyway! I have better uses for my time than posting to the LES Non-Exclusive Offers section."

If the higher priced offers here remain exclusive of other sites, I.e., only at LES, then the motivation attracting providers to post in the still-Exclusive section remains the high quality Low End oriented audience here.

Maybe you set up the LES organizational structure right the first time!? Maybe it isn't broken!? Maybe it doesn't need to be fixed!?

AnthonySmith

@Not_Oles said: Probably I am way too clueless™ but I am having difficulty understanding how dropping the exclusivity requirement from the LES Exclusive offers section and further limiting the number of allowed offer posts benefits LES.

Born from part 1, but the quick version is that the fact that it has to be exclusive actively discourages providers from posting great deals here that may be slightly higher end while still great value MB per $, so the proposal is we lengthen the time between posts and remove the requirement for them to be exclusive.

@Not_Oles said: A random provider might think: "Well, LES now allows my company to post this higher priced offer everywhere, but if we also post it to LES, we can post only one offer on LES in this higher priced category every two weeks, our offer on LES won't be indexed by the search engines, and our offer only can be seen by logged in LES users. LES doesn't have sufficient logged in users volume to attract enough customers for us! Everyone already will have seen our offer everywhere else, anyway! I have better uses for my time than posting to the LES Non-Exclusive Offers section."

This scenario is basically exactly how it is now, except they also would have the burden of making it special just for us, which pretty much no one is doing. The theory is that having to make it special for a pretty small niche forum is the blocker, not the amount of times they can post. As an example, I cant see Hetzner bothering to let us know about their latest 360TB Storage server with GPU if they also have to pair that with an exclusive discount code for ONLY lowendspirit.

I appreciate that's the other end of the scale, but hopefully makes my point clear, something I seem to be struggling with today (I am genuinely over medicated right now, sorry)

I could be wrong; if I am, just a proposal based on the original discussion in part 1.