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Hi all - sorry for all the issues with BTCDeals. I have (as titeuf_87 pointed out) been dealing with an urgent medical issue that has left my incapacitated from running the site - I'm not going to go in to details as it's far more personal than I care to divulge - but I assure you I have not been neglecting the site or people by choice. I have a lot of emails and people to follow up with and I am 100% aware of peoples concerns, frustrations and even anger. I will rectify all accounts that are having issues - you can send me a message on the support page, a private message here on the forums or even out in the open on this forum; I will answer all inquiries but be aware I am back logged and still not feeling completely up to spending too much time on my computer at this time as I continue to get better.

I apologize for this and wish I could have offered more assistance during this time and hope everyone understands I am doing my best to answer inquiries and follow up with missing or delayed orders.

In addition to this - the deals on the site for the next few days are all going to be repeats and I will probably mark them up quite a bit just to discourage sales so I can get things back on track;

Thanks,

Elliott / sublimnl / BTCDeals
admin@btcdeals.com

Errr, no that is not wrong. I want people to support Humble Bundle as well - think it's a great program and it deserves as much attention as possible. I also want to be compensated for my time - and my time, from a business perspective is not worth running orders for people who aren't willing to support Humble Bundle - I make it clear they can go elsewhere to get it cheaper if they so desire. I do take a cut, it's what makes it worthwhile for me as a business owner - even when the cut is low. Every single order (26 at this point in time) receives an email showing how their payment was broken down and based on what market rate I a based it off of - including what my cut came to. I have always run my business transparently and pride myself of my honesty. This same honesty is why I take a cut - I do pay the full amount, while I could easily do as some people are and pay the 0.01 per and pocket all of the donation. That is not who I am. I am happy doing this service for the little profit I am making, it's additional advertising for my site and hopefully will bring repeat customers on future deals who previously didn't know about my site.

Anyhow - I still wish you good luck - there is free market here - and people have a choice to go with me and my business while paying a small fee, or going with you without a fee. I welcome you as a competitor, and won't be changing my pricing structure - which you should see as a good thing because in the end it's the consumers choice and that could be a better deal for you.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery - just shows that you had a good idea

I honestly hadn't checked the forums when I had set up the deal on BTCDeals - and was already working on the code modifications to handle the set your price portion well before you posted. Good luck though - a bump for the competition

(Oh and just a side note - I won't be running the deal past tomorrow at noon, time to go back to my regular business model - you still have a little under 2 weeks until Humble Bundle is over with )

Hah, I work two blocks away from the location - will be there.

If shipping with Media Mail (you go to the USPS office and deal with it in a special envelope - don't use first class stamps) it costs approx $1.90 to ship a Blu-ray - but it's very slow shipping this route.

As I said, you can go ahead and pay a penny right on the site - I think they deserve more, so I imposed the minimum. If you feel like paying less you are free to do so directly on the site, or via someone else offering a similar service. I take 5% to make sure that when I assume the current rate is $14 to 1 BTC, and then it drops to $13.80 to 1 BTC, I am covered and not losing on the transaction - plus I am running a business in general. Hope that answers your questions

That was a quick bump

I love the idea of the Humble Indie Bundle - and the third such bundle just recently launched. The concept is that 5 indie developers are releasing their games, DRM free, with unrestricted licenses for Windows, Mac and Linux for whatever you are willing to pay for them. The games are of great quality and while not being released by major game publishers, they deserve all the attention possible.

For 48 hours, BTCDeals will be acting as a service to purchase your copy of the Humble Indie Bundle #3 using bitcoins. The minimum price is 0.25 BTC - only because I don't think these games deserve something - if you want to pay less you can always go directly to humblebundle.com

All orders are redeemed via a gift code that will be sent within 2 hours (unless I am sleeping - give me at least 6 hours then). The breakdown of the donation sent to Humble Bundle is as follows:

55% will be allocated to the developers
15% will be allocated to the EFF
15% will be allocated to Child's Play
10% will be allocated to Humble Bundle as a tip
5% will be kept by BTCDeals for service fees

More details on the Humble Bundle and the games available on https://www.btcdeals.com/ or the Humble Bundle site at http://www.humblebundle.com/

Wether you use BTCDeals to get it, or not - it's worth checking out and supporting this cause. It encourages indie developers to make great games, offer great cross-platform support and gives some to charities that matter.

Think of Bitcoins as your primary currency. Whatever you can buy and/or sell with your current currency can and will be bought and/or sold with Bitcoins. There are no restrictions in that sense... the only restrictions are legal ones but that is up to you on how you would approach that...

Considering the direction this thread went.

I have had a lot of fun running BTCDeals.com however it is starting to take up a lot more time than I have available which equates to a negative experience to the customer if I can't keep up with emails and orders in a swift and timely manner. The site is profitable, and a great following of customers who often make repeat purchases. I don't want to let it go and this is may not lead to a sale, but I am entertaining any legitimate offers if they are made.

This would be perfect for someone who has approx 8 to 10 hours a week available. As little as that sounds, working startup hours, commuting 3 hours a day and maintaining a married life does not easily afford me that time. This might be better suited for a single person, a college student, or someone who just can manage time more efficiently than I can.

What you would get:

  * The domain BTCDeals.com
  * The BTCDeals.com SSL certificate
  * The whole site's source code (PHP for the site, Perl for the automated emails and price updater)
  * The Amazon micro EC2 instance that it is running on that contains everything needed (site, db, scripts, bitcoind)
  * The mongodb database dump (of products and order history, past customer names and addresses would be stripped)
  * The Google Apps setup that hosts the email for BTCDeals.com
  * Some info on products, hints on maximizing your profits and other info
  * Support on the code and system for up to 3 months after hand-off

Details on actual profits, stats etc are available in PM for interested parties.

This is not going to be a quick thing or even anything at all - I will entertain offers, but in the end I might not sell at all unless it seems worthwhile.

If I were to sell, I would ideally want to sell to someone who is known in the community as at least being reliable. I have built this site up with a reputation to the customers and do not want to have it tarnished even if it's no longer mine.

To my existing customers - if I were to sell, IF - then all orders would be handled by me until a public hand-off would happen. I would support past orders after a sell off, and would not be passing your information on to the purchaser of the site except for leaving the order number and price paid. Address and name information would be cleared before handing off the site.

If anyone has any questions (potential buyers, or even concerned customers) feel free to shoot me a PM or via the contact form on BTCDeals.com or even in this thread... but please keep offers and talks about stats private.

That's more in regards to hiding your tracks, not hiding a website. You could "hide" a website by not tieing it to a domain name, just using an IP address and some odd port - but that just hides it from easy viewing - and even then someone can just link to it and it's found.

I highly recommend the Kasteel brown - which reminds me that I had requested it and never ordered.... Order being placed now!

Woot is the obvious inspiration for the site - and you ironically just missed our very first "Day of Deals" which is our version of a woot-off without completely ripping off the idea It ran from Friday the 1st of Jul, through Saturday the 2nd from 12 noon to 12 noon EST. Our format was one product every 20 minutes over the course of 24 hours. We even had a freebie mixed in there which sold out within a minute - though I think in the future I will attempt the mystery bag style approach as well.

Had you checked the site out one day before you would have been in the middle of the "woot off" The Android Set top box you mentioned was the product to follow all of that.


Oh and as of last night I have added a "side deals" section to the site which will serve as additional items that could either compliment the featured deal or are just additional mini deals. The side deals will always be under 1btc while the featured item will be of varying prices. Another addition includes the addition of a "past deals" section so people can see what they may have missed.

My suggestion is to always see it as business days - thus shaving off 2 days on most of those time spans you mention- and keep in mind in the U.S. it's a holiday - I know that doesn't mean anything to anyone else in the world, but if LR is run here then it affects you as well.

Hi - I run BTCDeals.com -

One of the suppliers I use is indeed DealExtreme. I do add a slight markup on the items (but if you do the math on most items, it's very little) for my time, overhead and risk - but mostly I run BTCDeals.com as my way to invest in to the bitcoin market. I cashout the value needed to cover my costs, while all profits I leave in bitcoins in a separate wallet that I keep as an investment. I'm pretty open about how I run the site and am more than happy to answer any questions (except the full list of suppliers I use)

It may seem obvious to just order directly from DX, but the service I intend to be offering is a way to purchase items with BTC instead of your personal currency and utilizing your bank or paypal accounts.

In the end it's up to you, the consumer - just trying to help fill a void in the bitcoin market, and obviously help myself be part of the bitcoin economy.

Thought I would post an update to the forums about some upgrades the site has received recently - besides the obvious day of deals which was a lot of fun

1) The site now automatically sends out confirmation emails once 5 or more confirmations have been made on a payment. This was one of the biggest complaints - and rightfully so. The confirmation email will now be sent as soon as the confirmations are there (it checks on a 15 minute interval) so in general you should get the confirmation email within an hour.

2) The site now uses a rolling weighted average of the market - so you may see the price fluctuate occasionally from the launch time to the final time. So even when MtGox hiccuped the other day with those two dips to 2.99, the site didn't go ballistic - had the price stayed down, well that's another story.

3) During the checkout process, when you are presented with the bitcoin address to send payment to, you can now click that address ad you will get a QR Code. This was requested by a user a while back, and I finally got around to implementing that.

4) The site has been given a wider layout and slight changes here and there in design (mostly minor - like renaming the top menu buttons, rewriting the about section completely).

5) A new "past deals" section has been added as per requested to show past deals that have elapsed. More updates to come in that area.

6) Just added a side deals bar - this makes sense in the wider layout and allows me to showcase additional deals every day. These will be updated every hour in the very near future, and will sometimes be related to the current deal, or completely unrelated. The deals on the side deals may not be as good of a deal as when they are featured, if they ever are. The featured item will always be the best deal on the site - just something to keep in mind.

More updates to come - and always welcome to hearing other suggestions!

You found a mass conspiracy in all the miners - even the open source ones - people just don't bother checking the source code.

I am assuming you are referring to the line "slowDownMiningBy(85);" where 85 is the variable you change to slow things down. I would certainly be fearful of your life. That's serious business. I am only bringing it up because you did first. They can't kill us all!