[ActiveMining] The Official Active Mining Discussion Thread

[SoylentCreek]

I just PM'ed the following to Ken, and if you share my sentiments, I hope that you do the same.  We're talking about a company that the community helped completely turn around.  I see no reason, that we can not be vocal enough to make this happen.  Fingers crossed.

Ken,

We've spoken a time or two in the past, and I have been with you since AMC had lift off.  Before I go on, I should say that I have nearly a decades worth of experience in design and marketing.  I am writing you in the hope that you would reconsider your position on the matter of the VMC logo and website.  As of this moment, two board members have presented two separate options that work beautifully with one another to help solidify your company's image. 

The first comes from user hazryder, in the form of a beautiful, modern looking logo that helps implant the thought of, "This company has really taken it's time to focus on their branding.  Maybe I should consider buying hardware from them."  To be as polite as possible, while also being blunt, hazryder's logo is far superior to the one that you are currently operating under, which looks incredibly dated from a design standpoint.

Moving on, we have lewicky, who has worked diligently to build a fantastic looking website, that not only looks great, but is also fast, simple and professional.  I will be 100% honest, I do not hate the current VMC website.  I think that it serves it's purpose, and looks moderately clean.  I am however, strongly against the decision to implement very campy artwork, such as this one directly on the front page.



Again, not to sound incredibly rude, but when I see this, the message to me is that this is a company that is being run by a guy living out of his mom's basement, who just pirated his first copy of photoshop.  In no way do I get the vibe that this is a professional company, that could potentially be worth millions. 

I sincerely hope that you will reconsider your decision, and at least focus test with the various options.  At the end of the day, it comes down to the market's decision on whether a company succeeds or not.  And right now, I feel that VMC is in need of a major marketing overhaul.  Branding and marketing is just as critical to a company as operating efficiency.  It is for this reason that Hollywood invests just as much if not more on prints and advertising as a film's production budget for every blockbuster that they make.  Word of mouth is great, but bums in seats are much better.  In the case of VMC, we might be able to fill a demand for chips and hardware for early adopters desperate for 28nm tech, but once that market has dried up (and trust me, it will), casual miners will be the ones who will determine who comes out ahead.  The thing about the casual market, is that they do not focus all of their attention on raw specs.  Instead, they typically turn to whomever is wrapped in the prettiest package.  You can look at Apple if you feel there is any question to that logic.

Thank you for your time.

[1714735809]

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[drawingthesun]

Normally you seem reasonable but isn't that a bit harsh?

The dividends has to be at least the IPO price, otherwise it could be simply be paid out of shareholders money (even then, an falling BTC/USD could create inflated divs). Considering the discussion on the Avalon refund, it is actually likely.
A bet on share price is also very hard too, because only a few shares are traded; the big investors can't all sell their shares.

It's based on history of previous securities, and the fact that in the contract there is "The first 10,000,000 ActiveMining shares have the privilege of getting all profits until BTC0.0025/share is paid, starting from the day when dividends begin to be paid."

What was the IPO for ActiveMining, I can't find it anywhere.

I thought that the IPO was 0.0025 in which case 0.003 by march marks over 200% per year returns on IPO.

If the IPO was 0.0025 and then we can expect 100% return in 3 years. Thats a good investment.

I am wrong if the IPO was a lot higher than 0.0025

[dhenson]

Normally you seem reasonable but isn't that a bit harsh?

The dividends has to be at least the IPO price, otherwise it could be simply be paid out of shareholders money (even then, an falling BTC/USD could create inflated divs). Considering the discussion on the Avalon refund, it is actually likely.
A bet on share price is also very hard too, because only a few shares are traded; the big investors can't all sell their shares.

It's based on history of previous securities, and the fact that in the contract there is "The first 10,000,000 ActiveMining shares have the privilege of getting all profits until BTC0.0025/share is paid, starting from the day when dividends begin to be paid."

What was the IPO for ActiveMining, I can't find it anywhere.

I thought that the IPO was 0.0025 in which case 0.003 by march marks over 200% per year returns on IPO.

If the IPO was 0.0025 and then we can expect 100% return in 3 years. Thats a good investment.

I am wrong if the IPO was a lot higher than 0.0025

The original IPO was on bitfunder under the name AMC.  It was for .0005 (yes that was three zero's).

[drawingthesun]

The original IPO was on bitfunder under the name AMC.  It was for .0005 (yes that was three zero's).

So they only raised 5,000 Bitcoin from the IPO? Damn I thought we had more invested than Labcoin (7,000 Bitcoin invested)

I thought that the IPO was 0.0025 in which case 0.003 by march marks over 200% per year returns on IPO.

No that would be 120%. 0.0025 (100%) might have been enough as it would be hard to return 100% of the capital anyway.
But it's still pretty much the only way to state profitability; share price can't be a good measure as many can't sell them without moving the price down by a lot. It also measures market sentiment, not hard facts - which is what I'm about!

But if the IPO was 0.0005 then demanding 0.003 return by mid year is not really fair.

I can understand the bitbet if ActiveMining's IPO was 0.01 or something like that. But if the shares at IPO were really so cheap then I can't see why 0.003 means return on investment. Even now if you buy a share at 0.003 and in 3 years you end up with 0.0025 in dividends, thats still 25% a year return.

Also, what happens after the 0.0025 dividend is paid? Does the company get to start taking a dividend too?

[tom.hashemi]

http://vmctest.com

DO NOT PLACE ORDERS

Few notes:
-The support page is laid out but inoperative.
-Ordering through Coinbase does work.
-Pricing is not indicative of current prices.
-Footer is not fleshed out.
-Emails come through with HTML, since an SMTP mail server was not hooked up to it.

Built it in 3 weeks while home from work staying up to 4 am most nights.

Fully AJAX (quick loads, no page refreshes)

Logo:
hazryder https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=84063

Splash:
knybe  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=24307

Notes:
Check out the Fast-Hash Builder on the products page.

Fully mobile.

Offered this to Ken 2 weeks ago for free, since it was supposed to coincide with the press release. This was turned down because it did not run off of the PrestaShop shopping cart software. The way the 2 are built makes them completely incompatible. I offered again to make the Prestashop modules for free, but was turned down. He has the same design team that did the SEO on the current site, working on the rebuild (I'm told that he was rebuilding it, all I have seen changed so far is the splash and the ... logo).

It doesn't have a robust back end. That could have been built out in the future.

I like this a lot - clean, simple, presentable

[pheaonix]

really liking the website

nice and presentable and attractive

[VinceSamios]

http://vmctest.com

DO NOT PLACE ORDERS

Few notes:
-The support page is laid out but inoperative.
-Ordering through Coinbase does work.
-Pricing is not indicative of current prices.
-Footer is not fleshed out.
-Emails come through with HTML, since an SMTP mail server was not hooked up to it.

Built it in 3 weeks while home from work staying up to 4 am most nights.

Fully AJAX (quick loads, no page refreshes)

Logo:
hazryder https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=84063

Splash:
knybe  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=24307

Notes:
Check out the Fast-Hash Builder on the products page.

Fully mobile.

Offered this to Ken 2 weeks ago for free, since it was supposed to coincide with the press release. This was turned down because it did not run off of the PrestaShop shopping cart software. The way the 2 are built makes them completely incompatible. I offered again to make the Prestashop modules for free, but was turned down. He has the same design team that did the SEO on the current site, working on the rebuild (I'm told that he was rebuilding it, all I have seen changed so far is the splash and the ... logo).

It doesn't have a robust back end. That could have been built out in the future.

This is absolutely fantastic! The best mining hardware sales site I've seen - the fast hash one builder console is bloody excellent.

I think its fair to say it's Ken's duty to act in the best interests of his shareholders, and I think its likewise fair to say this new site concept is better than any shareholder could hope for and streaks ahead of the old POS (sorry, thats the most accurate term for it) - therefore, Ken, For the love of god implement this new site. It won't take much if any effort on your part other than to say "yes" and wangle some DNS settings.

[ffssixtynine]

Add $/GH to the items in the store Lewicki. A lot of people look at that (I know the pricing will be painfully obvious that it isn't competitive right now) but hopefully that will persuade Ken to also reduce the price and round the numbers for easy math.

K.I.S.S!
"Keep it simple stupid!"

+1

Pricing need to be competitive. I have no doubt that Ken knows this.

Remember this is not a final site at all (although we could have rolled one out quickly and gradually updated, via a beta site!). We also had a lot of content written up that isn't on there. We wanted this before the eASIC release, partly why we were so busy working all hours.

We also completely redid a pricing and product details/strategy and wanted a vastly improved marketing approach, particularly to miners and press.

Ken is aware of $gh/s comprisons because I created a big spreadsheet with an awful lot of data in it for costs, prices, margins, competitor comparisons, and more. I can't share it because it contains confidential information. That's why we got the original pricing changed because it was, quite literally, all over the shop, made no sense, and too high for that point in time.

Ken did listen and made a lot of changes (but did them on a live site and without a proper announcement etc, sheesh).

The updated products and prices weren't what we suggested but they were an improvement. We didn't want the expansion boxes (pricing is to high, current website makes them so complicated to work out), had a different and cheaper/simpler hardware plan, and suggested a nicer, cheaper form factor for the lower end as well.

Ken's engineering is genuinely good and the chips should be good, don't be fooled by his curious marketing techniques and fud on here. Power usage and reliability (including of cooling solution) is important as well in costing things up.

Of course, Ken has had several weeks of sales so he may not be worried about updating existing stuff at this point. That's the other thing to remember in all this. At the moment he seems a very happy chap and that's not always been true.

Re: share transfers. It's a no go. Have to stick with bitfunder.

[crumbs]

Add $/GH to the items in the store Lewicki. A lot of people look at that (I know the pricing will be painfully obvious that it isn't competitive right now) but hopefully that will persuade Ken to also reduce the price and round the numbers for easy math.

K.I.S.S!
"Keep it simple stupid!"

+1

Pricing need to be competitive. I have no doubt that Ken knows this.

Remember this is not a final site at all (although we could have rolled one out quickly and gradually updated, via a beta site!). We also had a lot of content written up that isn't on there. We wanted this before the eASIC release, partly why we were so busy working all hours.

We also completely redid a pricing and product details/strategy and wanted a vastly improved marketing approach, particularly to miners and press.

Ken is aware of $gh/s comprisons because I created a big spreadsheet with an awful lot of data in it for costs, prices, margins, competitor comparisons, and more. I can't share it because it contains confidential information. That's why we got the original pricing changed because it was, quite literally, all over the shop, made no sense, and too high for that point in time.

Ken did listen and made a lot of changes (but did them on a live site and without a proper announcement etc, sheesh).

The updated products and prices weren't what we suggested but they were an improvement. We didn't want the expansion boxes (pricing is to high, current website makes them so complicated to work out), had a different and cheaper/simpler hardware plan, and suggested a nicer, cheaper form factor for the lower end as well.

Ken's engineering is genuinely good and the chips should be good, don't be fooled by his curious marketing techniques and fud on here. Power usage and reliability (including of cooling solution) is important as well in costing things up.

Of course, Ken has had several weeks of sales so he may not be worried about updating existing stuff at this point. That's the other thing to remember in all this. At the moment he seems a very happy chap and that's not always been true.

Re: share transfers. It's a no go. Have to stick with bitfunder.

This thread is hilarious.  You guys treat Ken's boss marketing the way little kids act when they walk in on their mom & dad having sex:  Everyone thinks it's eww gross, most find it too painful to even think about, and some are convinced that the whole thing's just a nightmare or nasty prank by the older kids & shit never happened.

Grow up.  Seek counseling.  Admit that's exactly what you bought into   [bitgoatse.gif]

Edit:  The new site is way better than the current one, that's why it will never be used by ActM.

[lewicki]

Add $/GH to the items in the store

No sense in making anymore changes if it's not going to be adopted.

[ChefBorjan]

Another 'good job' for the website put together, and lets hope all that hard work is not going to be for nothing... miles better than the current offering.

[LorenzoMoney]

Just took a look at the test site Lewicki put together.

I LIKE IT!

It  makes the modularity of the ActM machines understandable and it makes it more clear what you are ordering and getting.


Please Ken, use what Lewicki has created

[EskimoBob]

...
This thread is hilarious.  You guys treat Ken's boss marketing the way little kids act when they walk in on their mom & dad having sex:  Everyone thinks it's eww gross, most find it too painful to even think about, and some are convinced that the whole thing's just a nightmare or nasty prank by the older kids & shit never happened.

Grow up.  Seek counseling.  Admit that's exactly what you bought into    [bitgoatse.gif]

This must be American thing. And that fear of a females nipple, you guys have, makes no sense too. I guess that's why you guys have to overcompensate by producing and consuming most porn per capita in the world. LOL

So, Little crumbs, how is your mental health after you went all pixel perfect on goatse for at least 10 minutes and redesigned Kens front page image (I must admit, it was funny, see few pages back). BTW Crumbs,  do you know this shit is burned into your memory forever. Enjoy your flashbacks, asshole!
I bet you had or going to have loads of "fun" at your shrink from now on. Take your meds and be happy, like a true cheerleader.

[crumbs]

...
This thread is hilarious.  You guys treat Ken's boss marketing the way little kids act when they walk in on their mom & dad having sex:  Everyone thinks it's eww gross, most find it too painful to even think about, and some are convinced that the whole thing's just a nightmare or nasty prank by the older kids & shit never happened.

Grow up.  Seek counseling.  Admit that's exactly what you bought into    [bitgoatse.gif]

This must be American thing. And that fear of a females nipple, you guys have, makes no sense too. I guess that's why you guys have to overcompensate by producing and consuming most porn per capita in the world. LOL

So, Little crumbs, how is your mental health after you went all pixel perfect on goatse for at least 10 minutes and redesigned Kens front page image (I must admit, it was funny, see few pages back). BTW Crumbs,  do you know this shit is burned into your memory forever. Enjoy your flashbacks, asshole!
I bet you had or going to have loads of "fun" at your shrink from now on. Take your meds and be happy, like a true cheerleader.

EskimoBob, fisting helping u guys is hard, thankless work -- we, The Patriotic Americans, fortify ourselves with plenty of pr0nz to do it right.

  Love and cab fare home,
  USA

[funkymunky]

http://www.vmctest.com/

I think you have done a fantastic job, especially as it is in your spare time.

To be honest with some tweaking I'd be very happy for this to be the outward face of VMC.

[creativex]

...
This thread is hilarious.  You guys treat Ken's boss marketing the way little kids act when they walk in on their mom & dad having sex:  Everyone thinks it's eww gross, most find it too painful to even think about, and some are convinced that the whole thing's just a nightmare or nasty prank by the older kids & shit never happened.

Grow up.  Seek counseling.  Admit that's exactly what you bought into    [bitgoatse.gif]

This must be American thing. And that fear of a females nipple, you guys have, makes no sense too. I guess that's why you guys have to overcompensate by producing and consuming most porn per capita in the world. LOL

So, Little crumbs, how is your mental health after you went all pixel perfect on goatse for at least 10 minutes and redesigned Kens front page image (I must admit, it was funny, see few pages back). BTW Crumbs,  do you know this shit is burned into your memory forever. Enjoy your flashbacks, asshole!
I bet you had or going to have loads of "fun" at your shrink from now on. Take your meds and be happy, like a true cheerleader.

EskimoBob, fisting helping u guys is hard, thankless work -- we, The Patriotic Americans, fortify ourselves with plenty of pr0nz to do it right.

  Love and cab fare home,
  USA

rofl

[zumzero]

vmctest.com website is fantastic and implements the K.I.S.S. principal which was an enormous success when Ken used it to change the company to ActM for the 2nd IPO.

The community effectively told Ken what he had to do to make the IPO a success.  He listened, it worked.

I feel strongly that Ken needs to listen to the community once more on the website issue and embrace the new design.

He may have all the pre-orders he needs right now, but the public image of the company has to work in order to gain much needed credability in this marketplace.  If Ken doesn't do the right thing here, I will start to have serious doubts about the long term success of Active Mining and will reconsider my position.  If Ken rejects this new website, it would raise the question, how many other serious or possibly fatal business mistakes is he capable of making.

Cheerleader practice cancelled this week due to lack of interest.  If we get the numbers up then it will recommence next week at the usual location.

[lewicki]

vmctest.com website is fantastic and implements the K.I.S.S. principal which was an enormous success when Ken used it to change the company to ActM for the 2nd IPO.

The community effectively told Ken what he had to do to make the IPO a success.  He listened, it worked.

I feel strongly that Ken needs to listen to the community once more on the website issue and embrace the new design.

He may have all the pre-orders he needs right now, but the public image of the company has to work in order to gain much needed credability in this marketplace.  If Ken doesn't do the right thing here, I will start to have serious doubts about the long term success of Active Mining and will reconsider my position.  If Ken rejects this new website, it would raise the question, how many other serious or possibly fatal business mistakes is he capable of making.

Cheerleader practice cancelled this week due to lack of interest.  If we get the numbers up then it will recommence next week at the usual location.

With 98% certainty, my website will not be used.

[zumzero]

How do we know this?  Has Ken used a family member to design the original one or something?

[lewicki]

How do we know this?  Has Ken used a family member to design the original one or something?

Ken has been making changes to the site himself. Darin Carolus, VP Marketing made the splash, repurposed the logo that I purchased off hazryder, and SEO.