Bitcoin Forum

Hi all,

Announcing my new project.. Bitcoin Counsel

Primarily its a business directory of all the Bitcoin related businesses that are available.  I know we have quite a few similar sites already, thebitcoinreview.com being one of the largest but what sets this new site apart from the rest is I intend to form a small counsel of trusted Bitcoin enthusiasts to assist with maintaining an up to date database and offer revenue sharing to that counsel.

My vision is the counsel will be able to provide an accurate but diverse view of our economy.  I also hope to put individual counsel members in a position to maintain seperate categories and benefit from greater revenue if they bring in more visitors to their category.

Using click counts and Counsel member rankings etc i'm hoping the Top20 charts will start to show an accurate list of high quality and reliable businesses where you can spend your hard earned bitcoins.

I have a few different models for advertising on the site, just check the services page for more details.  Nothing is automated as yet but if you want to start advertising now just PM me here and we can set something up manually until the automated system is in place.

If your interested in being a member of the counsel, get in contact.

So please, check it out, let me know what you think. report bugs, provide feedback, ways to improve etc.

bitcoincounsel.com (http://bitcoincounsel.com)

Cheers

slothbag

Thanks Slothbag, just submitted a few sites.

The universe of Bitcoin is certainly disorganized and sites like yours are needed.

Expect some more to come your way ...very good initiative!

You should contact mem and/or mc_lovin about maintaining the gambling section.

I'm getting db errors when I click the links in the "categories" area.  ???

+1

Clicking on any category link gets a database error.

Another thing I'd like to see is some level of answering the question "who runs this?"

It takes a while for a new business to earn the trust of its customers, and one way new bitcoin businesses have of bootstrapping that trust is publishing information on their corporate structure -- who runs the biz, where is the biz incorporated, etc.

DB error should be fixed now.

My next feature is to add a business profile screen where business' can update their profile, this would be the perfect place for them to add some details about who runs it.


Yeah, I have thought that too.. I'd like to add the ability to make the categories customizable so that they can include the minbet maxbet etc.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

Added 3 that I could think of off the top of my head, including my own http://shiresilver.com

All the suggestions have been added.  Just click on the "Most recent" Top20 to see them.

Keep 'em coming!

Awesome! And I see the categories bug has been fixed too.

You should put the link in your forum signature.

Hi slothbag,

Added my sites.

Had a couple of recent outages over the past week, i've only been with the hosting company for a few weeks so i'm still working with them to improve the stability.

Added a few more suggested sites to the list.

As a interesting bit of information, the "Adult" section is receiving the most amount of views by far.

Nice, big surprise there!

A bunch more bitcoin businesses added.. including some of the prominent exchanges and advertisers.

I had intended to build my own advertising system for the site (and may still do), but for now, just to get some revenue coming in I have put up some Absolutely Fabulous BitcoinAdvertisers banners on the site.

Starting bid is FREE, so if you want your banner ads on the site for cheap, head on over to absolutely fabulous BitcoinAdvertisers and make a bid.

Counsel Ranked Top20 is now working, and this is now the first linked chart as it has a more meaningful list of bitcoin businesses than the "most clicked" chart.

Next item on my todo is to show the scores or percentage of score next to each listing.

Also note I will be seeking candidates to be part of the counsel in the coming weeks/months to make the counsel ranking less bias towards just my point of view :)

Scores now shown for "counsel ranked" and "most clicked" top 20's.

We've got about 160 bitcoin related businesses and sites listed now..

Project announcements are starting to come through too. So if you have a big launch coming up, drop me a PM and get it on the announcements page.

Also added the ubiquitous "donations address" at the bottom until I get the paid advertising up and running :)

Thanks for all the site suggestions so far, its been interesting looking a little closer at each of these sites as they're added. There is an amazing amount of work being done by the bitcoin community.

Great site! Well-needed indeed...

I think you may want to co-operate with GLBSE and maybe put detailed upcoming IPOs, as most of them are bitcoin-related businesses.

Well done :-)

Awesome site but could you please disclose how you're doing the "counsel ranking" and could you please sort "by categories" a bit more intuitively, the horizontally alphabet order is really hard to read and maybe add some icons next to each category..

Overall cool, keep it up!

Thanks, GLBSE already has an upcoming IPO list on their site, i'm not sure how I could provide further benefit by replicating that list.. I'll have a think about it.


Thanks, the "counsel ranking" is derived from a ranking of various aspects of a business/site that are summed up to a overall score, each counsel member will provide their own score.. the counsel ranking you see is the average score by all counsel members.  Though its important to note that I am the only counsel member at the moment so those scores are solely mine :)

I'll see what I can do about the categories.. I agree I find it confusing also.

I have added the concept of "Clean click throughs" to the site.  What this means is each listed business on the site gets 5 clean click throughs, the 6th person to click through to the business in question is presented with a brief popup suggesting that that particular business should perhaps become a supporter of Bitcoin Counsel.  Then the counter is reset and another 5 clean click throughs are allowed.

This shouldn't annoy the people clicking through cause it wont happen too often, and its easy to just click continue.  But hopefully also offer a little incentive for businesses to throw a few bitcents (0.1btc a month) to Bitcoin Counsel so I can hopefully employ some more counsel members.

Not for profit businesses / sites are exempt from popups, although they can still become supporters and get a cool gold star :)

Good news.. It is now possible to "show your love" for Bitcoin Counsel by using the new automated supporter payment link.

Simply find your business listing either in the charts or using the search box and click the "Clean click through" icon next to the business name.  There you will find a link on making a payment and an address to send bitcoins to.

There is also a new Top 20 chart called "Top 20 Supporters".. it is ranked by cumulative bitcoins sent as a supporter.  So at the moment a single Satoshi will get you on the chart :)

Any amount over 0.1 will provide unlimited clean click throughs for your business.

Cheers

Added a bunch more suggestions that have been queuing up.

Unfortunately I don't have the free time to really make this site as kick arse as I was hoping.  I'm kinda happy with it so far and its not costing much to keep it running so i'll keep it ticking along for now.

Anyone have any idea's / suggestions for making the site more useful?  Anyone with a grand plan (and more free time) want to take over?