A little help to decide if you want to do a groupbuy or not...

[daburone]

A lot of the work comes from the fact that many of you have no or very little restrictions regarding the minimum investment. If you choose to deal with 100's of of tiny investors, what do you expect?

[1714032740]

1714032740

[SebastianJu]

A lot of the work comes from the fact that many of you have no or very little restrictions regarding the minimum investment. If you choose to deal with 100's of of tiny investors, what do you expect?

Thats correct. Thats why burnin (The bitburner developer) now decided to only do B2B anymore because the work involved is too much otherwise.
But a groupbuy has the purpose to allow small buyers to buy. Of course one can raise the minimum but when i see into my list there werent very often chips bought below 20 pieces anyway. Of course a 1000 chip threshold would have helped a bit but its not much better than the 10K threshold avalon used then.

[DyslexicZombei]

A lot of the work comes from the fact that many of you have no or very little restrictions regarding the minimum investment. If you choose to deal with 100's of of tiny investors, what do you expect?

Thats correct. Thats why burnin (The bitburner developer) now decided to only do B2B anymore because the work involved was too much otherwise.
But a groupbuy has the purpose to allow small buyers to buy. Of course one can raise the minimum but when i see into my list there werent very often chips bought below 20 pieces anyway. Of course a 1000 chip threshold would have helped a bit but its not much better than the 10K threshold avalon used then.

Hate to say it, but that's where gentlemen like myself, waldohoover, CoinHoarder, etc., etc.. help fill in the niche of those looking for complete hardware even if they don't own the entire device. The sad fact is that the very best values are only found in the most expensive hardware, for the most part; hence: Group Buys of single expensive miners for those adapting to rapid network difficulty growth. Group Buys are for those willing to take fractional risk on a number of strong bets among ASIC mfgs *and* Group Buy Coordinators. Those willing to be GBCs better have a lot of patience, be good at selling, customer service, education, and handling refunds and concerns.

When I became impressed by HashFast's Miner Protection Plan & value at the time for B1, I could buy about 1/3 to 1/2 of it so I didn't want to pay share management fees since I would own a big chunk. That's why I, personally, out of the blue decided, hey, running a Group Buy shouldn't be too hard! That was about Aug. 13-14 (I hope I've gotten better at things on my 2nd round for a Group Buy).

For my first real GB attempt, I quickly figured out that the only way I could compete and make a mark was if I offered rock bottom prices with some sort of guarantees in place for miner payouts. I also figured out that the only way the little guy could compete was by us banding together via trusted members so we can collectively get the best prices, technology, and values. My small co-op, which I had no intention of expanding 3 days ago, is currently at 19 members, so there's much less of us to keep track of, so far.  

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I also offer services to smaller custom hardware manufacturers who do Group Buys here, like Barntech, for example, to help offload Customer Service and some marketing to people like me, who are hardware neutral, and advocates for both Buyers and Sellers. I'm able to see things from both perspectives having been in both roles.

I'm naive enough that well over a month ago, I even offered to help dig Yifu (offer sent via PM) out of his hole via Customer Service (AKA as uberfast refunds and sincere apologies to pissed off customers) when he came out of so-called "mafia" hiding and still had some semblance of a chance of salvaging his name and Avalon's reputation. This offer was from someone with no horse in the Avalon race, a CSR background, and the patience to deal with angry people since I had nothing to do with them being angry.  

For those willing to put the work and effort into really succeeding at Group Buys...To those willing to take risks, you can't win if you don't try! Ya know that really cute friendly girl that everyone knows but no one asks out? Sometimes they're the loneliest ones because everyone assumes they have boyfriends! Or so I've heard.   

Thanks to my first GB launched 1 month and 1 day ago, and my GBEC services, I've already vetted several hosts and GBCs for free, and already have a mesh network of vetted (or soon to be) vetted Bitcoin Miner Hosts available in multiple US states, and favorable possibilities to expand to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia! I had no idea I would have my GBEC services in place *and* a 2nd GB in September. I would probably have voted against such a possibility 5 weeks ago.

[DyslexicZombei]

A new model of GB share pricing and BTC volatility protection, for both buyers and sellers.

Just thought I'd offer this for anyone that wants to use this type of share pricing on future GBs. From a PM I sent to an anonymous gentleman asking about which exchange I was using to value the USD to BTC ratio since I was pricing shares for my 2nd GB in USD instead of BTC (TL;DR: As a GBC, BTC volatility doesn't matter to me for USD products!):

"Here's another nice thing about this USD/BTC GB share model I suppose I'm helping to pioneer: since it's priced in USD, you just need to make sure that as long as you have X amount of USD or your natl. equiv. (in the range of $100-138 avail. per share) to ensure that you're getting the best price possible on your GB shares at the exact time you're ready to apply PayPal or BTC funds towards a GB; thereby allaying worries/distrust about BTC volatility on the part of both the GBC *and* the buyer!

As a GBC, I don't have to care about the ever changing BTC/USD exchange rate and variability across exchanges because you the buyer just need to get BTC in the amount that's equivalent USD value of your share(s), *when* you're ready to purchase your share(s). Since you have Coinbase, you should only be charged a 1% fee for the currency exchange, which appears to be the lowest cost & fastest method to buy BTC from a reputable source." - DZ

[SebastianJu]

Don't anyone think that this topic should be sticky?
SebastianJu's insight is very valuable to anyone considering a groupbuy and if it's not stickyfied, it'll get buried under tons of other topics...

I think it was stickied already not long after the start. My first stickied post...

[DyslexicZombei]

As a Network Engineer and having built the biggest Miners Co-op on this forum with able partners (400+ members/customers, 32 GPUs operational, and about 56TH/s of hashrate ordered, as of today), here's some more free GB planning advice below.

Don't forget to include the costs of:

- UPS and Battery Backup for short outages
- Gas Generators (Optional) if you're ambitious enough to try to protect against longer outages
- Network costs (including dual network connections preferably 4G LTE as a backup, if possible)
- Electricity costs - a not unimpressive amount, depending on what you're running and where
- Cooling costs - Fans and optional Air Conditioning aren't free. A/C can sometimes let you overclock, but also drives up energy costs.
- Mining Pool costs and Management costs

All these costs add up and are not always properly accounted for by those trying to get into the Group Buys biz.

I also want to add: don't hesitate to *build* an able team. No woman or man is an island, and it's a *lot* of work to both sell, run, maintain, and troubleshoot ASIC miners, in volume.

[anykeywhy]

As a Network Engineer and having built the biggest Miners Co-op on this forum with able partners (400+ members/customers, 32 GPUs operational, and about 56TH/s of hashrate ordered, as of today), here's some more free GB planning advice below.

Don't forget to include the costs of:

- UPS and Battery Backup for short outages
- Gas Generators (Optional) if you're ambitious enough to try to protect against longer outages
- Network costs (including dual network connections preferably 4G LTE as a backup, if possible)
- Electricity costs - a not unimpressive amount, depending on what you're running and where
- Cooling costs - Fans and optional Air Conditioning aren't free. A/C can sometimes let you overclock, but also drives up energy costs.
- Mining Pool costs and Management costs

All these costs add up and are not always properly accounted for by those trying to get into the Group Buys biz.

I also want to add: don't hesitate to *build* an able team. No woman or man is an island, and it's a *lot* of work to both sell, run, maintain, and troubleshoot ASIC miners, in volume.

I completely agree, thanks for your contribution DZ, your advices would be good start point for who's thinking that "one order" is sufficient to start mining!  

Cheers!
-akw-

[MWNinja]

I decided January 1st to make a big move mining wise and am now running my 3rd group buy.  I've never worked so hard in my life.  You really don't appreciate the scale of things until a pallet of miners is sitting in your garage. Timing the arrival of everything needed to do a successful install is very challenging; Fry's Electronics and I are on a first name basis.  On group buy #2, half of our power supplies were shit ~ be ready to face a ton of unexpected costs.  Just managing all the owners, keeping track of who buys what and staying in constant communication is a full time job.  Your family and friends need to be supportive, and you need to build a team to work at a large scale.  It's vastly different than running a dozen miners at home; you are now accountable and responsible for somebody else's hardware.  When you go big you'll want to use 208V power for more efficiency; be prepared to pay out the nose for cables to plug into a 208V PDU.  Oh don't forget you need PDUs; get the ones that you can remote power cycle, only problem is they are over $1k each.

I haven't made any sort of profit (yet); I'm basically working for free.  It's also been one of the most fun, rewarding experiences I have ever had. 

Come Friday we'll be up to 17TH deployed, all from idea to deployment in less than a month's time.

[SebastianJu]

I decided January 1st to make a big move mining wise and am now running my 3rd group buy.  I've never worked so hard in my life.  You really don't appreciate the scale of things until a pallet of miners is sitting in your garage. Timing the arrival of everything needed to do a successful install is very challenging; Fry's Electronics and I are on a first name basis.  On group buy #2, half of our power supplies were shit ~ be ready to face a ton of unexpected costs.  Just managing all the owners, keeping track of who buys what and staying in constant communication is a full time job.  Your family and friends need to be supportive, and you need to build a team to work at a large scale.  It's vastly different than running a dozen miners at home; you are now accountable and responsible for somebody else's hardware.  When you go big you'll want to use 208V power for more efficiency; be prepared to pay out the nose for cables to plug into a 208V PDU.  Oh don't forget you need PDUs; get the ones that you can remote power cycle, only problem is they are over $1k each.

I haven't made any sort of profit (yet); I'm basically working for free.  It's also been one of the most fun, rewarding experiences I have ever had. 

Come Friday we'll be up to 17TH deployed, all from idea to deployment in less than a month's time.

Congrats for the success! Yes, the work involved is intense. Besides that the responsibility is something to shoulder which isnt easy when you watch the forum and see projects going down left and right. Other people start with good ideas too but then problems happen. So you hope to run everything better and try to prepare for every possible turn of events. I didnt want to get into the same place others in the forum landed when things dont run well. If something goes wrong you can save a huge amount of hate and the circle of doom when you keep really in contact and have some rhetoric skills. Nothing is worse than silence and missing information then.

Good thing people still try running groupbuys and projects knowing the risks...

[DyslexicZombei]

I decided January 1st to make a big move mining wise and am now running my 3rd group buy.  I've never worked so hard in my life.  You really don't appreciate the scale of things until a pallet of miners is sitting in your garage. Timing the arrival of everything needed to do a successful install is very challenging; Fry's Electronics and I are on a first name basis.  On group buy #2, half of our power supplies were shit ~ be ready to face a ton of unexpected costs.  Just managing all the owners, keeping track of who buys what and staying in constant communication is a full time job.  Your family and friends need to be supportive, and you need to build a team to work at a large scale.  It's vastly different than running a dozen miners at home; you are now accountable and responsible for somebody else's hardware.  When you go big you'll want to use 208V power for more efficiency; be prepared to pay out the nose for cables to plug into a 208V PDU.  Oh don't forget you need PDUs; get the ones that you can remote power cycle, only problem is they are over $1k each.

I haven't made any sort of profit (yet); I'm basically working for free.  It's also been one of the most fun, rewarding experiences I have ever had.  

Come Friday we'll be up to 17TH deployed, all from idea to deployment in less than a month's time.

Congrats MWNinja. I see that you're already in the Top 15 now at BTCGuild with 22TH currently deployed.

Sorry I couldn't help you earlier to help you organize your GBs when you contacted me when you were trying to get into the GB game; I/we were swamped ourselves dealing with expanding beyond mining ops, and a number of issues and moving to a larger facility 6k sq. ft.+...which turned out to have used fuses from 1974!

If you go the pre-order route...just know that you'll be having to not only deal with hardware that may be late or never arrive (grumble grumble) but also software: as in people both on the back end and on the customer support side. On some matters, as a mediator on some things, I've personally lost sleep and felt discomfort over how the minority was affected when votes came up for critical things.

On another note: Over the last 7 months, I've vetted 14 Miner hosts and/or GB Coordinators so far, for free. Some of them you see in threads below such as thomas_s, bobsag3, Dabs, SolarWindMiningCo., Thyatis, and others.

I'm now charging $10 BTC for my Forum Vetting services, for those reading all of these horror stories and who *still* want to do break into doing Group Buys for the community. Please shoot me a PM or contact me via Skype if you'd like to get vetted by a forum veteran with a history of doing this for the GB community.

[mikerbiker6]

I myself did a little groupbuy with around 15 people.
I just kept track in a little textfile who ordered what, who payed using which service, etc.
But how are you keeping track if you have hundreds of clients?
Do you use a massive excel sheet, of some other software?

Also, Do you use adress stickers or handwrite everything?

[SebastianJu]

I myself did a little groupbuy with around 15 people.
I just kept track in a little textfile who ordered what, who payed using which service, etc.
But how are you keeping track if you have hundreds of clients?
Do you use a massive excel sheet, of some other software?

Also, Do you use adress stickers or handwrite everything?

Calc(Free Excel) is a huge help. Most people dont know what it can do really.

Adress stickers printing is easier for big amounts. But thats only a very small part of the work.

[anykeywhy]

I myself did a little groupbuy with around 15 people.
I just kept track in a little textfile who ordered what, who payed using which service, etc.
But how are you keeping track if you have hundreds of clients?
Do you use a massive excel sheet, of some other software?

Also, Do you use adress stickers or handwrite everything?

Calc(Free Excel) is a huge help. Most people dont know what it can do really.

Adress stickers printing is easier for big amounts. But thats only a very small part of the work.

another must have helping tool could be a co-worker... more heads on the same things often help, especially with high work loads!

[bbxx]

before joing group buy check trust feedback of creator

you can be scammed and get your trust ruined...

[Bicknellski]

before joing group buy check trust feedback of creator

you can be scammed and get your trust ruined...

Also read trust those entering the GB as buyers... if you don't want PROBLEMS after the fact with extortionists like bbxx and his "brother" you might want to limit people like that getting into the group buy in the first place.

[marto74]

Then read Bick's writing about any member and if he says NO.
Then it is FINAL sentence .
listen to this man. I recently discovered he is also even  investigating my wife.
So then he is trustworthy

[VentMine]

It's almost as if a Developer should design a trustworthy group buy platform

[SebastianJu]

You realize that the last answer in this thread was three years ago? 

And no, software can not really solve things.

[PassiTheApe]

Wow, this seems all so far in the past now. I was involved in an ASIC purchase by candoo a couple of years back but since having lost so much on mtgox I became really distanced from the whole cryptocurrency stuff. All the latest group purchases were a couple of months back.....if there´s anything going on in the near future, I´d be highly interested to take part in a new group project.

Does anyone have some news on that maybe?

[SebastianJu]

Wow, this seems all so far in the past now. I was involved in an ASIC purchase by candoo a couple of years back but since having lost so much on mtgox I became really distanced from the whole cryptocurrency stuff. All the latest group purchases were a couple of months back.....if there´s anything going on in the near future, I´d be highly interested to take part in a new group project.

Does anyone have some news on that maybe?

I would say, stay away form the risks of cloudmining, mining groupbuys, mining ICO's or mining with your own hardware. The risks are no fun. Even self mining. You order gpu and at the end they change delivery date so "we don't know when we can deliver, sorry".

It's not worth it. Just invest in the coins you believe in.