Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin Pride will be represented as BitPride on BitFunder.

http://bitcoinpride.com

What is Bitcoin Pride?

Bitcoin Pride is the premier Bitcoin shirt marketplace. We offer the largest collection of Bitcoin graphical T-Shirts for all occasions.

We are constantly expanding our marketplace, and building a solid fan base in the process. We currently own store fronts on eBay, Cafepress, and soon Amazon.

All of the designs are ours, and ours alone, and are trademarked property of BitcoinPride.com.

Google for 'bitcoin shirt', we currently fluctuate between 1st and 3rd place.

Virtual Shares at BitPride

BitPride is comprised of 50,000,000 virtual shares in total.

One (1) virtual "share" of BitPride on BitFunder represents 1/50,000,000th of monthly profits after all costs.

Virtual shares issued via BitFunder do not represent equity ownership in any real-world business entity.

The virtual shares are solely a distribution mechanism for rights to profits.

Should the company be sold, the full amount of the purchase price will be evenly distributed amongst the 50,000,000 virtual shares.

BitPride virtual shares offer no voting rights.

Virtual Dividends

Virtual dividends will be paid MONTHLY for the prior months net profit.

Forced BuyBack

No forced buyback may be enforced for shares of BitPride.

About the Operators

Bitcoin Pride was started by Brian "FlipPro" Santos. Brian also maintains UpTweet the next generation retweet site. Brian is also well known as an outstanding member and COO of the Bitcoin Business Alliance http://bitcoinbusinessalliance.com.

Bitpride is compromised of a small team of designers, programmers, and marketeers who make it the gem everyone has come to know and love.

Bitcoin Pride was created to support the bitcoin community. We feel that profit sharing helps to bring the community together and make a stronger foundation to help support Bitcoin world-wide. Help us help Bitcoin succeed! You CAN make a difference.

**Last Modified 8/8/2013**

https://i.imgur.com/Fm5Wwvo.png

 ???

Scam accusation started.

Odd it's showing in 1st place for me.

It must be a regional thing, google is known for swapping 1st place based on demos and region.

In any case I will fix that in the details.

P.S We're no scam btw, I have been a member of this community for 2+ years, and I have been selling shirts under the Bitcoin Pride brand for 6 months now.

http://content.screencast.com/users/FlipPro/folders/Jing/media/ec0968bd-8062-4ea2-bf86-9cbcd818b080/2013-02-25_1505.png

I was joking, Vegeta.  :D

How will you handle that you accept both BTC and fiat? Does one currency get converted to other daily, monthly, or?

Hello ThickAsThieves,

Thanks for your question.

Currently we convert all the USD we make into BTC cold storage daily. We keep a small USD balance in order to cover real world necessities.

25% of the shares sold in the time it took me to take a shower, good job :)

This brings the question. Will dividends be paid based on cash sales or monthly stored BTC. Making either profit from deflation spread or 1 man cash in.

Also, I understand this is not a equity shares but royalty shares, but it might help to know what the IPO is for besides "support"?

Dividends will be paid out based on monthly PROFIT. This is irrespective to the exchange rate which is what I think you are referring to. If there is an apparent Bitcoin crash, we will obviously balance out our USD reserves so that our company isn't harmed by such a cataclysmic event.

I myself am a Bitcoin daytrader, and work with Bitcoin 12-18 hours a day. I watch out for big movements or trends, and make sure this never happens to us.

Edit: Expanding on your edit:

We are going to do some serious upgrades on the site. We want to bring in thousands of new original products into our catalog.

We seek to expand our brand by adding:

More clothing: Hoodies, polos, long sleeve shirts , tank tops,active wear, and pajamas.
Office supplies: Staplers, pens, pencils, erasers, chalk erasers, folders, notebooks, and much more.
Electronics: Cell phone covers, phone sleeves, mouse pads, keyboard pads, laptop cases,control remote sleeves, ear bud holders, and more.
General home. Refrigerator magnets, oven mittens, spoons, forks, curtains, seat covers, placemats, and much more.

And much much more...

Bitcoin Pride currently holds 25M shares that represent our 50% cut of the total profits.

We have exclusive right to 2,500,000 of those shares for operational purposes. So when dividends come in 2.5M shares will be paid first.

That is correct.  :)

We are selling the rights to the profits of Bitcoin Pride in the form of shares.

Why does this look exactly like the ZigGap OP? Are the issues related? I'm thinking, they were written up by a PR man working for BitFunder (i.e. it might not be a 'bad' reason). Please inform! ty

Has nothing to do with ZigGap.

We have been around much longer than they have.. :) Thanks for the question.

Would guess they saw ZigGap sell a ton with no real plan, no record, no projections etc and figured they may as well copy the contract and get a load of BTC themselves.  Heck I'm tempted to make an alt, register a domain and sell 50 million shares myself - just need to sell 10 million 'cheap' at an Early Bird price and people will just throw their money my way to get in on the 'bargain'.

Have you gone through our products?

We worked really hard on the site.

We seek to continue the same level of quality that we are achieving now.

Healthy skepticism. I do think exchanges and IPOs will improve over time. Bitcoin investing is still much more risky than most people admit to themselves. Plenty of room for improvement.

Of course this is risky. If it didn't have risk involved there wouldn't be any reward.

People in this community know I work extremely hard to make sure that everything  I participate in succeeds.

Even if it takes a bit of over time to get it done :).

What I see from your limited gfinancials is that you launched 3 months back and sales have declined ever since - suggesting once you'd tapped your initial fan-club of purchasers there was little revenue left to be had.  Generally when investing I look for a company whose sales increase - not decline: hence my mention of projections.

What dividend/share do you expect to be paid in March, April, May etc?  That's the sort of information I'd like to see - but can't really fault you for not giving it given the willingness of the community to throw money at people who provide no information at all.  We all saw how everyone got burned first time round doing that - guess it needs a 2nd round to drive the point home.  Hopefully you aren't one of the companies proving how idea + marginally profitable business + investment does NOT automatically mean profit (but statistically there's probably about a 90% chance you are).

I expect for the profits to increase in the coming months. This will be due to us opening up retail sales of Bitcoin.  We are also exploring ways that we can safely deliver Bitcoins to our growing fanbase. We have made these profits with virtually no paid advertising. We are now going to be investing in a variety of paid advertising options including a FULL PAGE ad on the Bitcoin Magazine, and getting some community giveaways going to promote sales and awareness. I am heavily invested in Bitcoin myself, and I only seek to increase the value of my investment, and with that said I make sure everything I do is done for the betterment of all Bitcoin not just a few.

Find out more about me here:http://bitcoinmagazine.com/uptweet-social-media-and-bitcoin-meet-again/ (http://bitcoinmagazine.com/uptweet-social-media-and-bitcoin-meet-again/)

Looking at sales, it's possible the exposure from the IPO alone could keep them on track...

I wanna see marketing plans and projections too: Advertising (Google Adwords), PR (hype machine and customer/investor support), better web designs, etc.

In general, bitcoin businesses seem to be pretty lackluster at communications. Maybe I should start a bitcoin marketing biz...


Sorry I think this thread might be getting hijacked a bit, I'll stop.

BTCPride sells bitcoins?

Why don't you have this advertising info in your stock description, that's good stuff!

I have nothing against the business model, and FlipPro sounds sincere enough and seems to have pride in his product, but where I look at the available investments for a bitcoin economy, one that depends on converting national fiat to bitcoin just doesn't make sense to me for a long term investment.  Sales and profit can grow while BTC/USD grows even faster and your dividend shrinks.  Buying the precious metal funds make sense to me, but as a hedge against a falling bitcoin.  Mining stocks and maybe the bonds issued by them seem to be the only thing currently besides gambling that seem to be stable enough to survive in a bitcoin only economy.

How are mining investments more stable in the face of an unknown number of ASICs being released at an unpredictable pace?

That is where doing your diligence comes in, those that invested in ASICminer look to be ok, the latest auctions at .4+ per share have a fair shot as well, maybe smart, maybe bag holders, only time will tell.  Some of the miners have plans in place to convert to ASIC gear.  Thinking about the bitcoin without the value in national currency is the only way to value them.  This in my eyes is really a bond that pays a dividend based on profits converted back to bitcoin, so as the value of BTC rises and falls, so does the dividend.

Your question is certainly a valid one, but the point I am trying to relay is my feeling of a good/bad investment, and I can't see how a share of profits based on currency values is good for the long term.  I might be completely wrong in my thoughts, but it is a discussion I have not seen I would like to have, but maybe not in this thread, it's probably not appropriate to highjack.   

Your shares are held in PURE BTC and your profits are paid out in PURE BTC.

You can cash them out at any time with the amount of volume we are getting already, whenever you feel the need to take advantage of an urgent price fluctuation cash out!

Mining is about the most predictable form of BTC investment around - it'll lose money (all the time it's profitable more people will start mining until it ceases to be profitable - meaning a loss for investors unless you find one of the rare investments where operator's pay comes from profit not turnover when you'll break even or make a tiny profit).  Only the very first wave of ASICs or those investments with some significant edge (manufacturing ASICs, very cheap power etc) will ever make any noticeable profit for investors - the rest just earn cash for operators whilst losing investment capital.

The general problem with BTC investments is that with BTC being deflationary by design very few fiat-denominated investments stand any chance of producing (BTC-denominated) profit - they can make fiat-denominated profit but will still be likely to end up worse than idle BTC would.  That will tend to balance out long-term -as deflation will be curbed by a lack of utility (reducing demand), leading to a state of equilibrium.  But we're some way off that (like a few years).

Investments like this are sort of good for the community/BTC as a whole.  Although the odds are very heavily in favour of investors making a loss (that's by no means uniquie to BTC - most startups fail period), at least by doing so they're spreading the word about BTC.  It's unfortunate (when it comes to investment) that BTC is deflationary - as even when I see half-decent investment opportunities I KNOW that statistically I'm better off with BTC in my wallet than investing (if BTC succeeds the idle BTC will appreciate in value more than any traditional business - especially considering a 90% failure rate, if BTC fails then either way I've lost - so why invest?).

Note that I see a strong distinction between investing (buying shares to make a profit from the dividends or growth of the company) and trading (buying to sell higher and make a profit from the market).  Something like this I'll happily trade (buy the early-bird shares and flip them below 2nd batch price) but without assets backing the shares there's no way I'd personally invest.  There's definitely far worse investments around though (e.g. the two blatant scams currently listed on Bitfunder).

You can never cash out (at the old price) when the price of a share collapses.  It's unfortunate - but true - that you can cash out all the time you don't want to, but as soon as you need to you're no longer able to.   Just look at all the ex-GLBSE companies listed on Bitfunder/BTC.CO.  There's plenty of people who'd love to cash out - but can't (at a price they're willing to take).  Your business will be no different (NONE are) - when it's doing well noone wants to cash out, if it does badly loads of people will want to cash out but won't be able to without incurring a heavy loss.  Volume right now has ZERO to do with that.  Or are you guaranteeing buy-back based on previous highest trading price?  I thought not.

While true, your profits are based on the conversion ratio at the time of sale from national currency to bitcoin, so if you profit $1000 this month, your dividend is ~33BTC, next month another $1000 in profit but the conversion ratio only yields ~30BTC, or maybe ~35BTC depending on what rate it all converts at.

Like I said, I have nothing against your business model, but me personally, I am looking for what can give me a pure BTC investment with as little exposure to national fiat as possible.  Getting 100% shielded from it is impossible I fear, but this is far from shielded to that exposure.

Unfortunately the difference between "scam" and "investment" when it comes to bitcoin is so thin as to be virtually identical. Bitfunder doesnt have a feedback system either so its difficult to know what is legit or not. Sadly most of it is shit.

I think the community needs the scams to mature, but I agree, I do not care to BitFunder that much, too hard to get enough info to make any choice, but this forum is giving us that opportunity.

Not really. This forum promotes some of the largest scams and indeed makes them worse than they should be. For instance hiding posts about BFL which would have a negative impact on companies that are relying on BFL equipment to ever make a return.

I wont even begin with the Pirate stuff and how many of the operators and promoters of that massive scam dont have scammer labels.

There's a couple of VERY obvious scam IPOs on Bitfunder (NOT this one).  Anyone (as is the case here) who makes a thread and answers critics is taking a very positive step to affirm themselves as not being in the scam category (it's not impossible - and the fail category still has wide-open arms).

Of course there's a huge grey area between scam/failure.  Where does a business fall that the operators should know will never generate enough profit (or will make a loss) to make investment worthwhile - whilst doing precisely what was described in the IPO?  Is it a scam or a failure (NOT saying this one falls into that group)?  How about when an operator has good intentions but is incompetent (very wide-spread - not just in BTC land)?

It didnt really answer the question. I noticed the same thing  and it looks suss. It also opens a can of worms if you copied and pasted and broke the authors copyright and now they can sue you for it.

Not that it is likely but you never know, the way copyright is these days.

Copyright infringement on a bitcoin stock description? Probably a stretch. I'm pretty sure Bitfunder helped write both of them, hence the similarity.

*ding ding ding* We got a winner.   8)

This sounds like a real bitcoin company with a dedicated management.

I'm happy to invest, however...


...what does this mean "will be paid first". Are these 2.5M shares somehow different than the other shares?

The shares are normal shares, they just happen to be used by the company to maintain growth, these 2,500,000 shares are part of our 50% stake.

"2,500,000 shares will be retained by BitPride to maintain a growth and expansion fund. Possible uses of this fund may be used to
cover up front costs for bulk product production. Should it be determined that the growth fund is not needed, all amounts held by
the growth shares will be equally distributed per share at the following dividend, and the shares may be posted for sale."

Right now BitcoinPride.com owns 50% of the shares. It's selling the other 50% over the coming weeks. Eventually we hope to have a community owned site.

I understand what's written in the contract. What threw me off was you writing here: " will be prayed first". Still don't get what that is supposed to mean.

10,000,000 shares sold! Thank you to the first set of share holders!

We have alot planned for all of you! Stay tuned!

Congrats on a smooth IPO!

When will the first dividend be payed? Beginning of March or April?

Stranger things have happened  :D

Hello Molecular :)

Dividends
Dividends will be paid between the 1st and 5th of each month for the prior months profits.
A monthly statement will be provided at or around the time of Dividend payout.
First public dividend payout will be for the profits of the month of March at the beginning of April.

Ah, thank you. I must've read right past that last sentence ;)

All good. I have high hopes in your business and am confident you will do your best (already great job, not to downplay anything you've done so far).

Oh, and also:

https://i.imgur.com/WS0oUmQl.png (https://i.imgur.com/WS0oUmQ.png)

you are #1 on google for "bitcoin tshirts" from "my google view".

Thanks. I managed to buy a good chunk of shares.

When is the next issuance planned? (Please announce the issuance in advance.)

Hello wisard.

Thank you for your support!

We do not know when we will be releasing our next batch of shares.

We are going to release more shares along with a press release.

We will let everyone know in this thread 24 hours before.

Thanks again.

I have a suggestion: I think you would have much higher quality shirts if you offered a shirt designer tool (and maybe share of profit to the people making designs). I say this because I considered ordering a t-shirt, but couldn't find one that suits my taste (I want much smaller logo (chest) and a better anti-bank slogan).

When I search for bitcoin shirts, I see sponsored ads of "Shop for bitcoin shirts on Google" at the top, and bitcoin gear as the first organic result.

I haven't clicked on anything relating to Bitcoin tshirts, and if you have then it's going to be ranked higher for your personalized search results.

I think this alone would be a great tool. Especially if it allowed use of pre-created images that could be 'placed','sized' etc. Not only shirts, but other objects as well. :)

There's many tools like that out there and integraton / licensing is not free. I think however it could be worth the cost. It's something to consider: shirts designed by bitcoiners for bitcoiners. Monetary incentive can produce great results.

Having a shirt design tool gets into copyright issues for sure. There are plenty of great designers that can do work as contractors. If you really want a bunch of random designs from the public, just use a crowdsourcing website, no? Super cheap, and you get tons of options.

Personally, I think the best route is to have a process for determining great ideas, implementing them as great designs, and avoiding clutter in the store with unpopular designs.

Could make a community, if you want your image to be purchasable by others and get a cut, you have to submit it for voting or something. This would help weed out dupes / unauthorized a bit.

Why submit for voting? You could just submit it to be sold in the store, then people would "vote" by buying the shirt. It'd have to be printed on-demand, but I can't imagine that to be a big problem (except a maybe a price increase or profit decrease). Well-selling designs could be produced cheaper and put into stock.

I looked up the magneto plugins and they are over $2000  :o.

Wouldn't we rather spend that money on marketing?

I am trying to find a more stable solution for your request in the mean time though, just give me some time.

Thank you

is it possible to have all of the designs licensed under a creative-commons license? imo, trying to make the store based around the community means giving the community freedom to use the designs appropriately, depending on which creative commons license is chosen. i'd strongly recommend share-alike and non-commercial is optional if you are worried about other sellers.

This is a business, I think you are describing something else.

Yes...

We are a for profit business. If we let everyone use our designs we are basically giving our entire model away.

yes, i know. this is why you would distribute the designs under a non-commercial license so that the community is free to use the work for non-commercial purposes (wear it in a picture without fear of being sued for copyright infringement), but is not allowed to use the work to compete with your model. as the original author of the design, you are able to waive any of the license restrictions and can obviously use your own design commercially.
the license i'm talking about is: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. at the very least a license like https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ would benefit the community because because although this is a restrictive license and the community can't improve on designs, without an actual license behind your work the community can never know with certainty what their rights are regarding the designs on what they are buying.

one idea that could include BitPride is selling community uploaded designs and a cross between http://thingiverse.com, http://threadless.com, http://kickstarter.com, and http://massdrop.com. when a user uploads a design licensed under creative commons, it has an address where people can send bitcoins to escrow to pre-order a product with that design. if it reaches a tipping point (like kickstarter) of enough pre-orders, the product begins a batch cycle, where for 1-3 weeks more people can order the product. as more people order it, the price goes down like massdrop. if a pre-batch product never reaches the tipping point, pre-order people are refunded. generalizing beyond BitPride is 'community uploaded designs sold in bulk with bitcoin', would have to include profit-sharing with the design authors, and could possibly be really great if done right. i'll think about this more, and wait for open source to make improvements, http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/16y42v/chair_of_w3c_rdfa_working_group_explains_their/ and https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=141858.0, before i might give it a go with profit-shared production equipment over colored coins.

do what you do best BitPride, i have trusted you with my coins.  :)

Hello ahdinosaur,

We are taking everyone's suggestions into our sincere consideration. I think I have a compromise for the whole "community input" issue, something that does not add too much cost on the development end, does not give away our business model, but gets the entire community involved and pays them Bitcoins for their beautiful designs in the process!

Stay tuned, and thanks for your support.  8)

I don't see much growth potential in this company. The market for selling tshirts and merchandise has a low barrier to entry (easy to get to) - there are few upfront and operational costs, and bitcoin pride isn't bitcoinshirts.com which would help with SEO. Like others pointed out, it looks like a failing company with profit decreasing each month.

You're also open to currency risk by holding this asset, effectively a short on BTC. Regardless, while it seems pretty legitimate it's definitely not worth > $60,000.

That's a chicken and eggs thing. The more capital they can raise, the more they can grow. The question shouldn't be about the market it should be about the quality of the management and size of the money they want. We're playing VC here. If they have the money and the skills they can branch out from shirts to other things.

First, it's hard to qualify how much skill the current management has. Bitcoin Pride isn't what I'd call a very successful business, as much as you can call an ebay seller a businessman.

An avalanche of new products would also lead to decreased attention for each of their products, don't forget about that. The barrier to entry for those isn't high either.

Who is in the management? Just one person? I noticed the use of 'we'.

Do you have a timeframe for the next release of shares?

Fair question, but just to be practical I am gonna say this. A business is an entity in itself, so a business may refer to itself as "we" even if it has only 1 operator as in "the business and I".

We currently don't have a time frame set. We want to prepare the company for a global press release and formal launch.

But first we are taking everyone's suggestions here very seriously, and plan to launch several critical features that will allow us to gain maximum sales during our PR launch.

Right now shares are still reasonably priced. We will announce more information about the launch as it comes closer.

Thanks

I have made a lot of money over the past 12 years with ecommerce. I've sold all sorts of products, both tangible and digital. Here are my recommendations in doing better.

- Get rid of the image slider. Research and multiple tests have shown that they reduce conversion rates. They may be good for a blog to have, but they should never be used on an ecommerce website.
Source: http://conversionxl.com/dont-use-automatic-image-sliders-or-carousels-ignore-the-fad/

- The Free Shipping & The Toll Free information - this should be on the top of the page. Not at the bottom. These are trust builders. Does nothing if they are at the bottom.

- People who don't know what Bitcoins is are not going to buy the tshirts. There is no need to waste prime screen space in educating them about Bitcoins. They are not the audience you should be focusing on.

- Get rid of the social media interaction tools from the footer - twitter and facebook. Its a waste of time for an ecommerce website (unless you are using them to spread your "coupons" and gift certificates). Focus on sales. Not social media. Instead, move the Newsletter form over there.

- Reduce the choices you provide on the first page. The less options you provide, the more sales you'll make. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/your-money/27shortcuts.html?_r=0 (Read about the jam research case study. When people were given a choice of 24 jams, 3% of them bought. But when they were given a choice of 6 jams, 30% of them bought.)
I would recommend showing just 6 tshirts. And then providing a "More" button that shows 6 more tshirts dynamically below that.

- On the home page, I would also only show the top 6 "best selling" t-shirts. Don't showcase the latest 6 t-shirts. Or don't show random t-shirts. Show the highest selling ones.

- It would also be better to show the actual tshirts. And not just the artwork. More people will buy when they can see what the tshirt looks like, and they don't have to imagine how it will look like.

- On the product page, have a "Buy Now" button. Not just a "Add to cart" button. This will drastically reduce confusion and increase sales.

- Get rid of the "Add to compare" and "Send to friend" options. Reduce the number of call to actions you provide. Because the more call to actions you provide, the less sales you will make.

- The checkout page. Don't ask people to signup before they make a sale. This really reduces the conversion rates - even when you offer Guest checkouts. (Instead, automatically sign them up and send them a password on their first sale - to make repeat purchases easier.)  Source: How removing the signup option increased sales by 300 million for one company: http://www.uie.com/articles/three_hund_million_button

- Having a 4 page checkout process will reduce the conversion rates, as more people will abandon the checkout process. Its better to just have a 1 page checkout - and have a longer checkout form. Source: http://www.abtests.com/test/65001/other-for-single-page-vs--multi-step-checkout


Seriously, spend some time going through the checkout processes of huge multi million ecommerce websites. They test things constantly and know what is working.  This is a good primer: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/40-checkout-page-strategies/

Please don't spend time on "features." Minimal features actually work the best in increasing conversion rates and sales.
(Product search, Buy now, 1 page checkout, upselling, and coupons. This is all an ecommerce website requires.)

Instead, focus on increasing the product line beyond just tshirts. Here is what I think bitcoin evangelists would buy:

Hats.
Keychains.
Stickers.
Posters explaining to people what Bitcoins is.
3 fold brochures that people can give to their friends that explains what Bitcoins is (you can sell in packages of 50 brochures for $30 or so...)

And work on bulk sales. Allowing companies to make bulk purchases of 100 units or so for a discount.

Having multiple products to sell also increases our ability to upsell. When people buy a tshirt - we can ask them to buy a best selling keychain while they are checking out.

Excellent suggestions.

Will execute on most of these.

Please feel free to ask me any ecommerce related questions you may have. I have a lot of experience in the field and can help.

Now you made me pull some of my asks ;)

https://i.imgur.com/7SkQ4VQ.png

Upgraded us to Premium account on eBay, due to them limiting the quantity of items we can put on our store.

We were only selling our old products on eBay, we are now in the process of loading those items on our store, and cleaning up the site.

I have a big feature coming to the site! Stay tuned!

Me too!

Also, I'd love to see more understated design options.  The giant cartoony look is a bit loud for my style.  Handsom, clean, smart.  I'm guessing I'm not the only one.  You're probably already working toward this, but thought I'd mention it anyways.

I'm guessing Bitcoin Pride's busiest days are ahead.  As Bitcoin gets pulled into the spotlight with increasing news coverage and legislative assaults, Bitcoin awareness will be a huge.  Bitcoin Pride could play a powerful role here.  I'd love to see design options that dispel common negative Bitcoin myths, and serve to spark conversations on the merits of Bitcoin and free global exchange.  For example dispelling the myth that Bitcoin's most common uses are not gambling and meth, but donations and savings, or whatever the current hot topic of the month may be.

HUGE announcement coming soon!

This announcement is going to drive community involvement through the roof stay tuned!

The more recent suggestions in this thread are very much on point.

Thanks for being proactive and advertising.

I haven't seen very many ads on /r/bitcoin - so you could have just spent the minimum amount and still received the same coverage (as reddit doesn't charge on a CPC or a CPM basis, but divides the total ad revenue from all advertisers and divides it by total page views.) $320 for 16 days may have been good enough as far as I can tell.

Please do add a graphic to the ad.
And please use advanced google analytics to track the sales we receive because of reddit.
- Use http://bitcoinpride.com/?utm_source=reddit to the URL you are inputting in reddit.
- Setup Goals tracking in your Google analytics.

This way, we will know if we should continue with Reddit advertising.

EDIT:
Reddit says the minimum $30 / day

Will do on analytics campaign.

http://www.reddit.com/comments/19iv6f/bitpride_bitcoin_tshirts/

Sorry to be pissing on your pie/pride/parade, but what I take away from that list is not that you average 70% margins but that your income is freefalling. Less than half in two months?! Ouch.

We won 2 ad-spots in Bitcoin Talks latest ad auction.

http://content.screencast.com/users/FlipPro/folders/Jing/media/024ed33b-bc48-4331-87c9-e9d5399426ca/2013-03-03_2208.png

Cost 16 BTC.

Exactly. Don't wanna be running around like a teenager with huge screaming comic stuff on my shirt. ;)

I'd love to see some t-shirts with "famous" quotes from bitcointalk, like this:


But not HUGE, but small, like on the chest to the left, where the hears is ;)

Or a site that lets you design your own tshirt.

Exactly, as suggested before. This was mainly to illustrate the need for that ;)

Awesome, it's so nice to see you're taking suggestions seriously. And quick you are! Congrats.

I hope you like the solution we came up with :).

I want us to continue expanding Bitcoin Pride more and more as time goes on.

We don't want to get carried away and put all of our eggs in one basket though.

Expect this in the next 4 weeks:

1. Increase in product diversification.
2. More payment processors.
3. More options to buy Bitcoin including Physical options like Casascius Physical Bitcoins and Bitbills.
4. Paid advertising testing and tweaking.
5. Site-wide SEO and product description optimization.
6. Site-wide conversion rate optimization.

If you have any questions please do let me know.

Thank you,

God Bless

This sounds awesome!

The approvals will always be made by the admins of the site.

I have approved your awesome submission! Voting takes place in the form of likes.

The more votes/discussion your design has, the higher the chance for winning!

Awesome, I'll share it up!

Very cool!  Thanks for being so responsive to community input. 

I made several submissions, a few hours ago, but don't see them outside of my "Customer Pictures" account. 

A question:  Are these submissions to serve as the actual files that will be used on the products, or just to serve as reference art from which the vectorized files will be created?  I submitted my designs under the assumption that they would serve as reference art, not the actual vectorized files that would go directly on the products.

I see BitcoinPride ads on Reddit :)

There are a few questions asked in the comments section - you may want to get to them.

http://www.reddit.com/comments/19iv6f/bitcoinpride_tshirts_wear_satoshi_on_your_sleeve/

sorry for OT: but did you guys see this rendering? https://i.imgur.com/0awvfFJ.jpg

(from http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1a03gu/as_a_3d_artist_this_is_my_take_on_the_bitcoin/)

**Announcing Weekly Dividends**

Starting today BitPride will start paying out weekly dividends!

The first dividend payout today was for 13.01BTC .

Here is BitPrides P&L statement for the weeks 3/1/2013 - 3/8/2013

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8jhaL_imOkwbU1zTlRiclVEWlE/edit?usp=sharing

Expect the next dividend payment to be on 1/18, as we are a bit behind on our accounting due to the high demand and rapid expansion of our site.

We have many new and exciting things going on with the company including a $300 design contest going on here http://bitcoinpride.com/index.php/submit-design.html , an active ad campaign that's showing real results on Reddit and one here on Bitcointalk, and lots of designing and development going on behind the scenes!

If you would like to find out more about the virtual asset please visit here.
https://bitfunder.com/asset/BitPride

Thanks.

Weekly dividends is a pretty good idea.
0.85% dividend per week is pretty awesome too - if this continues.

Keep up the good work.

Why is the dividend payed twice ? Is it an error ?

The amount was wrong, so he had me correct it into one dividend.

I realise you must be very busy at the moment, so apologies for this distraction, but is there any news on when this week's dividend might happen?
Thanks.

Bump. No div, no communication. What gives?

Sorry guys! I had family fly in town and the dividend was taking longer to calculate due to an EXTREME increase in demand for both Bitcoins and TShirts...

I will be releasing the dividends shortly.

Again sorry for the pause in communication.

Thanks for the update. 

How are your new t-shirt designs coming along with the ideas and designs your getting from the design competitions?

Dividends for 3/9/13 - 3/22/13 released.

Profit: 15.50 BTC

Next dividend payout: March 31st.

P&L Statement
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8jhaL_imOkwNVYwSzR4TFlveEU/edit?usp=sharing

Too lazy to submit a design, but make a Silk Roads one.

Are you serious? I don't think dread pirate roberts would sue him.

What do you mean by "this website"? Bitcoinpride or SR?

Nice dividend. Amounts to roughly 1% at current share price if I calculated correctly. Per week! Thanks, great work!

https://i.imgur.com/PSrbGfKl.png (https://i.imgur.com/PSrbGfK.png)

these shirt-links in the footer should be clickable links, no?

EDIT: I also suggest to put either "bitcoinpride" and/or "bitpride" into the subject of this thread. I had trouble finding it. (although my bitcointalk search skills suck, I think others might have problems, too)

Dividends paid 7.50 BTC.

P&L report should be out tomorrow.

Also we have been working on alot of fixes/changes on our site.

We will be migrating it to an independent VPS (as we have had many users with DNS server issues. )

Stay tuned for more updates soon.

Bitcoin Pride, you guys should contact Marc Fennell (https://twitter.com/marcfennell) to see if you can make a deal to use his designs for your t-shirts!  If you haven't seen the awesome video he did yet, check it out.  http://vimeo.com/63502573

Any word on the dividind for last week?

Nah, Bitpride, btcQwik and Ziggap appear to be having some private competition to see who can miss deadlines/fail to produce accounts/not deliver on dividends the most.  Ziggap's ahead but the other two are definitely putting up some strong competition.

BtcQuick lost, it seems. Let's hope we're next :P

Can you put up the P&L and the sales numbers so that folks can valuate it and figure out for themselves if 0.00004BTC per share is worth it or not?

Sorry for the delays on the P&L's. We have 2 weeks worth of reports on the way.

Thanks for all the patience folks. We are excited to have all of you by our side during this explosive growth.

A dividend of 0.00000057 BTC/share was paid on bitfunder.

Taking price of 0.00004 BTC/share (the new offer), this translates to 1.425 % /week = 108% /year.

Seems like a good investment to me.

(those are just numbers, not projections of future profit)

Question is: are those actual profits?  It's easy to dividend out some of your capital (by not deducting all costs before claiming a profit) to try to attract interest in your shares.  Also remember their sales are in USD (even if transacted in BTC they set prices in USD) - so with BTC having fallen sharply the same USD sales as in rpevious perod would generate more BTC profit.  Whilst that's great it has to be taken into account when looking at growth - as we can't expect BTC to lose 2/3 of its value every week.

Some weeks back they paid for advertising on reddit.  If thats not counted in when working out profits then the figures are rather deceptive.  And that's a problem I've seen on lots of BTC "businesses" - that they calculate profits in a very perverse manner.

What I want to see in accounts is a statement of all accounts at the start of a period and then a statement for the end - with profit being the difference between the two.  Unfortunately what we often get (mining companies being the worse for this) is income less immediate operational costs being all called profit - and dividended out causing a fall in book value.  That leads to the situation where new investment regularly has to be raised to continue paying out old investment - a business model that has only ever worked well for ponzis.  Alternative being a fall in share price followed by collapse when capital is finally depleted (see Ziggap).

I'm hoping that isn't the case here - and these represent actual profits with no loss to the capital of the company.  But I'm not optimistic that's the case given the rush to shovel out more shares without even publishing the accounts.

Incidentally, has anyone worked out what "overwhelming demand" these shares are being sold in response to?  Does the company have an overwhelming demand for more capital maybe?  It certainly isn't an overwhelming demand for more shares - as there's only two sizable Bids up at non-trivial prices.  And both those are well below last IPO batch price.  There was one decent sized panic-buy after the dividend was paid but otherwise no indication of any significant demand whatsoever.

CURRENT P&L REPORT FOR @BITPRIDE

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8jhaL_imOkwS0Zkai1TdW1NQVU/edit?usp=sharing

--------

We apologize for the delays.. We have been extremely busy filling orders, and integrating several new features to our website.

Congratulations to the winner of the design contest for winning $325 prize.

Look out for his T-Shirt coming soon for sale at our store!

Because of the wild fluctuating price we have removed the buy now cart, and instead are using a web form for all BTC related purchases. This allows us to communicate to our customers directly and set up deals that are more beneficial for the company. Because of the increased attention we want to direct our focus to our customers and ensure that all outstanding orders are filled.

Please stay tuned for more updates!

-Flip

???
I am unable to open the P&L Report
All I get is a blank screen (using Chrome, latest version).

Is it just me, or is there a problem with the excel sheet?

You need to be logged in to your Google account before it will open.

 ::)
Ahhh, thanx :)

I would buy a shirt if it had the silk road logo..

No dividends for last week?  ???

There hasn't been weekly dividends if you check the dividend tab.

If the owner is 'too busy' he should 'unannounce' weekly dividends.

Any updates?

Share price isn't doing particularly well, FlipPro.  What's the deal, brother?  Any updated financial statements for April?

FlipPro, whats happening mate?  Keep us posted here.  Even a quick 'We are busy, and its coming' would go a long way...

I guess it went to zero in the interim.

Also would like to see an update soon please? As previously stated anything will do just let us know what's going on...

Latest Dividend Payment will 15 BTC P&L coming soon.

Hello BTC Talk,

I am pleased to announce that we are now caught up with 75% of our orders and we would like to thank all of you for your continued patience and cooperation. One of the issues that we have been experiencing @ BitPride has been excessive book-keeping due to our weekly dividend schedule, thus effectively consuming most of the businesses time and money. This is unsustainable because the orders are coming in from many different places (online and locally), and because of this we require real humans to organize prints, interact with clients, and fulfill all of these orders in a timely and professional manner. This forces resources to constantly be placed in one area of the company leaving every other area briefly unattended. For this reason we have decided effective immediately to halt weekly dividend payments, and begin to send them out on monthly basis like originally planned in the virtual offering. This will allow us to prioritize all of our t-shirt & Bitcoin orders (important for our continued longevity), and give us the opportunity to put the focus back on our customers. This does not mean smaller payouts, and if anything it may actually help us by putting the focus back on the things that matter the most so that we can begin to grow our profits on a more consistent basis. What this absolutely means for us is reduced accounting costs, and increased productivity in customer service and the product development departments of our company. We appreciate all of your questions and concerns and will be ready to answer any questions you may have.

Thank You

Awesome! I am glad that it is going so well, thanks for the update ;D

Financial statements are all out. There is 1 report pending for the last dividend payout.

Hope that helps. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8jhaL_imOkwS0Zkai1TdW1NQVU/edit?usp=sharing

Thank you but I guess I'll have to be the dick here and ask some hard questions.

BitPride has never had weekly dividends. No 2 dividends have ever been paid in 8 days time frame.

Also, the P&L statement we get to see is 1 table with no details. And there is no P&L statement for the last dividend payment since... there are no numbers since 14 April. If it took you time to get it done, why not share it with us too?

It shouldn't take you more than 10 minutes a day to figure out the cashflow situation of that day.
i. How many orders have come in - the total amount earned.
ii. How many orders have been fulfilled.
iii. How much new inventory has to be bought. What was the cost of that inventory.

Why this much takes you so long a time is something hard to understand.

I would appreciate instead of making this an excuse that you let us know the real hardships faced. Maybe some of us can be of help.

You're having problems fulfilling orders, ask people about it. If you've never done P&L and cashflow management before - ask someone over here and they can guide you.

I like that you listen and take action. But asking the right questions and knowing when you need help is equally important.

Wisard, it's important to note that even though we have been a bit late (due to volume), we are current on ALL of our dividend payouts.

If you look at the P&L statements and the corresponding dates you will see that last weeks payments were combined.

We will have the numbers out from 4/14-4/26 soon.

I have been in the process (as I said a few posts before) of setting up new fulfillment partnerships with local printers so that we can streamline the process and cut time & money. We intend to automize 90% of the business, and when we do we may approach weekly dividends once again.

Thank you again for your continued patience.

Sure.

I'm not concerned about dividends being monthly or not.

I was concerned that accounting is taking the bulk of your time. And that we are having fulfillment issues with buying and selling of bitcoins. (I see that we still have a form for it - which I'm sure reduces the number of orders.)

Please be aware that my post was meant to be in a helpful nature. My main point was: you shouldn't hesitate in telling us about the problems we are facing - because some of us may be able to help solve these problems.

And you shouldn't wait to post only when you have happy news to share.

Duh. Monthly dividends is the standard for a reason.


It's indeed very easy to understand: finance is a profession.

Have you ever run an ecommerce store?

FlipPro, I'm a shareholder (albiet my holdings are very, very small).  I've got my degree in economics and finance and I'd be willing to go over and audit your books like DeaDTerra does for usagi.  Contact me either here or Twitter if you're interested.

flippro, you should change the thread title, it still says "Announcing Weekly Dividends".

As a shareholder I would welcome this offer being taken.

I can provide an official pdf copy of my university transcripts too.

Bitcoin Pride will be @ Bitcoin Convention 2013!

http://www.bitcoin2013.com/

We will be selling T-Shirts @ the BIPS (http://bips.me) booth at Bitcoins 2013.

We will be have 200 shirts at hand with us ($4,000 in inventory) available for sale.

The profits of the Bitcoin 2013 sale will be included in this months dividend payout!

Also we apologize for the lack of communication. We have been really hard at work, gearing up for the convention, and catching up on all of our outstanding orders.

If you are a customer and have not received your tracking number yet please wait 24-48 hours and we should have that ready for you.

Orders from this point forward should start processing normally.

wait dividend ;D

Dividend for month of May released.

18 BTC in profits paid out.

Profit and loss coming soon.

FlipPro;

I sent an email two days ago through the support email on the website and never got a response.  Can I get some customer support please?  Unresponsive customer support makes me think maybe this isn't the best place to park my money.  Willing customers don't wait around forever to have their questions answered.  Eventually they look for another vendor.

so guys, what's going on here?

People report massive problems with customer support and delivery (Watch out for BitcoinPride! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=182218.0)), dividends keep falling (albeit BTC/USD is stable or even favorable), even halving compared to last month.

FlipPro doesn't say a word here for over 2 months and the value of the shares on bitfunder plummets.

FlipPro, why not just explain to us what's up?

I'm here guys, I have been busy with a bunch of different (but very very important) projects, I already responded to Benjamin in an email, as he had an issue with one of the shirts we sent him, we paid for his shipping to send it back to us and now he's waiting on his reprint.

I am happy to say that we have caught up with 99% of all of our orders and have over $800 in inventory (shirts) that we will be selling here on the forum. These shirts are IN HAND so it means they will not be drop shipped and should generate some nice profits from us this month.

Also, I am working on a deal with http://www.bluecotton.com/ (one of our shirt providers) to take all of the work off our hands so that I can do whats important for the site (marketing), and create a pathway for us to grow. We are also talking to them about giving us access to their design studio http://www.bluecotton.com/studio.html so that we can put our designs on multiple products (not only shirts) and people can customize it anyway they like.

This deal with blue cotton will not only make the business fully turn-key (as originally envisioned), but also increase our profits by giving customers the freedom to create their own products (this has already been requested in here) anyway they like.

Product expansion & revamping is also in the works, however we will not add any new products, until we have a streamlined approach to delivering them to our customers. We have had obvious problems in the past with fulfillment, and I am trying to rectify that, as it is the most detrimental thing that can happen to our business (lack of fulfillment). Customers should have their products 2 weeks from the time they order, and anything else is unacceptable.

If any investors have any issues please contact me directly, as I wish to be as transparent as possible with the asset. I too want the dividends to stay healthy, and I am working hard to preserve our little cash cow.

It's good to hear there is progress going on behind the scenes. In fact it's good to hear anything at all ;).

I'm glad this is not as bad as it seemed at the moment, price has recovered quite a bit, too.

keep going ;-)

So you raised thousands of BTC from IPO and hold $800 of stock?  What's the rest of capital being used for - or has the rest all vanished?

Pretty sure he was just selling profit shares of an existing business. As in funds are not used to launch anything/expand, just to acquire rights to profits which the current owner sells.

This is 100% true.

However, it is also true that all the Bitcoins I got in the IPO 7 months ago (was not thousands of BTC, and was actually less than 400 BTC at roughly $20 at the time) were all spent and documented on marketing/seo/development/contests/promotions/real merchandise/bitcoin convention/ and general business expenses to keep bitpride operational (we took $4000 in inventory with us to the Bitcoin convention alone).

Also it's important to note that I reinvested my own money (over $10,000) in the company two months ago to buy usb miners and sold them off on our eBay BitPride account. That was able to sustain our dividends through June while I caught up on backed t-shirt orders. The USB block Erupters have plummeted on eBay recently (due to mining difficulty) so again I am looking for more revenue generating models to bring more profits into the business.

I am here to answer any relevant questions, and take any serious suggestions for profit growth you all may have.

Thank you all for your concerns!

I suggest making a few new minimalist and inexpensive designs and marketing them as such. Getting the message out about bitcoin is important and if the shirts are so expensive Bitcoin pride may lose a lot of potential customers.

I don't have any good suggestions for marketing in mind.

Just my 2 satoshis.

I agree, minimalist white tees are some of our best sellers. We are currently having issues with our ebay account, as we had several charge-backs from the Bitcoin USB orders. Doing my best to get that back up, in the mean time the sites doing ok, but we definitely need to do more on the marketing.

Fight every chargeback you get. You shipped physical. They didn't pay. End of story.
Good luck!

If only they paid in BTC...

OK, I'm just brainstorming here. What about a shirt that changes monthly and has an issue number like a comic book?

In this shirt you get the most important  or relevant bitcoin news story turned into a beautiful piece of art (on the shirt) and it gets changed every 15th day of the month....

For example a recent shirt could have a German theme to it, and something close to: Germany recognizes Bitcoin.

The shirt could also have the price of bitcoin somewhere and other details that stay in the same place in its layout.

The shirt could also be the most inexpensive/standard shirt in the catalogue making people want to buy and keep buying it.


This may go a long way in building a customer base with people buying the monthly shirt in a row getting a small discount.




What is the thread in which you're selling Bitcoin Pride shirts in the forums? PM?
I may just buy my first bitcoin shirt in the next few days.  ;D


Off Topic:   

There are many great products to be made in the BTC world such as a physical wallet (comes with most of the blockchain, enough memory and a way to sync from a wireless connection from a nearby cellphone or Wireless network (or connecting with its very own SIM card) Benefits of a physical wallet (extra security, maybe standardized offline backups through a usb port and automatic backup option)

An Electronic vehicle charging station that accepts bitcoin. (It probably already exists by the time you're reading this (or even before I typed it))

A file hosting service with quick download speeds that charges in Satoshis (0.0000001 BTC)

A jukebox in a cafe/ restaurant that takes Bitcoins.

A vending machine that vends money for bitcoins that vends bitcoins and money. People would be able to put in USD or BTC. (in a local business)

An electronic rechargeable coin that stores bitcoin safely offline (For storing large amounts of bitcoin offline safely).

(The first and last device in this list would work together really well, the last device would require far less memory and capability)


I can edit that last part out if this is too off-topic.

so i just went to check out the featured products and have to say it´s pretty disappointing. what happened to the idea of minimalist designs? is anyone even taking care of the shop?
KonstantinosM provided some pretty good ideas.
i mean it really shouldn´t be too much to ask for (as an investor) that you have a couple of minimal desgins. to me it seems like the makers behind bitpride have better things to do than taking care of this project.  :-\

any comments regarding bitfunder situation? Will the asset fulfill the requirements to remain listed?

Would you please let us know whether you are a USA based business and whether you are going to be listed on bitfunder?

+1

I have been in talks with several knowledgable people about the current situation at Bitfunder and the associated BitPride shares.

After careful deliberation I have decided to sell the asset and all of the related intellectual property.

I will be conducting a sale right here on the forum, and begin taking offers from private buyers.

Whatever the site is sold for, the proceeds will be evenly distributed amongst all 50,000,000 shares.

Whoever buys the asset will have the option to either take it down or re-list it at a fair market value.  

I will be posting up details about the sale as soon as possible.

If any of you have questions about whats taking place please do not hesitate to PM me.

Thank you all.

marked...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=320690.0

Tell all your friends!  :)

So you will sell the business and distribute the profits among shareholders on BitFunders?

The deadline of the shutdown of the site is approaching quite fast...

Checkout the auction, tell all your friends! https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=320690.0

I doublt I have friends interested...

"yo man 'tsup?"

"'tsup, dude. you got any weed?"

"nah. you want a t-shirt shop?"

"wuuut?"

no need to repeat that scene  ::)

Bitcoin Pride has sold for 21 BTC!

If you are a share holder PLEASE PM ME ASAP to turn in your shares, and collect your BTC!

Thank you all for your continued patience and cooperation.

If you're holding Bitpride Shares make sure you claim your payment!

Thank you

bump