[ANNOUNCE] Bitcoin Counsel - Bitcoin business directory

[slothbag]

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

Cheers

slothbag

[evoorhees]

Thanks Slothbag, just submitted a few sites.

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

[bbit]

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

[FreeMoney]

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

[mark_logan]

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

[jgarzik]

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

+1

[jgarzik]

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.

[slothbag]

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.

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

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.

[ShireSilver]

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

[slothbag]

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

Keep 'em coming!

[ShireSilver]

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

You should put the link in your forum signature.

[Kris]

Hi slothbag,

Added my sites.

[slothbag]

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.

[mc_lovin]

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

Nice, big surprise there!

[slothbag]

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.

[slothbag]

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

[slothbag]

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.

[gilgil]

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 :-)

[hazek]

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!

[slothbag]

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 :-)

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.

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, 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.