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Behind the eFront
March 9th 2001, 11:53 CET by Morn Ouch! <a href="http://www.efront.com/about.shtml">eFront Media, Inc.</a>, the guys hosting and marketing such fine sites as <a href="http://www.somethingawful.com">Something Awful</a> and <a href="http://www.betanews.com">BetaNews</a>, should be worried about either their network security (<a href="http://www.sharesniffer.com">ShareSniffer</a> anyone? Coming to a PC thread near you soon!) or staff loyalty. Either way, they're probably not too happy about the fact that apparently everyone is having a good laugh (or not) reading <a href="http://www.angelfire.com/ab5/efront/">these leaked (?) logs</a> of ICQ conversations between three eFront bigwigs (Sam Jain, CEO; Will Bryant and Jonathan Roy of Acquisitions). I'm not going to quote them here, but I recommend reading through them (while they're still up -- I already feel the ground shaking because of the impending lawyer stampede). It's a lot of material, but some parts of it are simply wonderfully entertaining (or rather worrying). <a href="http://www.lumthemad.net/news/1798.php">Lum the Mad</a>, who scooped us all with this, has some highlights (and already some healthy discussion going on). Thanks everyone who sent this in, too. |
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Wow, talk about shady stuff (allegedly). |
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A couple of random thoughts: I really want to know how those logs were leaked. I can't imagine someone just "stole" them. What the heck happened? Are there any companies out there where the people in charge are not complete m0m0s? I wonder what eFront hosted sites webmasters think about this. - Morn |
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There's far too much business shenanigannery in this scene of late. I'm steering well clear of this. |
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mr0n: Are there any companies out there where the people in charge are not complete m0m0s? Um... Uh... *thinks harder, space-brain recoils in horror* Nope. Definitely not. |
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Wow, that's some pretty tasty stuff. The comments about Penny Arcade are fairly spicy, I'd love to quote bits and pieces in here, but something tells me that would be stupid. I'd also like to know how the fuck people managed to get their hands on this, and just how many laws they're breaking by posting it. |
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bryant 11/12/20 12:22 pm re: SomethingAwful.com Lowtax (ICQ#19629905) Wrote: My site's down *again* LOL!!!!!!! Joker. |
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Lowtax has some good (and not angry at all :D ) comments in the LtM thread about the topic. |
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Wow, after reading all of those transcripts I am a bit shocked. Those guys are slimey, greedy bastards. I'll bet a million dollars it was those "kids", they have so much wonderful things to say about, that leaked this stuff. Quite a bomb-shell. |
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I actually talked with these guys a while back and decided pretty quickly they were slime balls. I did get them to send me a contract that I could laugh at though. They were offering just a flat # of shares in a company with no indication of the total # of shares the company would be offering. For further amusement I even talked to the CEO on the phone and he must have said "vertical marketplace" to me 20 times in the span of 10 minutes. Then I asked him share dilution and a few really simple stock questions. They danced for a few days offering nothing and then gave up. I'm familiar with the guys in those logs, I dont have any doubt that it is real. |
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Holy shit those logs rock!!!! Joker. |
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sam 14/01/20 6:20 am if we get SA on our side, then PA ranting will seem like its their fault HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Joker. |
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sam 20/02/20 7:44 am iBLAMEj00: (3:44 PM) But he couldn't accept not getting paid for back months. sam 20/02/20 7:44 am iBLAMEj00: (3:44 PM) And then he mumbled something about having to sell his Lexus. LOL!!! Joker. |
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Lets just say there are very easy ways to get @ icq history files........ (some of which you can do even if the machine isnt trojan compromised) also sounds very much like these guys are marketroids and have zippity clue about the.. shall we say .. technical aspects, can you say Sniffit or BackOrifice? Whenever 'commercialisation' hits a scene, the scene gets a huge amount of popularity then gets fucked over by the money men.... parallels with any recent fad anyone ... eg snowboarding scene... Ds |
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New IQC log: #1 - we've just been raped all over the internet. #2 - don't worry, i'm searching JuniorLawer.net for a C&D that'll cover everyone on the planet. |
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I notice the Quote of the Nanosecond is back, Morn. I was gonna suggest putting it in the pirate's speech bubble, how about just makin him dance when you put the mouse over him ? Pleeeaaaase ? And when're you gonna add a link to let us go from viewing only the new comments to viewing all comment à la PC3 ? deadlock |
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Shenanigannery? There is just no goddamn way that's a word. Aren't PA and SA still hosted by these guys? Or did either/both of them walk? -brennan |
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The logs just disappeared from Angelfire. Anybody get copies . . . the first 3 are in my browser cache. |
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Doh, I only got to number 6 before they vanished. |
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I really want to know how those logs were leaked. I can't imagine someone just "stole" them. What the heck happened? If one of those tools just left his PC on and went out to lunch and didn't have it password protected, an irritated employee could have done it in a few minutes. How long does it take to cut and paste from a history log, save it to a file, and save it to a floppy? ICQ's handy that way. You don't need to search through someone's email to find pertinent messages. Just grab the history file. |
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(OT) Morn: I think you need a top link or the entire menu at the end of the page with this design as well. 8) -- Martin |
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I've got all the logs, baby! Joker |
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Joker : so what's keeping you from posting them ? Speed |
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Joker, yeah, post them all here, one per message. (-: |
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There are plenty of tools for screwing around with ICQ, tapping in's the easy bit. Knowing when that tha hard part. |
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-------------------------------------- ICQ History Log For: 586491 bryant Started on Tue Mar 06 15:36:21 2001 -------------------------------------- sam 24/11/20 3:11 am im looking at different sites toassignto acq ppl for ad sales.. which ones would u prefer (genre) bryant 25/11/20 6:04 am Sports and Gaming come to mind. I'd say Mens General, Fashion and similar as well except I don't know if we have any. sam 25/11/20 6:07 am do you have any special sites that you'd like to pick you know you can do great on sam 25/11/20 6:07 am i think jon wants rpgamer and squaregamer :) bryant 25/11/20 6:08 am Heh. Actually if I can keep out of gaming I'll be happy, but I suspect I can still leverage old contacts so I'm not looking to avoid it. Let me look around the different channels this afternoon and I'll see if I can eyeball a few sites that have decent size and substance that I think I can work well. sam 25/11/20 6:09 am ok great sam 27/11/20 12:39 pm any luck on the sites? bryant 09/12/20 11:19 am Kevin Jenkins at MPOG isn't lazy. He's put every campaign up on time or faster and has never once complained openly or not. Yet he's extremely frustrated and angry right now. sam 09/12/20 11:21 am well not every one.. but a majority refuse to coopreate sam 09/12/20 11:22 am so what is he frustrated about bryant 09/12/20 11:22 am We should directly and harshly penalize those that don't. I don't think we need to reward the ones that do - but I think they should be treated well. sam 09/12/20 11:23 am i dont think we treat them badly? bryant 09/12/20 11:23 am The communication that's come down in the past week. How it's been handled. Nothing is concise or to the point. I can forward his email if you like. bryant 09/12/20 11:23 am Many of them do feel mistreated right now. A lot feel like they're being openly threatened right now. bryant 09/12/20 11:23 am I'm not on "their side" here. Just telling you what we're running into down in the trenches on this. sam 09/12/20 11:24 am sure..feedback is always good so we can let our WRC's have better diplomatic communication skills. bryant 09/12/20 11:27 am Sent. That email is mild and diplomatic compared to what we're getting today. The main problems seem to be that they want directives to be straight and to the point. Not one of them has argued with me the merits of putting the campaign up - it's all been about the delivery. sam 09/12/20 11:27 am thats funny sam 09/12/20 11:28 am well, sure.. but 90% of the webmasters arent cooperating with direct and to the point directives sam 09/12/20 11:28 am so i think g3 took this approach to create rapport with the webmasters sam 09/12/20 11:28 am and build realtions sam 09/12/20 11:28 am you cant please everyone.. i think he's trying to build a relationship and communication and rapport.. sam 09/12/20 11:29 am perhaps one solution is to divided the webmasters into 3 groups bryant 09/12/20 11:29 am It seems to be doing the opposite. I just had an hour long call with a webmaster who spent the time venting about his approach. bryant 09/12/20 11:29 am You're right though, you can't make everyone happy. sam 09/12/20 11:29 am 1. who like direct and to the point communication. sam 09/12/20 11:29 am 2. who like to be "babied" w/ video, etc. sam 09/12/20 11:29 am 3. who need to be threatened bryant 09/12/20 11:29 am Heh. sam 09/12/20 11:30 am i think he should make a list and treat them accordingly :) ill talk to him bout that sam 09/12/20 11:30 am which webmaster was venting :) bryant 09/12/20 11:30 am I'm sure you all have gone around and around over this. I guess my approach would have to be short and sweet, then those that don't cooperate get the campaigns inserted by us and we fine them some good % for it. sam 09/12/20 11:30 am personally, i wouldnt do the video stuff.. i think his stuff is hilarious.. but its getting their attention :) sam 09/12/20 11:30 am yeah..thats the other approach we need to take also.. we talked about this yesetrday sam 09/12/20 11:31 am have an in-house team do it w/ those who dont cooperate ..and delay their payment sam 09/12/20 11:31 am until they do cooperate bryant 09/12/20 11:31 am I don't think there's any downside there except the energy we have to espend to cover the slackers. But noone can fault us for doing so and fining the ones that don't comply. They all know what the climate is out there, and what we have to do to monetize. bryant 09/12/20 11:32 am eXpend rather. sam 09/12/20 11:32 am i read kevin's email..he does have a point.. mass emails are bad.. i hate doing mass emails myself bryant 09/12/20 11:32 am These campaigns are how they get paid. They don't do their job and help roll out the campaign, they don't get paid, or at least don't get paid 100%. bryant 09/12/20 11:35 am Anyway, all just food for thought. We'll figure out what's the best way to do this. I'm in my 14th hour - so calling it a day. Couple RFPs out btw, nothing that will have us swimming in cash - but I'll let you know what kind of responses we get back. Every little bit helps. bryant 09/12/20 11:35 am Oh and Reviewboard has agreed to close. I know you liked what you saw of them. bryant 09/12/20 11:36 am BTW - last thought. One thing brought up by another webmaster today was the notion of a webmaster congress of sorts where they have a unified body (and thus a representative) to relay concerns, their voice, etc. How would you feel about that? sam 09/12/20 11:37 am union! eww bryant 09/12/20 11:37 am Heh. sam 09/12/20 11:37 am i just fwd: that email to g3 and cc'd you guys bryant 09/12/20 11:37 am Can see lots of pitfalls, might also be a way the webmasters police themselves and deal with slackers. Don't know. sam 09/12/20 11:38 am yeah, we always wanted an in-house webmasters advocate.. that was david woodruff at one point.. its not a bad idea bryant 09/12/20 11:38 am It's easy in the Marines, the platoon takes care of the problem child and everything goes smoothly. =) sam 09/12/20 11:38 am heh.. maybe we need to setup a platoon and brigade per category or area? sam 09/12/20 11:38 am we're alrready starting that.. asia webmasters, europe, usa gaming, usa general sam 09/12/20 11:39 am maybe better to get one of their own to be the 'rep' sam 09/12/20 11:39 am for 5 to 10 sites at a time.. i dunno sam 09/12/20 11:39 am but lets start by getting g3 going in the right direction first bryant 09/12/20 11:39 am Maybe a little bit of both, I don't know. It's a concept though. And might help them feel empowered. bryant 09/12/20 11:39 am TOTALLY agree there. =) bryant 09/12/20 11:39 am I'm out. Have a good weekend. Will be around if anything comes up. sam 09/12/20 11:39 am ok cya bryant 09/12/20 11:49 am Amazing news on CNet lady btw. sam 09/12/20 11:50 am yeah thats great.. she needs all the info u guys were asking for though, and more.. demographic surveys, target audience, etc. sam 09/12/20 11:50 am of course, proof still has to be in the pudding.. im not too excitd until we see money flowing in the bank :) bryant 09/12/20 11:51 am No, I'm the same way. But that's definitely encouraging. Let me talk to Jon about the ad bullets. Maybe there's a way to streamline that. I've been spending time recently looking at media kits of our competitors, so at least we have an idea of what is needed at the base level. sam 09/12/20 11:52 am yeah.. we just need to concentrate on the online media kits too.. she doesnt even use offline media kits. something nice online would be awesome.. of course, having our webguide and better navigation (dynamic) links on the inside efront part to let advertisers/ppl navigate efront would help tremendously.. we need more programming resources for that though..we're backed up:( bryant 09/12/20 11:53 am Actually all the ones I've been eyeballing have been online. I think that's more or less the standard these days. sam 09/12/20 11:58 am ive been talking to the maxpc sales guys.. and know their entire cycle, figures, etc. pretty much.. for the number of sales ppl we have (4)..we're not doing that bad in total revenues per head.. we need to increase that to 10-15 sales ppl though aug: 160k, sept: 320k, oct: 260k, nov: 1.7mil aug: 3 ppl, sept: 4 ppl, oct: 4 ppl, nov: 4 ppl we also have chris -- who is setting up local salespartnerships ($0 yet) and brad - who moved from dennis's biz dev group to sales recently..who isnt counted in the above sam 09/12/20 11:59 am brad has a $35 cpm deal for 2 mil imps in the gaming channel for 70k..that was pitched in person today and they were enthusiastic.. he's saying he'll get it signed monday.. we'll see bryant 09/12/20 12:00 pm Heh, well sure - now I feel like a punk with my little $15k RFPs here and there. j/k sam 09/12/20 12:01 pm everything helps.. heck, if after rampup you can pull in 50k/month consistenly.. thats great:) sam 09/12/20 12:01 pm sometimes ppl forget to pay the bills..they try to go for homeruns.. ilike lot of smaller deals coming in too .. someone's gotta pay the light bill bryant 09/12/20 12:03 pm No, I agree - was just joking. I want to develop a relationship with EA, we do that even at a low level and it can turn into something that rolls at a higher. sam 09/12/20 12:05 pm oh is this for EA? great.. i know mike murphy tried to do something w/ them for skinz and stuff in october but that didnt go through bryant 09/12/20 12:07 pm Yeah. Still have some good entrenched contacts over there. We're going to try and start with a campaign for a Wes Craven (or was it Clive Barker) game called "Undying" and possibly "American McGee's Alice". If we get those and it goes well, they're interested in rolling campaigns across their different departments, and are acutely interested in our capacity to serve their commericals via streaming FMV ads down the road. sam 09/12/20 12:07 pm hey.. Rad is availalbe this weekend to work on the online media kit.. should we brainstorm and give him a spec and layout/etc? that would be awesome to get that done this weekend..because we have maxpc guys strting next week .. i can get him into the loop as well bryant 09/12/20 12:08 pm Yeah. I have a couple quick links I can shoot somewhere as at least a reference. bryant 09/12/20 12:08 pm Obviously the sooner we get that up the easier life is on a lot of fronts. Certainly especially Ms.CNet, but also on the grassroots pursuits as well. bryant 11/12/20 12:22 pm re: SomethingAwful.com Lowtax (ICQ#19629905) Wrote: My site's down *again* sam 11/12/20 12:23 pm yeah matt is at globalcenter moving servers around i think sam 17/12/20 9:20 am hey Will.. what were the terms of the RB deal sam 17/12/20 10:10 am Are you there? Need to talk bryant 17/12/20 10:27 am Hey, just walked back in. What's up? bryant 17/12/20 10:28 am I can shoot you the last version of the RB contract if you like? bryant 17/12/20 10:29 am Basic concept is $14k and a normal amount of stock. No wacky clauses except he was still going to get his stock (based upon the existing vesting schedule) if we terminated him. bryant 17/12/20 10:32 am Where we are with RB right now is his mom (a lawyer) wants to add some meat to the contract. Just simply specify some things that are implied and meant, just not spelled out. I warned Phil (the owner) about it all falling apart if new terms were introduced - so he's actually working on our behalf to a certain degree to reel his mom in. sam 17/12/20 11:20 am hey Will are you there bryant 17/12/20 11:47 am Sure am. sam 17/12/20 11:49 am Been talking to Roy. I'm sure he's filled you in on the direction we need to head down for the near term. The ad market's much tighter.. not much low hanging fruits out there and we really have to work for our keep now :) Which means more resources towards the area and scaling back on untargeted RON acqs for pageview growth somewhat until we can fully monetize our assets. bryant 17/12/20 11:50 am Yeah, we've been talking about that. Completely agree there. bryant 17/12/20 11:50 am Any acqs right now should probably be something like breastfeeding.com and not anycrapgames.com, etc. I'm actually pretty excited to hear we can support regional ad sales. Going to see if I can work Jax and Columbus. sam 17/12/20 11:51 am yup.. we have chris higgins doing local sales too (chrish@efront.com) bryant 17/12/20 11:51 am Or perhaps OH/FL - we'll see how that plays out. bryant 17/12/20 11:51 am Great, I'll touch base with him Monday. sam 17/12/20 11:52 am That means we have to get more exp. sales ppl (we're starting to do that here) and cut back on other resources. I bounced this off of roy already and want to bounce this off of you. Basically, streamlining our ops in the office. We let jason go few weeks ago; basically he was unprodcutive. Brad pulled in a 60k sale (30 cpm).. so he's starting to kick up. sam 17/12/20 11:54 am On your side, I wanted to talk about sharon; it might be in her and our best interest to part because of our immediate needs. I know she tried very hard and was dedicated on the acq. side. I'd like to get your thoughts on this proposal: * Let her know about our direction * Pay her through the end of the year. * Vest her 5000 options immediately (and waive the excercise clause of 30 days to 1 year or something). bryant 17/12/20 11:55 am I think that's both reasonable and fair. Certainly it addresses our needs, and between us I see that as an approprite opportunity to streamline. sam 17/12/20 11:55 am Trying to allocate more funds on the sales side and with you doing Sales and Roy helping out more on the traffic side, we also have Lloyd coming on board for tech sales and Monique as well (cnet) |
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sam 17/12/20 11:56 am Since you're her immediate supervisor there, would you like to talk to her or do you feel it would be better for me to do so? bryant 17/12/20 11:56 am I think I would rather if that's okay with you. sam 17/12/20 11:56 am That's fine; that's why I approached you first. It's a touchy subject obviously and I want to make sure we do it right. bryant 17/12/20 11:57 am Absolutely, agree 100%. I think handled the right way she can see it as a positive. I know what drives Sharon, and she may well come out of this without any negative feelings. bryant 17/12/20 11:58 am It's never a real positive - but variables allow it to be as non-negative as possible. =) sam 17/12/20 11:58 am Right, and we'll do whatever we need on our side. including the option stuff -- she deserves it. bryant 17/12/20 11:58 am I'll talk to her this weekend. bryant 17/12/20 11:58 am Is it safe to assume we (Jon, myself, Brian) should continue to pursue clear revenue opoprtunity acquisitions? sam 17/12/20 11:58 am okay thanks. let me know and i'll let mike frue get the paperwork in writing (with the options, etc.) so she's secure. sam 17/12/20 11:58 am yes bryant 17/12/20 11:59 am OK, I'll make that secondary to ads right now. Have a few leads, going to put some of the quality ROI types in a holding pattern. sam 17/12/20 11:59 am our big push is revenues now.. i'd like to spit out 20% of our revenues and put it in the bank as a cushion bryant 17/12/20 11:59 am That may or may not include RB, when I get their contract I'll talk to you and/or Jerry about it. sam 17/12/20 11:59 am who knows how long this market will last sam 17/12/20 12:00 pm okay. I think RB can get us alot of storerunner (ecomm) revenues, no? sam 17/12/20 12:00 pm with every review essentially.. al ink.. bryant 17/12/20 12:00 pm It can't last like this forever. I'm no analyst but I don't see how it can't start to strengthem in the new year. bryant 17/12/20 12:00 pm Absolutely it will. sam 17/12/20 12:00 pm do you know how many daily visitors he gets? sam 17/12/20 12:00 pm thats a very good indication of conversino on the srunner links bryant 17/12/20 12:01 pm uniques? Not off the top of my head, but I'll find out. He's an odd one. 22MM PVs 1/00, 650k when I started talking to him. 3.5-4MM now, with a clause in the contract that he has to hit 7MM within 90 days. At his current growth rate, he should more be around 10MM w/in 90. sam 17/12/20 12:02 pm wow.. from 22mm to 3 mil huh.. what happened bryant 17/12/20 12:02 pm Botched acqs process that lasted 5 months with a company overseas. They just wanted his backend. bryant 17/12/20 12:03 pm The upside there for us is that he's growing at an unprecedented rate, so we effectively get a 20MM site (if/when it returns to that) on a 7MM contract structure. sam 17/12/20 12:03 pm ok.. let's say we get $1 cpm.. that 7k and if we can get 7k on storerunner.. which is 70,000 clicks a month.. which is 2000 a day sam 17/12/20 12:04 pm do you think he can generate that? if so, or if we could get him to somehow do it sam 17/12/20 12:04 pm then we can sign :) sam 17/12/20 12:04 pm because storerunner for us is very short payment terms.. helps with cashflow alot bryant 17/12/20 12:05 pm He is very easy to work with, which is a quality I look for in acqs targets these days to be honest. I don't know what a common CTR is on Storerunner, but I don't think there's any question his would be amongst the higher CTRs. sam 17/12/20 12:05 pm i know!! no more kids sam 17/12/20 12:05 pm i think we all learned alot bryant 17/12/20 12:06 pm Hell, we may be able to get him on board with SR even if he doesn't sign. Don't know how that might work, maybe some sort of payment to him... Just a "what if" contingency. sam 17/12/20 12:06 pm good idea.. maybe even try to get it to him now.. 'test of his traffic' as an excuse or something bryant 17/12/20 12:07 pm Yeah, even some of the non-kids are pretty confusing. I try to keep them docile (the ones that vent towards me), but in a few particular cases it's increasingly difficult to understand that level of rage coming from someone who works about an hour a day for an above average (according to US gross standards) salary. bryant 17/12/20 12:08 pm I'll talk to him on Monday. He's actually anxious to get aboard with us, it's his partners (damn Carter administration lawyer) and his mother that are slowing us down. sam 17/12/20 12:08 pm yeah i know.. well, guess what? im going through the webmaster sites, payments, etc. right now.. starting with the ones who arent cooperating, im kicking them out.. bryant 17/12/20 12:08 pm So SR now as opposed to later may well be feasible with him. sam 17/12/20 12:08 pm that sounds good sam 17/12/20 12:08 pm to start off the relationship.. so we can gauge the return too bryant 17/12/20 12:09 pm I can't say anything but 'good' to that. I look forward to hearing from some of them how much worse the grass is on the other side of the fence. sam 17/12/20 12:09 pm if you have any leads on ones who arent cooperating or wahtever, let me know (webmasters/sites) bryant 17/12/20 12:09 pm Particularly with the impending demise of the GameSPYs and UGOs. sam 17/12/20 12:09 pm yeah bryant 17/12/20 12:10 pm Will do. The danger I guess here is confusing "angry and vocal" with "uncooperative". Some are both, but a few are just one or the other. I'll sit down with Jo and Sharon this weekend and compare notes on the reactions we had to the SR rollout. sam 17/12/20 12:11 pm yeah..true.. of course, we wont do anything to shoot ourselves in the foot.. evaluating them on a one by one basis like themeheaven has a 24x7 banner next to ours.. well u know his payment will be delayed bryant 17/12/20 12:11 pm It goes without saying I think that anyone who still doesn't have the channelguide up by the 1st is clearly uncooperative. =) bryant 17/12/20 12:11 pm Heh, yeah - that can't fly. Especially as we ramp up sales. sam 17/12/20 12:12 pm well we're changing our coutning using the webguide now.. so it shoots them :) sam 17/12/20 12:12 pm we'll be reasonable but firm :) bryant 17/12/20 12:12 pm Yeah, I heard. Came across more than a few frantically getting it up on every page. Noone can fault 'reasonable but firm'. sam 17/12/20 12:13 pm heh bryant 17/12/20 12:13 pm Anyway - I better get running here. Meds are running out so starting to feel like hell. Good chatting with you. I'll follow up with you and Mike after I talk to Sharon. sam 17/12/20 12:14 pm still sick? geez:) ok..thanks..cya bryant 17/12/20 12:15 pm Yeah, it's not getting much better. Constant tests, and a 'spot' in one lung. Probably nothing, but man - I better be getting normal/well again soon. Just about sick of being cooped up in the house 24/7. Then again, it does allow for a whole new level of focus on the work at hand. =) bryant 17/12/20 12:15 pm Later. sam 18/12/20 12:32 am probably too late to change the terms on RB huh? bryant 18/12/20 1:07 am May not be. Want to do it by a different scale? Revs? sam 18/12/20 1:07 am just wondering.. maybe daily visitors sam 27/12/20 9:54 am hey how's it going sam 27/12/20 12:57 pm iBLAMEj00 (ICQ#8906076) Wrote: But you pay webmasters by page views instead of unique visitors; it would be best if you did by unique visitors. [even tim agrees we should pay webmasters per unique users, not pageviews. our sites get low ctr% and are too sticky -- bad for advertising (in general)] sam 28/12/20 8:34 am hey Will .. are you there bryant 28/12/20 9:30 am Am now - what's up? sam 28/12/20 9:38 am Hey .. just wanted to tell you that we'll be delaying our payroll as I mentioned before this week unfortunately : bryant 28/12/20 9:38 am np - how long? sam 28/12/20 9:39 am i would say 7 to 10 days at most.. About.com owes us 200k but it looks like they're going to play games with us.. speedyclick should be giving us 200k next week as well.. bryant 28/12/20 9:40 am Cool - we can make things stretch that long I'm sure. bryant 28/12/20 9:44 am Hey, Moviehit.com just called me. We haven't moved them over yet (closed 3-4 weeks ago) and they lose their hosting tomorrow. The ball was rolling with Nate to move them, but he's on vacation now. So they're looking for us to pay their hosting bill so they don't go dead tomorrow. bryant 28/12/20 9:45 am (They're (moviehit) telling me Nate is on vacation) - don't know if that's true or not. bryant 28/12/20 9:45 am What should I tell them? bryant 28/12/20 9:45 am Obviously we're not excited about dropping $1540 on hosting for them if we're delaying payroll. sam 28/12/20 9:46 am nate is in Dc yeah sam 28/12/20 9:46 am why are they dropping their hosting sam 28/12/20 9:47 am can we tell them that it will be delayed until we have more serveres sam 28/12/20 9:47 am and we don't have our banners on their site yet do we bryant 28/12/20 9:47 am They've been taking a loss every month, are basically out of money. sam 28/12/20 9:47 am oh really.. and we're still paying them 2cpm + free hosting? bryant 28/12/20 9:48 am Yeah, but the scale is much lower than 2cpm. bryant 28/12/20 9:49 am They're a flopped startup with a lot of promise basically. They burnt through their cash. The loss they''ve been taking was due to their startup costs, not standard operating costs. sam 28/12/20 9:49 am maybe we can use this oppty to renegotiate a better deal? or nah? :) sam 28/12/20 9:49 am how do u mean scale is much lower bryant 28/12/20 9:50 am Scale is like a 1cpm or less I think. sam 28/12/20 9:50 am really? sam 28/12/20 9:50 am thats ncie.. i thought it was 2 bryant 28/12/20 9:50 am I thought so, lemme check. bryant 28/12/20 9:52 am 1500.00 for every 1750k PVs mo. So less than 1cpm scales. bryant 28/12/20 9:53 am Anyway, they're still on the phone with me. They're saying Nate gave them a timeline and that's why they cancelled their hosting. sam 28/12/20 9:54 am hm.. can they keep it alive for another 30 days sam 28/12/20 9:54 am we're in the midst of a move from CAIS to another provider bryant 28/12/20 10:00 am I think we're covered. THey're going to see about some sort of temporary solution with their old provider. sam 28/12/20 10:01 am sounds good :) bryant 28/12/20 10:05 am Hey, have had a couple webmasters ask about the availability of the horizontal navbar. Any word on when that's going to be ready? sam 28/12/20 10:06 am yeah.. waiting on nate.. but that will only be available in areas where they cant absolutely use the vertical bryant 28/12/20 10:07 am Penny-Arcade is wondering if they can put the vert navbar on the left too, below their nav buttons on the new design. It's below the fold, but right in the meat of their content. Thoughts? It would be above the fold on the strip pages which is both the bulk of their traffic and their largedst exit pages. sam 04/01/20 2:01 pm hey Will.. how are the ad sales efforts going thus far? bryant 04/01/20 3:54 pm Haven't made just tons of headway. I've received a bunch of materials from Chris and have followed up with the existing RFP that I have out - but haven't really started pursuing much beyond some gaming contact leads I have yet. 'More' being local sales and the like. I haven't made a clean break from acqs at all, in fact there are some big sites I'm trying to reorganize to fit our newer needs and see if we can get them in with the new structure. bryant 04/01/20 3:56 pm It's a juggling act and I just have more acqs balls up at the moment than sales, but I think I'm on the cusp of being able to divert more time towards the sales. Managed to track down point of contacts for some of the more significant 'localized' companies I think might be interested in regional sales - so hoping to start cold calling them this weekend. sam 04/01/20 11:17 pm sure.. we're getting burned bigtime on page-view counting.. we need to do acquisitinos by daily visitor counting.. pageview is an artificial indication of traffic. also, just fyi, i did all the original acquisitions (30).. and all those are/were 1year deal.. they're due up now.. and its saved us 90%.. the 3 year was an idea whose time has come to pass..its an eternity.. i'd like to also go back to doing one year deals (vest their shares and case over one yera) bryant 04/01/20 11:46 pm Sounds good on the one year, I don't see that being an issue with people at all. In terms of daily visitor counting, I haven't run into anyone yet that has really balked at that - and to be honest, it might help the acqs process. Webmasters are used to talking PVs and CPMs - start talking visitors with them and we've taken them out of their comfort zone in terms of what they think they should expect. sam 04/01/20 11:47 pm i know :) |
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sam 04/01/20 11:48 pm and in this market, 1 year and that would be alot more efficient.. now to just get our revs going sam 04/01/20 11:48 pm btw, do u know marc? matt said he was looking for another job or something sam 04/01/20 11:48 pm if u know him, can u talk to him see whats going on. we'd like to keep him bryant 04/01/20 11:48 pm Marc Frank? Yeah, know him well. bryant 04/01/20 11:48 pm Will do. We talk just about every day. sam 04/01/20 11:49 pm i know 3 ppl in the office needed rent $ and we cut them checks for it sam 04/01/20 11:49 pm and nate asked about marc needing $ for check or something, i said not a problem of course sam 04/01/20 11:49 pm and yesterday matt said he was looking for another job cuz he was getting evicted or something..yikes sam 04/01/20 11:49 pm btw, our money is being wired today so we should be set bryant 04/01/20 11:49 pm Hmm, yeah - I'll definitely talk to him today. sam 04/01/20 11:51 pm thanks! bryant 04/01/20 11:51 pm No problem - would hate to see Marc leave! sam 04/01/20 11:51 pm im sure we'll be able to have him stay sam 04/01/20 11:52 pm i thought nate was going to talk to victoria to get a check over to him.. guess that didnt happen bryant 04/01/20 11:52 pm I am too to be honest. He would have let me know if he was serious about leaving. sam 04/01/20 11:54 pm ok :) everything else is starting to look good. working on a big deal w/ excite right now.. getting our european arm going so they can take over that inventory.. im still distressed over our ad sales effort.. geting worse.. i moved 2 ppl around to our biz dev and have a new vp of biz dev (worklife founder).. and they're pitching our b2b solutions to portals now bryant 04/01/20 11:55 pm New sales guru (cnet lady) working out well? sam 04/01/20 11:56 pm she doesnt start till the 15th.. im concerned about her though.. she was distressed that we didnt take credit cards.. and she didnt want to have a 100k/month quota.. 60k/month was what she wanted to start out w/ sam 04/01/20 11:56 pm sales ppl bs sam 04/01/20 11:56 pm so we'll see how it goes bryant 04/01/20 11:56 pm Yeah - they do seem to share a common trait with that. sam 04/01/20 11:56 pm i mean who takes credit card payments for ad sales sam 04/01/20 11:56 pm she said most of her clients sam 04/01/20 11:57 pm like.. are they small clients? she said her clients put it on their biz card sam 04/01/20 11:57 pm weird.. bryant 04/01/20 11:57 pm No kidding, I've never heard of that. With the one exception of google.com who has a link "instant advertising with a credit card". bryant 04/01/20 11:57 pm Which is sort of cool, but I wonder if anyone has ever used it? sam 05/01/20 12:03 am ya..not sure.. http://206.161.202.42/ new automotive hub.. if excite buys off on it, then we might need to buy auto sites to backfill the inventory sam 14/01/20 1:33 am your check amount is 'net' ..meaning taxes have already been taken out bryant 14/01/20 1:35 am Yeah, we saw that. It's just a different amount than what normally gets deposited each pay period. We were just confused. sam 14/01/20 1:35 am really? how much is it off by bryant 14/01/20 1:35 am May be a moot point, our bank isn't going to let us deposit the check in my account. bryant 14/01/20 1:36 am Mine is off $218.43, Jo's is off $53.54. sam 14/01/20 1:36 am i told victoria to wire it to every1 friday but she said the wiring deadline was 2 (it was 3).. any other way we can get the money out to u fast? sam 14/01/20 1:36 am can you sign on the back as DBA Will Bryant sam 14/01/20 1:37 am or "for deposit only payable to will bryant and sign underneath" bryant 14/01/20 1:37 am I don't think so. It's not the end of the world though. We're scrambling right now to see if we can get a GMX account open down here so that we can just xfer the money into our personal accounts. sam 14/01/20 1:37 am i used to do that all the time bryant 14/01/20 1:37 am Yeah, we tried all that. Damn banks won't let any of that slide. sam 14/01/20 1:37 am :( i wonder how victoria made that mistake bryant 14/01/20 1:37 am Actually, we might be cool. Jo's heading out to try and open a biz account now. sam 14/01/20 1:38 am i coudl wesetern union the funds or something.. monday is bank holiday so no wires allowed then either bryant 14/01/20 1:38 am She's had a lot riding on her - I don't have any hard feelings towards anyone. It happens. =) sam 14/01/20 1:39 am yeah.. we were short.. all the $ didnt come in.. so i had an idea.. to net it out.. and then we'd pay the taxes next week.. and i told her to do that.. she went through adp and figured out everyone's nets bryant 14/01/20 1:39 am re: Western Union - whatever you think is best. I wouldn't care at all about waiting until next week, but we're going to get hit with some serious penalties with the mortgage company. bryant 14/01/20 1:39 am Heh, that's a good idea. =) sam 14/01/20 1:39 am i know :) she was like huh.. what u cant do that i said yes you dcan :) sam 14/01/20 1:40 am how much penalty? bryant 14/01/20 1:40 am If the bank lets us open this biz account we're golden. bryant 14/01/20 1:40 am Can get the mortgage in and everything. sam 14/01/20 1:40 am ok.. hopefully they should.. do u have gamesmatrix documentation bryant 14/01/20 1:40 am Yeah. Just had to type up a few quick "board resolutions" lol. bryant 14/01/20 1:40 am Have everything else. sam 14/01/20 1:40 am heh been there done that :p sam 14/01/20 1:41 am was roy's check send to u? bryant 14/01/20 1:41 am Anyway, thanks for asking about it. Hopefully the 'crisis' has been diverted. If the bank gives us a problem I'll let you know to see if we can find another solution. bryant 14/01/20 1:41 am Yeah it was - I'm priority mailing it to him now. sam 14/01/20 1:41 am sure no problem sam 14/01/20 1:41 am thanks for sticking it out.. kinda rough week :) bryant 14/01/20 1:43 am We're all in this for the long haul and for the company. eFront is preferable to something a little more secure but not as exciting. Will make it that much better when we come out the other side. =) sam 14/01/20 1:44 am yeah i know :) ill fwd you a good news email.. hopefully something comes out of it bryant 14/01/20 1:44 am Great! bryant 14/01/20 1:44 am Hey, did Jon send you that gamers.com article re: UGO and its affiliates? sam 14/01/20 1:45 am yeah he did.. bryant 14/01/20 1:45 am Woops. Jo says I have to go with to open this thing. I'm off. Will talk to you later. sam 14/01/20 1:45 am k talk to u later bryant 14/01/20 4:39 am FYI Lowtax (ICQ#19629905) Wrote: Will, I'm probably going to be giving up SA. I can't wait until February to be paid, and I'm sick to death of all this network crap and never knowing if I'll have enough money to pay rent at the end of the month. I'm broke and I can't take this any more.. sam 14/01/20 4:42 am have hiim send an email to g3 outlining his needs .. g3 is collecting all of those and we'll be allocating some funds to take care of the webmasters who are struggling bryant 14/01/20 4:42 am Will do. sam 14/01/20 5:11 am in the recap email g3 is sending out monday, he's going to remind every1 of their confidentiality clause sam 14/01/20 5:11 am i mean if infospace sees stuff like that, we wont get any funding sam 14/01/20 5:11 am then its a sure death sam 14/01/20 5:11 am so we're only hurting ourselves sam 14/01/20 5:34 am roy & i were just talking about SA sam 14/01/20 5:35 am we wanted to see if we can try a new concept with him bryant 14/01/20 5:45 am Sorry back - seems one of the PA guys is continuiing to shit on us in public - and is being specific about myself and Jon in the process. Trying to diffuse that through the other PA guy, but with no luck. sam 14/01/20 5:46 am what do you recommend? bryant 14/01/20 5:49 am I think we need a cease and desist letter from the lawyers. sam 14/01/20 5:49 am and shut their site down? bryant 14/01/20 5:50 am I think that needs to go out as soon as possible. If he continues, I think we need to take some action. sam 14/01/20 5:50 am do you recommend shutting them down sam 14/01/20 5:50 am to get their attention? bryant 14/01/20 5:51 am No, I think we fire a warning shot with the letter. If that doesn't work I think we come down hard and furious in every way we can. bryant 14/01/20 5:51 am If Mike manages to impair our ability to operate we have legal recourse, but what good does that do us if we go under because we miss out on some big deal? bryant 14/01/20 5:52 am Shutting them down now would just fuel the fire. bryant 14/01/20 5:52 am The letter gives him enough rope to either hang himself, or climb off his soapbox. sam 14/01/20 5:52 am do you have a sample cease & desist letter sam 14/01/20 5:52 am i'd like to get it fired off today sam 14/01/20 5:52 am im looking on my hard drive to see if i have any sam 14/01/20 5:52 am we put specific evidence, etc. and quote laws sam 14/01/20 5:53 am and fire a warning shot.. sam 14/01/20 5:53 am and using his letter he sent us also as evicence of breach sam 14/01/20 5:53 am and violating our confidentialty policies sam 14/01/20 5:53 am as well as defamation bryant 14/01/20 5:54 am Yeah, we have to do something. It needs to be Mike 'Gabe' Krahulik to, and not Jerry 'Tycho' Parkinson. Jerry isn't being vocal. sam 14/01/20 5:56 am im seeing if i can find a sample copy of a generic c&d .. then we put specfics in there.. and fax it to him on efront letterhead and on the bottom we can do cc: Melody Dapp Williams, [full title, esquire, etc.] that way it makes it seem intimidating that the lawyer is ccd on it sam 14/01/20 5:56 am and we can send it to our lawyer as well sam 14/01/20 5:56 am but it brings more credibiilty bryant 14/01/20 5:56 am Yeah. sam 14/01/20 5:56 am and we order eerything to be ceased in 24 hours and retract everything they said sam 14/01/20 5:56 am and delete their postings sam 14/01/20 5:56 am or we will take action sam 14/01/20 5:58 am do you guys wnat to prepare it and ill review it then you can fax to him? bryant 14/01/20 5:59 am Yeah, have a template? sam 14/01/20 5:59 am still searching :) bryant 14/01/20 6:03 am Is Greg writing a letter as well? Or is that the one Jerry is having me do the first draft of? sam 14/01/20 6:04 am oh thats probably you.. not sure who was doing it bryant 14/01/20 6:04 am ok cool - just wanted to make sure we weren't overlapping. bryant 14/01/20 6:05 am These people kill me. They're so short sighted and immature. I've been trying to talk sense to Tycho but I'm not sure I'm gettomg anywhere. bryant 14/01/20 6:10 am So naive. |
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bryant 14/01/20 6:11 am I might have talked some sense to Tycho. I'm going to watch the messageboards closely this weekend to see if Gabe persists. If he does, we'll get the C&D out. sam 14/01/20 6:11 am http://www.creditmania.com/Letters/cease.htm sam 14/01/20 6:12 am one sample :) sam 14/01/20 6:12 am looking for more bryant 14/01/20 6:12 am In the meantime, I've got a lot of issues that I want to try and work into the letter to try and diffuse all of this. I don't think pissed of webmasters is the end of the world, but better to have them on their backs wagging their tails than snapping at us. sam 14/01/20 6:12 am yes i agree bryant 14/01/20 6:13 am Yeah, found some samples too. I might also call in a favor from some people I know at Paul Hastings under the premise that his actions are endangering my livelihood by means of endangering eF. If they'll do it it will be from eF, not from me so should work fine. I hope they will, they're some of the best. bryant 14/01/20 6:15 am Some part of me is still carrying a Corps mentality. I keep thinking a rifle butt to some kneecaps would solve all our problems. Instant collections and quiet webmasters. =) sam 14/01/20 6:15 am i like that attitude :) sam 14/01/20 6:16 am anyway we can work on SA? imnot sure if jonathan fwd u my thoughts on that bryant 14/01/20 6:16 am Not sure either, checking. sam 14/01/20 6:16 am let me do it bryant 14/01/20 6:16 am ok. bryant 14/01/20 6:17 am My current plan with Lowtax is to get him on the phone next time he's available and find out what he needs to get by. Not this $13k crap - the guy can live on 1/5th of that in style. bryant 14/01/20 6:17 am Perhaps if we can assure him that much at the very least just until things get better then he'll be happy. sam 14/01/20 6:18 am yeah i know.. actually if u want, put him on our payroll on normal salary sam 14/01/20 6:18 am or something sam 14/01/20 6:18 am and if things dont work out, he gets his site back.. so he's assured sam 14/01/20 6:18 am and would reduce the 13k sam 14/01/20 6:18 am and also sam 14/01/20 6:18 am we can get him to do real revenue stuff that ill fwd to you bryant 14/01/20 6:18 am Yeah - something. Let me work on him, we have a decent rapport. bryant 14/01/20 6:19 am His #1 issue is server stability right now - how soon are we at S4R? sam 14/01/20 6:19 am and tell him to get his forum msg down in the meanwhile.. and if we cant work anything out, then he can rant and rave then :) sam 14/01/20 6:19 am s4r..i ask matt and nate everday.. they said they're almost completed sam 14/01/20 6:19 am w/ data transfer sam 14/01/20 6:19 am let me ask matt again sam 14/01/20 6:20 am if we get SA on our side, then PA ranting will seem like its their fault sam 14/01/20 6:20 am if he posts good stuff about efront :) sam 14/01/20 6:20 am and they're a community type of site.. so bellwether sort of bryant 14/01/20 6:20 am Yeah, that's my biggest issue right now. Everyone seems to think it's okay to rant about this issues in open public forums. It's not. I mean shit, they can certainly have grievances and that's a normal aspect of life, but these people (kids) need to understand that when they started taking money, it stopped being a hobby and became a business. sam 14/01/20 6:21 am yeah i know bryant 14/01/20 6:21 am That's my hurdle right now with the email - make points like that while narrowing the gap between us. bryant 14/01/20 6:22 am Heh, the good news is that at least at the moment, we have a lot of people coming to us interested in being acquired. Since 1/1 I've received more direct emails with people asking to come aboard than in 3 months before. sam 14/01/20 6:22 am i know.. sam 14/01/20 6:22 am if half of our webmasters leave, we can get better contradcts with sam 14/01/20 6:22 am 1 year terms.. and $ based on uniques bryant 14/01/20 6:23 am lol, no kidding. sam 14/01/20 6:23 am so i dont mind if ppl leave.. but we need to do it gracefully sam 14/01/20 6:23 am like sitepowerup.com i gracefully parted ways sam 14/01/20 6:23 am (very bad clickthrus) sam 14/01/20 6:23 am and trying to do the same w/ teenstation (too many banners per user) bryant 14/01/20 6:24 am Agree totally. Hey look, we can really survive if we lose some of the 'garbage' sites that will never be able to run anything but RON stuff. If we're already overpaying them - then no harm no foul if they go. sam 14/01/20 6:24 am roy7 1/13/200 12:53 PM Argh the SA forums box seems to be offline. Anyway please do pay Lowtax (somethingawful.com) next week if possible. I can take a pay delay if need be. I feel really bad for him. He came to us after 2 previous networks that went under and didn't give people notice and he had late payments from. sam 1/13/200 12:55 PM tell him to stop spamming us then sam 1/13/200 12:55 PM and encouraging his people to stop spamming us sam 1/13/200 12:55 PM rather work with us and we'll work w/him roy7 1/13/200 1:04 PM (The Ars article) Brian - newsletter (ICQ#346505) Wrote: Yeah, someone that I was working with and wanted to sell to us saw that and changed there mind sam 1/13/200 1:04 PM that's okay.. we probably dont need acqs right now anyways roy7 1/13/200 1:04 PM SA makes more than I realized, $13K/month. I can't pay that off my credit card. But hopefully we can send him at least half next week. roy7 1/13/200 1:05 PM We didn't take SA's forums down intentionally did we? sam 1/13/200 1:05 PM no of course not.. sam 1/13/200 1:06 PM we should probably cut SA sam 1/13/200 1:06 PM we cant keep his forums up roy7 1/13/200 1:07 PM From a positioning point of view, if INSP funds us, we should pay webmasters off before doing a PR. Don't want them seeing we have a pile of cash and asking where their money is. ;) sam 1/13/200 1:07 PM and he keeps having server problems with us roy7 1/13/200 1:07 PM S4R will solve that. roy7 1/13/200 1:08 PM I don't like the idea of cutting someone who has tried their best for us but we've let them down. Someone like PA who hate us and wanted out all along, yeah, they are gone. But Lowtax had been pretty pro-eFront and trying to support us. sam 1/13/200 1:08 PM how has lowtax been pro-efront sam 1/13/200 1:08 PM i was just thinking in his best interest roy7 1/13/200 1:09 PM Well he's just been cooperative in our reveune stuff so far as I know, and more patient than most of us would have been with the forum problems. sam 1/13/200 1:09 PM megagames emailed that his srever is down hm roy7 1/13/200 1:09 PM Any tech people in today? SA's forum box needs rebooted. sam 1/13/200 1:10 PM no.. i dont see any1 roy7 1/13/200 1:10 PM It looks bad with the thread Ars links to goign to a machine that isn't on. ;) sam 1/13/200 1:10 PM probably better for us :) sam 1/13/200 1:12 PM in the recap email g3 is sending out monday, he's going to remind every1 of their confidentiality clause i mean if infospace sees stuff like that, we wont get any funding then its a sure death so we're only hurting ourselves roy7 1/13/200 1:20 PM I was going to try paying lowtax with a cash advance check off a credit card but I didn't realize how much he made. I don't have that much credit available on all my cards combined. :) sam 1/13/200 1:21 PM we can take care of him next week probably sam 1/13/200 1:21 PM but he needs to help us not hurt us sam 1/13/200 1:21 PM even though i know his site is all about bitching and whining sam 1/13/200 1:23 PM btw, somethingawful = 0 srunner links roy7 1/13/200 1:25 PM Hurmph. I wonder what the best way to monetize something like SA is. It's popular (6m+ page views), kinda famous (Ars are fans), and has a very loyal following. Not sure if it's something you can sell branded advertising for, like a "real" humor site. sam 1/13/200 1:25 PM ya .. u cant sell advertising on it.. its all cussing bitching whining sam 1/13/200 1:26 PM advertisers wont like it sam 1/13/200 1:26 PM however, u can do srunner type of stuff sam 1/13/200 1:26 PM like amd sam 1/13/200 1:26 PM like mad sam 1/13/200 1:26 PM and xdrive sam 1/13/200 1:26 PM and everything sam 1/13/200 1:26 PM because its a community sam 1/13/200 1:26 PM but we cant make money if he doesnt promote our stuff sam 1/13/200 1:26 PM on a daily basis sam 1/13/200 1:27 PM remember taht one day he had srunner link (he was whining about it).. and it got lot of clicks sam 1/13/200 1:27 PM but i highly doubt he'll do all this for us roy7 1/13/200 1:27 PM The tune will change once he's paid again. :) roy7 1/13/200 1:28 PM And once he's at S4R and forums work or, if they crash, someone can reboot them. sam 1/13/200 1:28 PM bryant 14/01/20 6:24 am "really survive" meaning, losing some of them is hardly going to kill us. sam 14/01/20 6:25 am yeah im sure we'll survive, i have no doubts.. its time for restructuring and streamlinging and losing the garbage sam 14/01/20 6:25 am our basic to cover.. rent & payroll isnt tons (200k) sam 14/01/20 6:26 am and some of the bills..we'll just have to make payment plans on.. and really, i'd like to get total 100% of our bills to 500k/month and revenues to go upto 1 mil.. sam 14/01/20 6:26 am and glide on that for a little bit.. while saving up $ sam 14/01/20 6:26 am with or w/o infospace bryant 14/01/20 6:26 am ok, cool - got the Lowtax stuff. I think there's something that can definitely be done there. When it comes down to it he's really quite reasonable and mature (at least compared to many of the others). More importantly, they almost all respect him to a certain degree so if he's not anti- then maybe some of them are less so. bryant 14/01/20 6:27 am He can help us without transparently being our puppet I suspect, and should be willing to do so. sam 14/01/20 6:27 am yeah just talk to him.. tell him that we think he can be a good spokesperson for efront to the webmaster community and we want to completely prioritize him and make sure he's taken care of bryant 14/01/20 6:28 am Tim Eckles is taking a beating in the closed discussion groups though. Gotta love the guy, he's going toe to toe with people and trying to bring them down. sam 14/01/20 6:28 am i know.. tim is awesome :) sam 14/01/20 6:28 am im feeding him info and material :) sam 14/01/20 6:28 am if we got SA on our side, then there's more voice sam 14/01/20 6:29 am so thats why i was thinking forget the 13k.. have a heart to heart with him.. does he really like what he's doing? does he want to do it instead of getting a regular job? well we think there's a way that can be done sam 14/01/20 6:30 am and work something out with him where he can continue to do what he enjoys while we get what we want from him : revenue projects + pro-efront support 100% no matter what :) sam 14/01/20 6:30 am this is truly like the corps huh :) strategy & intelligence to overthrow the opposition bryant 14/01/20 6:31 am The salaried thing is something intriguing - pretty comfortable with that approach? I'm thinking if we do that he's instantly our "webmaster advocate". That could be painted as a real plus. "We know you all are upset, we're trying to be upfront with you but communications sometimes break down - so we're appointing one of your own as the liaison for all concerns. sam 14/01/20 6:31 am yeah.. but he also has to position for us bryant 14/01/20 6:31 am Heh, it's like the Corps, but even more like my old counterintelligence work. As stressful as it can be, it's also a lot of fun. sam 14/01/20 6:32 am meaning in good times and bad times he has to stick together bryant 14/01/20 6:32 am Well yeah, but obviously we wouldn't position it that way to the webmasters. sam 14/01/20 6:32 am and we'll make sure he never gets evicted as long as we're around :) bryant 14/01/20 6:32 am Dunno, I won't go into any of that with him until I have a good idea of where his head is. sam 14/01/20 6:32 am thats true sam 14/01/20 6:32 am well see what u can do :) bryant 14/01/20 6:32 am Will do. I need to run - will talk to you later. =) sam 14/01/20 6:33 am if we turn his site into member-only we can make alot from email makreting too :) ok later bryant 14/01/20 6:33 am We'll reign the webmasters in - may just take a few days. Once they're under control it will be easy to separate some of them from the flock and quietly (and peacefully) trim them off. sam 14/01/20 6:33 am yup sam 14/01/20 6:34 am this is probably a good thing all this happened.. then we can finally control them.. they were like a wild herd before :) sam 14/01/20 9:45 am oy7: (5:42 PM) http://www.lumthemad.net Whoa that's odd. They claim we are throwing in the towel and fired most of our staff last month. sam: (5:43 PM) thats because of stupid SA posts sam: (5:43 PM) he blatantly violated our NDA sam: (5:43 PM) so i doubt he's getting paid next week sam: (5:44 PM) before some of our other webmasters sam: (5:44 PM) who are in more need sam: (5:44 PM) so he needs to retract what he said or.. sam 16/01/20 11:05 am heh.. tim from aah wants to take over doing PA cartoons:) sam 16/01/20 11:05 am he said he'll make fun of lazy, web-generation, immature whiny kiddies :) sam 16/01/20 11:10 am iBLAMEj00 (ICQ#8906076) Wrote: I know an artist that would probably love to do it. =) [another options.. kick PA guys out and we can do the comics ourselves] sam 16/01/20 11:13 am their email basically said they are not going to cooperate with us.. thereby they are in breach of the entire contract.. which means we fire them and have no further obligations to them sam 16/01/20 11:32 am if you can work on restrucutirng some of the agreements, i think that would help alot.. like SA gets 2cpm.. thats obscene and can't last ..lot of them like that sam 16/01/20 11:41 am iBLAMEj00 (ICQ#8906076) Wrote: Okay, artist is all lined up bryant 16/01/20 11:50 am Yeah, I can move into restructuring people. Re: PA, let me have 24 hours to see what I can do. Presuming I can get them to talk at all. I don't have a copy of their email, would you fwd when you get a chance? sam 16/01/20 11:51 am Tims's saying that the first storyline from the new artist is about PA :) sam 16/01/20 11:51 am yes.. bryant 16/01/20 11:53 am I have a copy of that one. Did they send one today declining our out contract? sam 16/01/20 11:53 am no they didnt sam 16/01/20 11:53 am but i was being proactive bryant 16/01/20 11:53 am Ahh, okay. sam 16/01/20 11:53 am i was telling jonathan in the future, we kick these guys out sam 16/01/20 11:53 am and do the content ourselves sam 16/01/20 11:54 am we have alot of resources through all the ppl on our team sam 16/01/20 11:54 am we can always find someone to do the content sam 16/01/20 11:54 am even if it sux :) |
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sam 16/01/20 11:54 am i was saying that because they said in their email they refused to put our stuff up, and thus breach oruagreement, we have a right to fire them as well sam 16/01/20 11:54 am and hire other ppl toservice the website bryant 16/01/20 11:55 am Ah, heh - okay. I thought they rejected our 'out' offer - I was completely flabbergasted. sam 16/01/20 11:56 am infospace sent us another termsheet sam 16/01/20 11:56 am today bryant 16/01/20 11:56 am Better? sam 16/01/20 11:56 am man.. not much room to negotiate sam 16/01/20 11:56 am getting better everytime sam 16/01/20 11:56 am but still not what we want sam 16/01/20 11:56 am maybe time to cut bait and go for it huh sam 16/01/20 11:58 am getting infosapce will give us some $, time to regroup, and $ in the bank as well bryant 16/01/20 11:58 am With the timing maybe. Don't think any one of us would take a deal like that seriously except from where we're sitting right now at this moment. It does buy us time though, and time is the one thing we really need. Our capacity for success and stability isn't the issue, having the time to put it in place is. sam 16/01/20 11:58 am its not a ton of money.. but enough to help us buy timewhich is the most important thing sam 16/01/20 11:58 am yup exactly bryant 16/01/20 11:58 am Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. sam 16/01/20 11:59 am btw, fyi, jerry wont be in all week.. his grandfather passed away sam 16/01/20 11:59 am he's flying to ohio 2morrow bryant 16/01/20 11:59 am Yeah I heard. Spoke with him briefly this afternoon too. Never good to hear stuff like that. sam 16/01/20 11:59 am yeah i know sam 16/01/20 12:04 pm also, before we announce the infospace deal, i'd like to restructure all our webmaster agreements sam 16/01/20 12:04 pm that way we can cry we're in the poorhouse.. etc. sam 16/01/20 12:04 pm otherwise it'll be tougher afterwards sam 16/01/20 12:04 pm and we do want to do that because the infospace money isnt alot and we have to give all of it back.. so we need to conserve every penny sam 16/01/20 12:05 pm so me and you can work on that i think.. we'll go through the contracts, and as part of going back to the websites we'll call them and say this is the offer wed' like to propose to move forward because of the ad climate sam 16/01/20 12:05 pm what do u think bryant 16/01/20 12:07 pm I think it will be fine. Some of them have to see it coming. We can even think about allowing contingencies that return the structure to its original form if X, Y, and Z happen. But may not even have to go to great lengths. bryant 16/01/20 12:07 pm Do we have a list of the biggest money holes? sam 16/01/20 12:07 pm mpog sam 16/01/20 12:07 pm jus kidding ha ha sam 16/01/20 12:07 pm ill get you a list of all the sites and stuff tomorrow bryant 16/01/20 12:07 pm Heh, true probably. bryant 16/01/20 12:08 pm OK, sounds good. sam 16/01/20 12:08 pm so we can work on this project.. and im going to work w/ dennis to try to push the infospc fwd:.. having a $3 bil company invest in us will give us alot of crediblity huh? bryant 16/01/20 12:09 pm Would almost have to. Although I still think that despite the bad press we still stand up pretty straight on our own merits. sam 16/01/20 12:09 pm i know.. but we want to kill all of that once and for all and show that we've adapted considerably.. that we're bring services to our user base, nto banners.. and evolving w/ the net sam 16/01/20 12:17 pm actually you know who would be a good swat team person to work with you on restructurings? sam 16/01/20 12:17 pm Tim sam 16/01/20 12:17 pm Tim & I restrucuted a few contracts already 6 weeks ago sam 16/01/20 12:17 pm He's really good sam 17/01/20 12:50 pm hey i m almost done with a list of webmasters we need to renegotiate with sam 20/01/20 11:11 am hey.. g3 briefed me on ur telecon w/ him.. everything looks good it seems.. i have a spreadsheet from bill schmidt on more webmaster financials as well.. maybe we can go over it whenever u have a chance this weekend bryant 20/01/20 11:52 pm Cool, that would be great. Lot of good info coming together, I hope to start prioritiziing sites and indetifying what needs to be changed asap. sam 21/01/20 11:17 pm hey linda/lotus msged me about helping with the chinese websites.. and she asked if she should talk to u about it.. im going to tell her yes as well. bryant 22/01/20 11:51 pm np, she ICQd me. sam 23/01/20 1:16 pm efront is a MSP (media services provider) that provides services and solutions to media business through eddie (efront delivery engine) which consists of: -Technology Division ( Managed Ad Serving & Mgmt, Content Mgmt & ASP, Managed hosting) - Syndication (Careers, Directories, Education, Tech content, Downloads, etc.) - Marketing Services ( Media Services & Media Sales) - Direct Marketing (Lead generation for online and offline businesses) - International (deploying the above internationally) [btw, some of the concepts we're currently developing: we're not a media company, we provide services and solutions to media & other businesses .. so probably get rid of the media from our name too :] sam 23/01/20 1:18 pm efront is a MSP (media services provider) that provides services and solutions to media business through eddie (efront delivery engine) which consists of: -Technology Division ( Managed Ad Serving & Mgmt, Content Mgmt & ASP, Managed hosting) - Syndication (Careers, Directories, Education, Tech content, Downloads, etc.) - Marketing Services ( Media Services & Media Sales) - Direct Marketing (Lead generation for online and offline businesses) - International (deploying the above internationally) [btw, some of the concepts we're currently developing: we're not a media company, we provide services and solutions to media & other businesses .. so probably get rid of the media from our name too :] sam 26/01/20 11:39 am hows the renegotiations going sam 26/01/20 12:14 pm PA Contract: Don't think we should accept the changes. The problem is that they could be looking to get us back or something. If Tim @ AAH or any of our webmasters or whatever says something bad about them, they could try to sue us; who knows? Tell them that the reality is that if we do something illegal to them or defame them, they can sue us anyways regardless of what the contract says so no need to put it in there. sam 26/01/20 1:32 pm hey just talking to alot of people right now (outside efront.. ppl i talked to about acquiring before.. like napigator etc.) the ad market isHORRIBLE.. cpms are now 10 cents RON .. best time to renegotiate:) sam 26/01/20 11:13 pm ill send you the email for sitepowerup and teenstatio...we terminated them.. and we just need to clean it up sam 27/01/20 1:54 pm Will-I must have an update on the renegotiations. Feb. 1 is approaching fast. What are we doing bryant 27/01/20 1:57 pm Linda got me her Asian site feedback today. Greg is putting criteria together. Jerry is going to look at the cpmU concept. Once those are in place we can rip through pretty quickly. Babynames is being handled this weekend, as is iswoosh presuming he gets back to the messages I've been leaving. bryant 27/01/20 1:57 pm ohtop is ready to go. bryant 27/01/20 1:57 pm I've got a basic list of which sites have out clauses that need to get removed. bryant 27/01/20 1:57 pm What happens on 2/1? sam 27/01/20 1:58 pm im going through a list / data collection right now..very interesting. btw, i just renegotiated one of the sites (Avfind.com) we owed him 65k on his contract. i gave him 2 options. 1. 20k and we call it even OR 2. he gets his site back, no questions asked he chose option #1.. (we'd pay 5k next week, and rest within a month) thats another tactic to use sam 27/01/20 1:59 pm february 1.. we need to get our payable for february to at least 200k.. because we wont be able to pay much more than that for the month of february until we rebuild our revenues using direct marketing (its working really good..but they need to ramp up.. takes 2-3 months) bryant 27/01/20 2:00 pm Is our goal to negotiate down what we owe in back pay or is it to restructure from cpmPVs to cpmUniques, reduce pay levels where appripriate as well as remove unhealthy clauses? sam 27/01/20 2:00 pm ill email you an interesting file.. sam 27/01/20 2:05 pm ok sent an email.. btw, PA guy left msg on my voicemail.. i deleted it.. whats up w/ him .. are they ready to sign bryant 27/01/20 2:05 pm Should be. Was it Mike? Contract is off to them, they just need to sign and fax. Expecting it back tomorrow. sam 27/01/20 2:06 pm yep.. i figured you're taking care of it. fyi, i also sent yout he new org chart we introduced to all the employees yesterday (well in the office).. w/ the new division.. you're part of corporate development, formerly acquisition.. i asked bill to interface with you for any contractual and acq. related matters as well.. so we can try to focus on revenue stuff :) bryant 27/01/20 2:08 pm Sounds good. I think once the cpmU stuff is in place we have a real opportunity to cut $ down. Plus with the distinct possibility that some expensive sites might bail - that helps as well. Re: 2/1 - even ones we do after that we'll grandfather back to a 2/1 effective date. I'll check on the legality of that, but it shouldn't present an issue. sam 27/01/20 2:10 pm okay no problem. btw, i think best thing is to do is renegotiate the length as well. going forward, i'd like to get lump sum cash contracts.. much cleaner and we have full control. most of the sites we own outright, we have people run it for 200--500/month (i dont know how you spend 4k :) i get 10 sites we own outright run for 200$/month and they run good:) bryant 27/01/20 2:10 pm Heh, Babynames walks and that's an extra $16k free a month, and we only lose 6MM PVs and just over 500k uniques. Can replace that easily with smaller cheaper sites in the same market. bryant 27/01/20 2:11 pm 36 -> 18? 24? 12? sam 27/01/20 2:12 pm yes i agree.. with cash only deals..they work really good from deployment standpoint as well. the way i structured these in the past were like this: * 25k cash * 30 day due diligence, then 5k * 30 day where they redesign it to our standards, move it over and 10k * 30 days warranty support 10k and we're done! sam 27/01/20 2:12 pm pretty smart huh:) we only say.. 25k upfront cash sam 27/01/20 2:12 pm in the contract we outline how this is broken down bryant 27/01/20 2:12 pm Any recurring money after that? sam 27/01/20 2:12 pm and if they come back, we just say this is to protect ourselves and make sure its moved over sam 27/01/20 2:13 pm no ..ZERO sam 27/01/20 2:13 pm i have like 5 sits like this..theyre great bryant 27/01/20 2:13 pm Wow, how do they support their staff? Or don't they have any? sam 27/01/20 2:13 pm just consultants.. pay them 200 to 500 a month.. i have alot of kids work for us sam 27/01/20 2:13 pm i have access to 50 kids sam 27/01/20 2:13 pm h.s. kids everywhere bryant 27/01/20 2:13 pm Ahh, okay. sam 27/01/20 2:13 pm i can get as many sam 27/01/20 2:13 pm better than working in mcdonadlsl sam 27/01/20 2:13 pm and they'll do anything we say.. in terms of design, etc sam 27/01/20 2:14 pm and most of the sites are easy to maintain once they have the traffic sam 27/01/20 2:14 pm no stocks, nothing sam 27/01/20 2:14 pm of course, you probably cant do it with sites like themeworld etc., sam 27/01/20 2:14 pm but those are few and far between sam 27/01/20 2:14 pm most sites that have 5k to 25k visitors a day you can do that sam 27/01/20 2:14 pm which is majority of our sites sam 27/01/20 2:14 pm pretty neat huh? that makes life easier for everyone..and gives us a huge cashcow long-term.. bryant 27/01/20 2:15 pm Actually, themeworld I think is a one man show. Static content sites that would really work for (cheats, pics, etc.). It's dynamic content sites that it would be harder to work. sam 27/01/20 2:15 pm actually funny thing is that sam 27/01/20 2:15 pm the sites i did those deals for ARE dynamic sites bryant 27/01/20 2:15 pm No kidding. sam 27/01/20 2:15 pm bytecenter.com totally CGI sam 27/01/20 2:15 pm avfind.com.. i did the site renegotiation today.. and got a perl programmer kid (200/month) whos going to take it over sam 27/01/20 2:16 pm gldev.com is same way.. mysql skinz.org.. is owned by us 100% .. different people running it.. we pay each guy 500/month sam 27/01/20 2:16 pm you get the idea sam 27/01/20 2:16 pm i can find resources to run sites.. thats never a problem sam 27/01/20 2:18 pm the spreadsheet is interesting bryant 27/01/20 2:22 pm Good lord - we pay indianmasala 10k a month? bryant 27/01/20 2:22 pm Always hard to remember what the market allowed this time last year. =) sam 27/01/20 2:22 pm i think so.. brian did the deal.. sam 27/01/20 2:22 pm only 2-3 months ago sam 27/01/20 2:23 pm we need to reduce that sam 27/01/20 2:23 pm this was kinda building up.. remember i sent that email out 3 months ago concerning how cpm rates are falling etc. and dont pay more than 1 cpm on most sites :) sam 27/01/20 2:24 pm out in the trenches, you kind of start to get an idea.. its okay though.. most of the sites.. we either renegotiate, or give back the sites sam 27/01/20 2:24 pm i thnk the best way to increase our margins is to reduce the length of the term bryant 27/01/20 2:24 pm Certainly. sam 27/01/20 2:24 pm upfront cash (3 month).. or one year (themeworld type of sites) bryant 27/01/20 2:25 pm So you've been taking a % of the total cash value from the original contract? How are you determining how much cash they're given? sam 27/01/20 2:25 pm as low as i can get them :) sam 27/01/20 2:26 pm depends on their needs.. economic hardship, etc. :) sam 27/01/20 2:26 pm i basically say original contract doesnt mean squat bryant 27/01/20 2:26 pm Using Megagames as an example, we pay them 30k over 36 months - that's $1.08M before you consider equity 'value' etc. sam 27/01/20 2:26 pm make Xyz with us.. or make 10 cent cpm out there in the market bryant 27/01/20 2:26 pm I see. So it's less about the old deal than it is a new. bryant 27/01/20 2:26 pm I gotchya. sam 27/01/20 2:27 pm and better to do just cash payment sam 27/01/20 2:27 pm than going from 3 year to 1 year sam 27/01/20 2:27 pm because if u do that, they'll know you're trying to reduce the payments bryant 27/01/20 2:27 pm Right. bryant 27/01/20 2:27 pm Can we afford to pay out such large lumps to people all at once? sam 27/01/20 2:28 pm and the excuse to use is that.. we're having hard time deploying campaigns etc. we have 3 options really.. 1. you take the site back (ill hve to talk it internally) 2. we renegotiate the contract based on uniques, etc. 3. we make a reasonable cash payment and call it even sam 27/01/20 2:28 pm well, structure it so that the cash isnt all at once sam 27/01/20 2:29 pm (some now, some for warranty support, etc...and drag it out over 3 months) sam 27/01/20 2:29 pm and not make it so large.. like avfind.com .. made it from 75k to 20k bryant 27/01/20 2:29 pm Was 75k the total he would have made over the term of his agreement? sam 27/01/20 2:30 pm his term was expriing feb 28, 2001 we hadnt paid him since oct. 2000.. he was getting basically 15k/month.. sam 27/01/20 2:30 pm (3 cpm.. yikes) sam 27/01/20 2:30 pm he agreed to the new stuf.. i just have to send it to him and make sure he doesnt change his mind.. nice site too.. and decent traffic AND we can put a srunner link next to each song :) sam 27/01/20 2:31 pm did u see the spreadsheet i gave u bryant 27/01/20 2:31 pm I see. I'm just trying to apply the model to sites that have very large amounts that will build up over the next few years. Megagames for example is over #$1MM. Even if we brought that down to $150k that would be $20k more a month than we pay him now ($30k). bryant 27/01/20 2:31 pm Yeah, I'm looking it over now. sam 27/01/20 2:31 pm yeah..megagames would be hard to do.. i'd leave him till last i think sam 27/01/20 2:32 pm until he relly gets in a jam $ wise sam 27/01/20 2:32 pm he was already sam 27/01/20 2:32 pm at some point in the future, we might be able to take the site for 2 payments of 50k a piece.. that sounds bad i know :) sam 27/01/20 2:32 pm or at least reduce it sam 27/01/20 2:32 pm personally, i'd skip that site for now bryant 27/01/20 2:33 pm OK I see, so there is a sweet spot for this process. Sites closer to term on their agreements in a cash bind so anxious and willing to get a sum of cash in the short term instead of more in the long. bryant 27/01/20 2:33 pm And obviously we position "more in the long" to be more like "questions about any in the long". sam 27/01/20 2:33 pm yeah.. somethingawful.. the site isnt a site without him.. so we need to keep him sam 27/01/20 2:33 pm we should get him for 4k/month flat or something sam 27/01/20 2:34 pm have u talked to him about renegotiation sam 27/01/20 2:34 pm yeah questions about any in the long :) bryant 27/01/20 2:34 pm I've planted the seeds but haven't really gone in depth yet. |
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sam 27/01/20 2:34 pm and we never talk about suing them or screwing them.. worst case, they get their site back.. we threaten them with giving their sites back sam 27/01/20 2:34 pm thats not so bad is it:) sam 27/01/20 2:34 pm of course, if they want us to keep it thats fine too sam 27/01/20 2:35 pm they have to get in line like the rest of our webmasters to collect bryant 27/01/20 2:35 pm Not at all. It never is when the choice is in their hands. bryant 27/01/20 2:35 pm We're telling them what we need to do in order to get them money, and saying we understand if that doesn't work for them and being kind enough to ignore the ownership agreement. sam 27/01/20 2:35 pm just looking at some of the contracts, etc. in terms of lump sum payments, we'd put them #1 on the priority list to get paid bryant 27/01/20 2:35 pm At least that's the approach. sam 27/01/20 2:37 pm our to 36 sites generate 80% of our daily visitors sam 27/01/20 2:37 pm 1.3 mil / 1.6 mil = 81% bryant 27/01/20 2:40 pm OK so; Lumps of cash (cut way the hell down) -or- Shorter contract based on cpmU with modern cash scale -or- Site back Yes? bryant 27/01/20 2:41 pm With the focus obviously being on the sites making the most and/or those in the top 36. sam 27/01/20 2:41 pm yes.. although we dont want to give the site back if we can help it.. we just threaten it for ex., at a few times, avfind said,.. ok ill just take my site back. of course response was.. 'okay so you dont want any cash then right' then he said.. oh wait.. well hm sam 27/01/20 2:41 pm do u hae most of the contracts bryant 27/01/20 2:41 pm Almost all, yeah. bryant 27/01/20 2:42 pm Those I don't Kevin will FAX me as I need them sam 27/01/20 2:42 pm we dont want to give any of the 1 year contracts one back either bryant 27/01/20 2:42 pm Of course. Too close to owning outright. sam 27/01/20 2:42 pm how are you guys holding up? pretty good? jan 31 payment is on time.. feb 15 is uncertain right now.. (negotiating w/ about.com right now) ..and webmasters would have to be first then bryant 27/01/20 2:44 pm Holding up fine at present. How long of a delay do you anticipate (if any) on 2/15? sam 27/01/20 2:45 pm really hard to tell.. i'd like to not any delay if i can help it. we have these possiblities: * about.com done (they are upto 200k now.. they owe us 450k.. and im trying to settle for 300k + get a new contract) * infosapce is now in the due diligence phase * meeting with reznor, etc. (geocities founders).. for possible funding * other a/r.. although gotta pay webmasters first bryant 27/01/20 2:46 pm We'll all play it by ear and see what happens. We survived the last delay, if it happens again I'm sure everyone can pull it out again. sam 27/01/20 2:47 pm yeah .. i just want to renegotiate so we dont have a snowball effect.. in terms of a/p building up.. thats the important thing bryant 27/01/20 2:47 pm Oh yeah, if anything is a knockout punch its multiplied a/p's. sam 27/01/20 2:48 pm yeah thats why this is like really important stuff :) sam 27/01/20 2:48 pm so our in-house bulldog is taking the lead on this then .. you :) sam 27/01/20 2:49 pm got any idea on how you're going to re-work SA? bryant 27/01/20 2:49 pm No, going to think about it a bit. bryant 27/01/20 2:49 pm With all of this I don't have to wait for the cmpU stuff at least. Should be able to contact a lot of these people this weekend. sam 27/01/20 2:50 pm i can get u the cpmU stuff tonight.. i havent looked at the ohtop stuff.. that should be easy to evaluate sam 27/01/20 2:50 pm btw, sites like indianmasala (i jsut went there) .. has their own serach engine im sure they're making $ from bryant 27/01/20 2:51 pm No rush. I suspec tthat will be the least taken option. sam 27/01/20 2:51 pm basically use audit/violation as an excuse too bryant 27/01/20 2:51 pm Going to pull Brian in on some of these. Any issue? sam 27/01/20 2:51 pm when it comes to them taking the stite back, dont promise they can have it back.. say that shouldnt be a problem..but u need to get it approved, etc. bryant 27/01/20 2:52 pm np sam 27/01/20 2:52 pm no not at all.. sam 27/01/20 2:53 pm indianmasala also uses mailbits sam 27/01/20 2:53 pm (for example..) t sam 27/01/20 2:53 pm dont mess w/ subnet.. i negotiated the poor guy down 2 times already :) his original contract was 3 cpm bryant 27/01/20 2:53 pm np, we'll use whatever we can to help. sam 27/01/20 2:54 pm ill see if i can renegotiate him 1 more time.. he's actully good.. im going to give him all the mp3 sites to run sam 27/01/20 2:57 pm the ones that end in 2001.. im pretty positive you can work out a lump sum arrangement . bryant 27/01/20 2:57 pm I doubt there's a question. For them it's a matter of "here's X guaranteed and in short order, or Y maybe - maybe not over a longer time". bryant 27/01/20 2:58 pm Not one of them will opt to wait longer. sam 27/01/20 2:58 pm ya i know.. u can get it for like 10-20 cents on the dollar.. bryant 27/01/20 2:58 pm Those are going to be the cakewalks. It's the ones that get a good amount for a much longer period of time that will be the battle. Even those should see the value though. sam 27/01/20 2:59 pm yeah.. megagames would be a battle.. you can try your hands at it if you want.. i said last cuz i antitcipt a lbattle :) bryant 27/01/20 3:00 pm Well, I'm going to work on the soft underbelly first. When the easy ones are dealt with we can afford to spend more time on the tough outer shell. bryant 27/01/20 3:00 pm If nothing else, MG might be a better candidate for cpmU and thus lower payments. sam 27/01/20 3:01 pm yeah..although megagames is a flat 30k / month sam 27/01/20 3:01 pm and his unique are good sam 27/01/20 3:01 pm and his traffic increases sam 27/01/20 3:01 pm and his pv/visitor ratio is good bryant 27/01/20 3:01 pm Our ace on that one is that our association with him also hurts us with our relationships with game producers and PR firms. sam 27/01/20 3:01 pm yeah thats a beter ace bryant 27/01/20 3:01 pm Well, them maybe just reduce the 30k. Don't know - won't worry about that one until there's time to joust. bryant 27/01/20 3:02 pm He's widely considered to be a pro-piracy site. I have no stance on that myself, but it's a tool. sam 27/01/20 3:02 pm yeah.. when we make him gaming.efront.com, we'll remove the crack section..and make it hidden sam 27/01/20 3:02 pm yeah good tool sam 27/01/20 3:03 pm btw, just read your cpmU email sam 27/01/20 3:03 pm only one problem i hae sam 27/01/20 3:03 pm wanna hear it bryant 27/01/20 3:03 pm Anyway, I'm going to run. Will track Brian down first thing and hopefully can deal with Jennifer Moss early. We'll see how many of the 'easy' ones we can crack down on tomorrow and Sunday. I'll very likely need some contracts here and there I don't have. Will someone be around? bryant 27/01/20 3:03 pm Absolutely. bryant 27/01/20 3:03 pm Shoot. sam 27/01/20 3:05 pm we're trying to tie it back to the cpm.. which means banner, etc. ideally, it'd be nice to know how much we can really make $ per daily visitor.. then use that data to figure out what the "cpm" model might be.. then try to think what a reasonable salary would be if they have high traffic.. then give them something in the neighborhood of a decent salary using the cpmU model @ the same time, making sure that their cost vs. overall $ per daily visitor is just 20% so gives us a 80% slush factor bottom line, we need to have an idea on how much $ per visitor we can make :) sam 27/01/20 3:06 pm its a good start..but @ some point, we'd need to take that into consideration.. for incremental visitors added to the network (we cant add unlimited either..) bryant 27/01/20 3:07 pm Certainly. sam 27/01/20 3:07 pm ill try to give u an idea of how much $ / visitor we can make using the short track history we have with the d.m. and other programs sam 27/01/20 3:08 pm okay.. talk to u later.. good night..thanks:) bryant 27/01/20 3:08 pm It will be tough to define a baseline for our profit margin per user with the rollercoaster that is the industry. But we can look at the lows and average it out. bryant 27/01/20 3:08 pm OK, cya. sam 27/01/20 3:09 pm thats why the lump sum cash 3 month thing is the best deal ever i think .. the 33 months is ours to monetize :) okay cha sam 27/01/20 3:09 pm okay cya sam 30/01/20 12:38 pm any luck on reneogitations?? sam 30/01/20 12:38 pm progress? update? even one renegotiated successfully? bryant 30/01/20 12:40 pm PA is done, Jerry will have the info from them tonight. EMUX is the first straight target because of the $100k clause on their contract which comes up in a month. Just got the contract on them this afternoon from Kevin, so we should be calling them tomorrow. iSwoosh and BabyNames have been impossible to reach so far, but we're still trying. sam 30/01/20 12:41 pm how bout the rest? bryant 30/01/20 12:41 pm Emux is taking the lead since that's the most urgent. bryant 30/01/20 12:47 pm Have to get a resolution on that asap. There are a few other fairly urgent ones we're going to tackle after that. Brian and I are going to collaberate on the emux family, then I expect we'll start splitting up sites from there. Obviously BN, iS and PA have fit in where and as possible. sam 30/01/20 12:47 pm any thought on plan of attack? i duno.. we are dead dead dead in the water if we dont reduce our payable.. so they're all urgent sam 30/01/20 12:48 pm emux is one contract @ 100k..and even if we owe them, we cant pay them..even if they take their site back (eventually we will) .. but the rest of them we probably want to keep on an ongoing basis so.. bryant 30/01/20 12:50 pm ok. Might be best if you, Jerry and I (Brian too maybe) conf on all of this. I think I'm getting different concepts of where our priorities are. Want to make sure we're getting done what's most important. bryant 30/01/20 12:53 pm That'll actually be good - can find out which sites you two think are most expendable. Helps to know whose ass we can just kick and whose we're best not to. =) sam 31/01/20 1:47 pm how did the call w/ jennifer go bryant 31/01/20 1:48 pm She had to run while I was still on with Jerry and the EFG group. She's making herself available first thing tomorrow. sam 31/01/20 1:49 pm okay just checking :) any luck with the others? i think that we'll see how the results go.. then within 24 to 48 hours, have myself + you + scott p. here + maybe brian even work on this in a swat team manner and focus on just this either thursday or friday or fri,sat,sun,mon bryant 31/01/20 1:50 pm Also, Rich at SA has cooled off a lot. Seems he just let the stress get to him. I think we still let him chill a bit and then approach him later if need be. In the meantime if tech can make his stable, we can get him to 100% compliance which will help. sam 31/01/20 1:51 pm yeah lot of the webmasters.. if they dont cooperate, i prefer not to threaten them.. but re-vistit later to be honest w/ you, ive not had one problem with anyone.. i always worked things out.. just drag it out and they come to their sense bryant 31/01/20 1:51 pm Agree there. It's just a tough time, some people just need to vent. bryant 31/01/20 1:52 pm Pill popping time. I'll drop you a line tomorrow afternoon with some sort of status update on where we are with the key sites. bryant 31/01/20 1:52 pm mame, asta, megagames, babynames, freevote, etc. etc. sam 31/01/20 1:53 pm http://www.pdquick.com/checkout/OurAffiliates. sp?AC=12 just ordered food.. babynames.com is listed there! sam 01/02/20 12:00 pm update on renegotiations? bryant 01/02/20 12:10 pm We've been in touch with iswoosh, babynames, megagames, indianmasala and mame.dk today. IS is basically taken care of, he's actually open to a whole new contract if he stays. Jenn (BN) just needs to talk with her partners but seems open to change. MG and IM were just initial contact. MDK cares most about equity incentives on future growth. His traffic seems completely legit, so we'll do that and use it to cap the $ and deal with compliance. sam 01/02/20 12:11 pm who is IS bryant 01/02/20 12:11 pm Trying to track down hebus.com, xaviersite.com and astalavista.com as well. Sub-net is on the short list, but noone seems to know where that contract is. bryant 01/02/20 12:11 pm ISwoosh. sam 01/02/20 12:13 pm ok.. even taking notes and feeling them out is a great start :) bryant 01/02/20 12:13 pm Yep. We're well into Babynames, mame.dk and iswoosh. Don't have a read on the others yet. So far I think people are being positive about helping take steps to solidify the security. sam 01/02/20 12:15 pm okay.. dont make any offers.. but get them moving towards the gaosl.. just get a feel for things.. and go through as many sites as you can bryant 01/02/20 12:17 pm Don't make offers? sam 01/02/20 12:17 pm http://yahoofin.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-46710 8.html?tag=pt.yahoofin.financefeed..ne sam 01/02/20 12:20 pm well sure make offers.. if you know what kind of offers to make? sam 01/02/20 12:20 pm if you give me an example of an offer or two you'd like to make, i an take a quick look at it and amke sure we're on the right track bryant 01/02/20 12:21 pm I know what the elements are we can't have on the contracts. I think I know which sites are ones we should really try and keep and which ones would be less of a loss. Familiar with what CPMs are appropriate. If there are issues beyond that though, then perhaps I'm not familiar enough with our goals. Clearly some of these cases are going to require decisions on either your part or Jerry's or both regardless. sam 01/02/20 12:21 pm my main concern is cashflow bryant 01/02/20 12:21 pm Understand that completely. sam 01/02/20 12:22 pm as low as possible..even being creative in how to achieve that sam 01/02/20 12:22 pm so i just wanted to get an idea on some of the offers bryant 01/02/20 12:23 pm I'll shoot you any we come up with tomorrow based on the follow-up convos we have. sam 01/02/20 12:23 pm okay great sam 01/02/20 12:23 pm is brian involved in the process as well bryant 01/02/20 12:24 pm Yes. I pulled him in on iswoosh since he's so familiar with newsletter issues. And I'm having him start the ball rolling with indianmasala since he closed the deal. Jon is involved with babynames with me since he has a rapport with Jenn. Using people where/when it will smooth the process. sam 01/02/20 12:25 pm k sam 01/02/20 12:25 pm any lump sum deal possibilties? :) (besides mpog:) bryant 01/02/20 12:26 pm All of these deals besides iswoosh are large value and long term contracts. None of them will really fit into that model. bryant 01/02/20 12:26 pm We'll see a lot more opportunities on that front when we get into the mid to small range sites. sam 01/02/20 12:26 pm ya i figured that sam 01/02/20 12:27 pm esp. middle sam 01/02/20 12:27 pm probably doenst make sense to do that with ppl making 300/month.. we'll have to pay that to someone else anywyas bryant 01/02/20 12:28 pm Exactly. The ones making 2000-4000 are probably prime. sam 01/02/20 12:29 pm although stas was making 18k/month.. and we got him down to 25k total..saved 150k :) tim helped me on that :) (aah_ bryant 01/02/20 12:30 pm Big drop. Stas has been an odd one all along with us running it. sam 01/02/20 12:31 pm well mostly our techs dropped the ball somewhat on it.. :/ i was just on the phone 3way w/ nate & s4r guys.. plan to have 99% uptime within 24 hours.. actino steps, etc. bryant 01/02/20 12:32 pm That will help a lot. sam 01/02/20 12:33 pm never have techies project manage :) bryant 01/02/20 12:35 pm That will help a lot. bryant 01/02/20 12:36 pm Heh. Hmm, ICQ is being flakey. sam 01/02/20 12:38 pm also going forward, i know what w'ere going to do with payables no matter what bryant 01/02/20 12:38 pm What's that? sam 01/02/20 12:38 pm we'll always pay everyone something, no matter how small.. so that way it keeps them going sam 01/02/20 12:40 pm and less complains.. and the news is alrady out sam 01/02/20 12:41 pm as we have the $.. so we dont have a major crises again..but more of a one on one situation..as the cash warrants.. easier to manage.. and no image to protect now :) sam 02/02/20 12:50 pm update? sam 02/02/20 12:50 pm any offers for me to look at? bryant 02/02/20 1:11 pm mame.dk is willing to come down from what we surrently owe them per month which is 31.5k down to 23.5k and both lower and cap any further scales. sam 02/02/20 1:11 pm 23k?????? sam 02/02/20 1:11 pm we've never paid them that sam 02/02/20 1:11 pm they are on crack sam 02/02/20 1:11 pm they are earning ZERO right now bryant 02/02/20 1:11 pm According to their contract we currently owe them 31.5k a month. sam 02/02/20 1:11 pm no webguide.. and we told everyone we're counting webguide impressions as of december 15 sam 02/02/20 1:11 pm how do you calculate? bryant 02/02/20 1:12 pm 26MM PVs. sam 02/02/20 1:12 pm nope bryant 02/02/20 1:12 pm ? sam 02/02/20 1:12 pm we told everyone we count by webguide pageviews sam 02/02/20 1:12 pm their webguide pageviews = ZERO bryant 02/02/20 1:12 pm They have no issue putting the webguide up and being compliant in the future. sam 02/02/20 1:12 pm well they havent made anything in january sam 02/02/20 1:12 pm we told everyone on december 15th bryant 02/02/20 1:13 pm We don't host them btw, I presume you know that. They cover their own hosting at 60Mbit/sec. sam 02/02/20 1:13 pm thats their problem really.. its all illegal roms anyways bryant 02/02/20 1:13 pm Agree. bryant 02/02/20 1:14 pm SA is also willing to come down on his pay level. But he too wants a firm plan on how payments are going to come. sam 02/02/20 1:15 pm btw, do you know we're using the webguide impressoins? the stuff they see on efrontsupport is only their banner impressions bryant 02/02/20 1:15 pm I know we told people that. sam 02/02/20 1:15 pm we'll give everyone a report soon on what their webguide counts were sam 02/02/20 1:15 pm for january sam 02/02/20 1:16 pm also mame has not put srunner or anything sam 02/02/20 1:16 pm lets work on an offer sheet for them and you can present it sam 02/02/20 1:16 pm anyone else? bryant 02/02/20 1:17 pm BabyNames folks are still talking. iSwoosh is fine with $2800 but is also concerned about back pay. sam 02/02/20 1:17 pm iswoosh.. whats the issue, what are we offering, etc? bryant 02/02/20 1:17 pm Don't know where Brian is with IndianMasala, was going to follow up with him tomorrow. bryant 02/02/20 1:18 pm He felt we owed about $4k for his mailing lists, we say $2800. He's agreed to take $2800 and go, but he also wants to talk about his back pay. sam 02/02/20 1:19 pm does he want the sites back? bryant 02/02/20 1:19 pm He's willing to either leave, or stick around under a new contract. If he sticks around, he wants the mailing list back. sam 02/02/20 1:19 pm did you tell him chapter 11 or anything sam 02/02/20 1:19 pm my goal is to get him outta here, no backpay.. take the site back and call it even |
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sam 02/02/20 1:20 pm is that doable under any scenario you can think of? sam 02/02/20 1:20 pm any angle :) bryant 02/02/20 1:20 pm That's what we'll tell him we're willing to do. I suspect he'll take it. bryant 02/02/20 1:20 pm Witht he $2800 that is. sam 02/02/20 1:20 pm okay.. next? sam 02/02/20 1:20 pm btw, im trying to pull up mame stats sam 02/02/20 1:21 pm you're saying he has 26 mil pageviews/month now?? bryant 02/02/20 1:21 pm That's basically it. I saw the Megagames emails. Not sure where you want to go with that. Sub-net contract still seems to be missing. bryant 02/02/20 1:21 pm Somewhere in there, yes. We've looked at it closely too and it all seems legit. sam 02/02/20 1:21 pm megagames.. well i dunno.. good email huh :) well imnot sure.. i just wanted to set the tone and give you leverage bryant 02/02/20 1:22 pm Expected some form of cheating, but there are no signs. bryant 02/02/20 1:22 pm Good ratios, no indication of placing banners on other sites, etc. sam 02/02/20 1:22 pm of course those are non-payable pageviews since he doesnt have webguide, but that was for january.. moving forward, anyway we can cap mame.dk to 10k? sam 02/02/20 1:22 pm of course, his ctr% suck bryant 02/02/20 1:23 pm They claim that doesn't cover the hosting. Then again, they say they're under an NDA on what they pay for hosting and can't tell us. bryant 02/02/20 1:23 pm We can get them to 10k or even less if we host them. bryant 02/02/20 1:23 pm But that's more than we want. sam 02/02/20 1:23 pm they OWN their own isp haha sam 02/02/20 1:23 pm so its free sam 02/02/20 1:24 pm we can host them.. but they cant putillegal roms as downloads on our servers:) sam 02/02/20 1:24 pm its better for us to put the html on our servers.. so we have control sam 02/02/20 1:24 pm so make a deal.. 10k tops.. we host it.. of course, we're not goign to allow rom downloads on our servers.. so they have to link off sam 02/02/20 1:24 pm and we got our 10k sam 02/02/20 1:24 pm hows that sound.. is that too sneaky :) bryant 02/02/20 1:25 pm Might work, certainly no harm in trying. sam 02/02/20 1:26 pm if they agree to wipe the past payments as well.. and make it a one year contract, we vest more shares sam 02/02/20 1:26 pm does that work bryant 02/02/20 1:26 pm It may, I'll take it to them. We willing to let them go? sam 02/02/20 1:27 pm sure.. but tell them sponsors suck out there.. noone is accepting anything..worst case, we'll have to let them go.. or we'll be filing chapter 11.. they're welcome to try to hunt for sponsors themselves (also all paymetns will be net 60) bryant 02/02/20 1:27 pm OK, we'll see what they say. Have a call already set up with them. sam 02/02/20 1:28 pm this is fun huh :) bryant 02/02/20 1:28 pm Heh, not sure fun is the word. It's interesting and necessary at the least. sam 02/02/20 1:28 pm next? bryant 02/02/20 1:29 pm That's all the action at present more or less. Any idea where sub-net contract might be? sam 02/02/20 1:29 pm ill find it.. it might be under 'seekmp3' sam 02/02/20 1:29 pm i renegotiated poor Johan twice alread bryant 02/02/20 1:29 pm Ah, ok. I'll drop Kevin a line about that. sam 02/02/20 1:29 pm it was @ 3cpm first (chris howard deal) bryant 02/02/20 1:29 pm Oh yeah - that one. bryant 02/02/20 1:29 pm Want to leave him alone then? sam 02/02/20 1:30 pm my plan was to take all the other 1 year mp3 site deals sam 02/02/20 1:30 pm and give them to johan to mantain sam 02/02/20 1:30 pm and tell him he has to maintain the traffic level sam 02/02/20 1:30 pm so all mp3 sites are under him bryant 02/02/20 1:30 pm Sounds like a decent plan. Still doing it? sam 02/02/20 1:30 pm yup.. just need to work the other mp3 sites..buy'em out or whatever sam 02/02/20 1:31 pm he is 'on our team' meaning one of our emploees then..and he puts srunner or anything sam 02/02/20 1:31 pm my ultimate plan to have like 10 super-webmasters..that run our sites and deploy whatever we need easy and fast bryant 02/02/20 1:31 pm Brian asked if we're comfortable trading equity on some ratio for cash on some of these deals, thoughts? sam 02/02/20 1:31 pm yes of course bryant 02/02/20 1:31 pm Figured. sam 02/02/20 1:32 pm but we want to shorten the timeframe, reduce the cash, net 60, etc. sam 02/02/20 1:32 pm trying to cram it all together bryant 02/02/20 1:32 pm Right. sam 02/02/20 1:32 pm u know what happend to snowbball today right sam 02/02/20 1:32 pm blank ads bryant 02/02/20 1:32 pm Yeah, saw the PR. sam 02/02/20 1:32 pm all that goes to help us bryant 02/02/20 1:32 pm Makes us look a little more friendly to our webmasters. That's some nasty stuff over there. sam 02/02/20 1:33 pm yeah.. we do some weak stuff too because of the market.. but our webmastrs are all sticking it out.. sam 02/02/20 1:33 pm so we must not be that bad bryant 02/02/20 1:33 pm BN wants to know how were handling our payables to the law firm, CAIS, etc. She's worried about sticking around only to have us sued and BK. Thoughts? bryant 02/02/20 1:33 pm What we're doing is better than what most of those other groups are. bryant 02/02/20 1:34 pm Only area I hear complaints about is lack of communication. sam 02/02/20 1:34 pm thats a tough one.. actually we're going to be suing CAIs ourselves.. sam 02/02/20 1:34 pm pillsubury has equity in efront and works with us sam 02/02/20 1:34 pm good relationship bryant 02/02/20 1:34 pm OK, that will help appease her. sam 02/02/20 1:34 pm CAIS provided no service to us whatsoeve.r.and we're drafting documents to sue them right nw bryant 02/02/20 1:34 pm Wouldn't be in their best interests to hurt what they have equity in. sam 02/02/20 1:35 pm yeah exactky bryant 02/02/20 1:35 pm Cool, actually that will help a lot. sam 02/02/20 1:35 pm if you can reduce the monthly payments sam 02/02/20 1:35 pm and get rid of the 2 ml etc bryant 02/02/20 1:35 pm She seems willing to address all the issues. Her out, her value guarantee, and her pay. sam 02/02/20 1:35 pm offer them their site back against BK protection bryant 02/02/20 1:35 pm Still talking with her team though. sam 02/02/20 1:35 pm i would give their site back to them ni a heartbeat sam 02/02/20 1:35 pm if something happens sam 02/02/20 1:35 pm to us bryant 02/02/20 1:36 pm Right, np. I told her that our previous offer to walk should be a good enough indication that we always work with people even if it sometimes goes outside the contract. She seemed to accept that. sam 02/02/20 1:37 pm any idea on how you would do megagames? bryant 02/02/20 1:37 pm Brian is going to approach a battery of mid-range sites tomorrow and over the weekend btw. sam 02/02/20 1:38 pm information gathering and tsuff would be great sam 02/02/20 1:38 pm then we can talk about deal terms, points, offers sam 02/02/20 1:38 pm and go back and make them sam 02/02/20 1:38 pm that builds rapports and stuff ,..and seems like we're doing it slowly.. the 3 G's: Gather Info Go over Offer Get it done bryant 02/02/20 1:38 pm Same as the rest. The approach we've been using a bit is basically establishing the obvious elements - poor market, banners dead, competitors dying, etc. etc. - and letting them find their own way to what we want to do. SA offered to drop his pay without me ever directly bringing it up. sam 02/02/20 1:39 pm really? :) bryant 02/02/20 1:39 pm Seems to be working this way, also serves to make them feel like they're more part of the team by getting involved. sam 02/02/20 1:39 pm i think realistically, we shouldnt pay anyone more than what they can make as a good salary bryant 02/02/20 1:39 pm We're definitely channeling them towards the goals, but letting them work towards it in their own heads. sam 02/02/20 1:39 pm i mean a real nice comfy slaary bryant 02/02/20 1:40 pm Right. Most so far seem completely on board with that. sam 02/02/20 1:40 pm tlel them that.. hey you're doing this, you're not struggling.. comfy lifestyle sam 02/02/20 1:40 pm any thougts on megagames? bryant 02/02/20 1:41 pm Was just rebrowsing the emails. I think a very similar approach. "Things you can do to not just help yourself, but all the other webmasters." sam 02/02/20 1:41 pm Megagames goals: No outclause. 20k/month fixed Help us on revenue projects. what do ut hink sam 02/02/20 1:41 pm yeah bryant 02/02/20 1:41 pm Part of that of course being 100% and instant compliance. bryant 02/02/20 1:42 pm Going to suggest that the struggle we're having now could have been prevented or at least lessened had people knuckled down and participated instead of standing around whining. bryant 02/02/20 1:42 pm They know what it's like to not see money now - that should be a strong motivator to help make sure it doesn't happen again. sam 02/02/20 1:43 pm yeah.. and that its not too late.. but we need to streamling and cut costs as the market doesnt support this bryant 02/02/20 1:43 pm It's like Jerry Maguire - "Help me, help you". sam 02/02/20 1:43 pm yeah were u surprised by megagames's reply bryant 02/02/20 1:43 pm I was actually. bryant 02/02/20 1:43 pm Rolled over with his tail between his legs quickly. sam 02/02/20 1:44 pm well most of the things we said was true, hows he going to argue bout that :) bryant 02/02/20 1:44 pm Which is good, he's on weak ground to argue on. sam 02/02/20 1:44 pm he did actually work rpetty hard bryant 02/02/20 1:44 pm He didn't comply period. Helped dig this hole we're in. No defense for that. sam 02/02/20 1:44 pm i believehim on that bryant 02/02/20 1:44 pm Oh I know - I think he's going to be easier than we thought to be honest. sam 02/02/20 1:44 pm yeah.. the trick for him would be to kill the past payables or somethign sam 02/02/20 1:45 pm tell him he's already getting it with the ipo sam 02/02/20 1:45 pm or add it to the end of the contract bryant 02/02/20 1:45 pm Or at least defer all or most till a liquidity event. bryant 02/02/20 1:45 pm Right. sam 02/02/20 1:45 pm and pay him 20 or 25k/month.. that we can afford that on a consistent basis sam 02/02/20 1:45 pm every penny saved helps :) sam 02/02/20 1:45 pm our goal is 150k/month payable bryant 02/02/20 1:45 pm I think he'll be fine on that front. We'll see. bryant 02/02/20 1:46 pm Getting him down on $ that is. sam 02/02/20 1:46 pm 25/150 = 16% sam 02/02/20 1:46 pm 50/300 = 16% bryant 02/02/20 1:46 pm Does someone have a breakdown of what we owe every site for Jan? bryant 02/02/20 1:47 pm Bill S. maybe? sam 02/02/20 1:47 pm yeah jonathan has to put the traffic stuff together and get matt's help in coutning the webguides per site sam 02/02/20 1:47 pm no.. it starts from traffic first sam 02/02/20 1:47 pm traffic calculates web guide impressions per site sam 02/02/20 1:47 pm then gives to bill s. and he plugs it into his spreadsheet bryant 02/02/20 1:47 pm OK cool - I'll touch base with Jon then. It will be a big help to see exactly how it's all going to add up and where best to come down more. sam 02/02/20 1:47 pm yup sam 02/02/20 1:48 pm im actively driving the sales guys bryant 02/02/20 1:48 pm That spreadsheet will be the biggest help I think. Time frame on that? sam 02/02/20 1:48 pm on the direct marketing |
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bryant 02/02/20 1:48 pm Yeah, we've given EFG some really solid leads. Sounds like they're panning out but hard to tell. sam 02/02/20 1:48 pm hmm.. ask jonathan to get the right ppl involved and give us a timeframe.. hopefully by next mon/tues? sam 02/02/20 1:48 pm yeah .. efg is the most shakiest one bryant 02/02/20 1:48 pm OK, will do and will let you know. sam 02/02/20 1:48 pm not really sure on that sam 02/02/20 1:48 pm we're cutting more payroll too sam 02/02/20 1:49 pm 200 right now sam 02/02/20 1:49 pm we're out sourcing accounting & hr bryant 02/02/20 1:49 pm Mike heading out then? I know his name has come up before. sam 02/02/20 1:49 pm nad i told bill s. to keep the core ppl, accounting, and take 150k and deduct it.. then tell me how much we have to cut sam 02/02/20 1:50 pm basiclaly, i want bill s. to say ok we need to cut 30k or whatever to come up to 150k in payroll sam 02/02/20 1:50 pm then we'll go through and try to make cuts bryant 02/02/20 1:50 pm Right. sam 02/02/20 1:50 pm probably mike, rad, chris h. maybe, maybe brad, sam 02/02/20 1:50 pm people who arent producing/contributing sam 02/02/20 1:50 pm as much as they could bryant 02/02/20 1:51 pm What's our plan on the next payout to webmasters? sam 02/02/20 1:51 pm im pretty sure we can come upto 150k..and we have to pay everyone something.. otherwise, things build up bryant 02/02/20 1:51 pm Not 2/19 - whatever's after. sam 02/02/20 1:51 pm well im gonig to settle w/ about.com and get that out to the webmasters sam 02/02/20 1:52 pm oh u mean after bryant 02/02/20 1:52 pm Yeah. sam 02/02/20 1:52 pm i want to make it net 60 bryant 02/02/20 1:52 pm One of the most common questions. sam 02/02/20 1:52 pm and the goal is to get past payment lumped elsewhere sam 02/02/20 1:52 pm and we're building up our nonbanner revnues right nw sam 02/02/20 1:52 pm so the a/r should take care of it when the net 60 kicks in sam 02/02/20 1:52 pm so our timing would work well sam 02/02/20 1:53 pm and we dont have the baggage of the hit we dtook with killing our banner business sam 02/02/20 1:53 pm and we turned things around fast bryant 02/02/20 1:53 pm Yeah, I've basically benn telling them that a lot of that depends on webmaster willingness to make some relatively minor changes for the good of both their peers and the company (thus their own checks). sam 02/02/20 1:53 pm makes for a good spin and story on why we need net 60 and why we need to lump it at the end sam 02/02/20 1:53 pm everything has to flow..and ppl have to see a light at the end of the tunnel bryant 02/02/20 1:53 pm benn=been. sam 02/02/20 1:53 pm if february payments arent due until april 30 sam 02/02/20 1:54 pm and 150k sam 02/02/20 1:54 pm we'd be in awesome shape sam 02/02/20 1:54 pm awesome awesome sam 02/02/20 1:54 pm dont u think bryant 02/02/20 1:54 pm Absolutely. Clearly that's what we'll shoot for. sam 02/02/20 1:54 pm i'd like to be able to renegotiate w/ everyone and pay them sam 02/02/20 1:54 pm after we negotiate sam 02/02/20 1:54 pm so that brings them to the table bryant 02/02/20 1:55 pm Right sam 02/02/20 1:55 pm in terms of negotiating with us :) sam 02/02/20 1:55 pm this could work real nicely sam 02/02/20 1:55 pm pretty good plan huh? bryant 02/02/20 1:55 pm Good opportunity to clean a little house too. bryant 02/02/20 1:55 pm Some sites can just plain go. sam 02/02/20 1:55 pm yup exactly.. and i want to kill our websites to like 125 sam 02/02/20 1:55 pm from all sam 02/02/20 1:55 pm i put a good list together sam 02/02/20 1:55 pm in my proposal to about.. ill fwd to u sam 02/02/20 1:55 pm just a sec sam 02/02/20 1:56 pm i spent 4 hours doing that yesterday bryant 02/02/20 1:56 pm Wow. Great though, all the extra vision we get helps. sam 02/02/20 1:56 pm check your email.. interesting sam 02/02/20 1:59 pm i took our 125 best sites and categorized them..and added a description to each site :) bryant 02/02/20 1:59 pm Yeah, that's a great list. I'll cross-reference that with the other data I have to give a better idea of who gets a litlle more rope, or a little less. bryant 02/02/20 2:00 pm The sites that can go are going to be simple. We'll simply make whatever offer suits us best. They can take it or leave it. Little to no dialog needed. bryant 02/02/20 2:03 pm Anyway, time for more pills. Going to get running. We should be talking with Megagames tomorrow (going to pull Jon in since he closed him). Will let you know how that goes, and when we should see the traffic data pulled into the spreadsheet. bryant 02/02/20 2:03 pm 'night. sam 02/02/20 2:06 pm sounds good..thanks! sam 02/02/20 2:06 pm feel free to msg me if u need anything. .. this is priority stuff..cya sam 04/02/20 7:03 am hey Will hows it going..any update? sam 04/02/20 7:05 am i'd like to offer $1cpm per daily unique user bryant 04/02/20 7:07 am Nothing of any real significance to report yet. Progress on BN and SA. Brian's working with IndianMasala but they aren't happy. Put together a list of sites for him to jump on, going to go over everything in greater detail with him this weekend when he's back online. bryant 04/02/20 7:08 am $1cpm per unique translates to $0.17cpm on PVs for most of our sites. I'd like to get them for that too but we probably can't. sam 04/02/20 7:08 am im talking to Tim eckel right now sam 04/02/20 7:08 am he said valueclick is not accepting any more members either sam 04/02/20 7:08 am nonags wants back in sam 04/02/20 7:09 am i think the market rate out there is about 10 cent cpm sam 04/02/20 7:09 am what do you estimte bryant 04/02/20 7:09 am For RON stuff I think it is too. sam 04/02/20 7:11 am so anything above that we'd be losing out :) bryant 04/02/20 7:21 am I guess it depends on the site. RON levels don't represent what an average level is for sites with RON + placed sales. PA for example will likely be close to a 2cpm in Feb despite a .10cpm (or so) RON level. sam 04/02/20 7:21 am really? how will PA make 2cp bryant 04/02/20 7:21 am Direct sales. sam 04/02/20 7:21 am will they be able to do it every month on a long term basis bryant 04/02/20 7:22 am Certainly not. Or at least I don't believe so. They of course do, but time will prove otherwise. sam 04/02/20 7:22 am they're still running our banners.. weird bryant 04/02/20 7:22 am Then again, market should start to readjust to. We're as low as it's going to get right now IMO. sam 04/02/20 7:23 am never mind.. that was my cache bryant 04/02/20 7:23 am I think they're completely down right now. sam 04/02/20 7:24 am you think? i think wwe're going to get even lower.. that banner advertising wont even exist for indepdant sites sam 04/02/20 7:24 am i just cant see how :) bryant 04/02/20 7:24 am Even the ad networks are going to have to go beyond the banner. Much below .10cpm though and it's not worth anyones bother. bryant 04/02/20 7:25 am But independants can't survive on their own for long, totally agree with you there. sam 04/02/20 7:25 am yeah.. u know if we have to lose some of the sites, so be it sam 04/02/20 7:25 am we can pick them up cheaply sam 04/02/20 7:25 am after they leave and teest the market sam 04/02/20 7:25 am and see that its bad bryant 04/02/20 7:25 am Yep. sam 04/02/20 7:25 am nonags already emailed me sam 04/02/20 7:25 am ill fwd to u.. its funny bryant 04/02/20 7:27 am Heh, how was he inflating? sam 04/02/20 7:27 am he wasnt sam 04/02/20 7:27 am probably refrsh rates sam 04/02/20 7:28 am that he was used to when he was with us sam 04/02/20 7:28 am we sent jennifer money friday sam 04/02/20 7:29 am jerry called and said she was going to cooperate in everyway bryant 04/02/20 7:29 am Yeah, Jerry told me. I think she's going to really come through. We'll see. sam 04/02/20 7:29 am and reduce the payments too bryant 04/02/20 7:29 am Yep. sam 04/02/20 7:29 am hope she does.. sam 04/02/20 7:29 am have u had a chance to analyze the sites and come up w/ a game plan.. like what we want sam 04/02/20 7:29 am i think we can add 3 more resources.. to cover all the site sam 04/02/20 7:29 am tim, myself, and scott p. sam 04/02/20 7:30 am what i'd like to do is go through the spreadsheet..and enter a column as to the different scenarios.. and what we want.. and send that to everyone .. and assign the sites to everyone's names bryant 04/02/20 7:30 am I think it's just a matter of trying to go through all of the special cases one by one and get them to come down. Once we do that we probably want to deal witht he bulk sites in batch. sam 04/02/20 7:30 am so everyone has a global idea of everything bryant 04/02/20 7:31 am Right now our focus is simply to reduce money and as a secondary, get nonworkable clauses off of the contracts. sam 04/02/20 7:31 am ya sam 04/02/20 7:36 am $1 cpm per daily unique = $50k/month in webmaster expenses sam 04/02/20 7:36 am our goal is 150k/month webmaster expenses tops sam 04/02/20 7:36 am so we could go as high as $3cpm sam 04/02/20 7:37 am per daily unique sam 04/02/20 7:37 am and if there are some higher than $3cpm.. than we'd have to get some lower sam 04/02/20 7:38 am 2 mil daily visitors * 30 days = 60 mil/month * $2.5 cpm = 150k sam 04/02/20 7:38 am hows that sound sam 04/02/20 7:38 am thats at least logical sam 04/02/20 7:38 am and can work with our model.. otherwise we wont be able to make payments on a consistent basis bryant 04/02/20 7:38 am We're better served just to deal with everyone all at once in that case. sam 04/02/20 7:39 am you know if we deal w/ everyone @ once, we're likely to risk class action.. and news posts sam 04/02/20 7:39 am if we send mass emails sam 04/02/20 7:39 am dont u think sam 04/02/20 7:39 am also, we have to remind them that 100k/month is used for servers, bandwidth, technical resources sam 04/02/20 7:40 am so theoreticlly, we're allocating 250k for them bryant 04/02/20 7:40 am Raises the risk, certainly. They communicate enough with one another though that there may be a greater risk to take that to them individually and they figure out that it's everyone. bryant 04/02/20 7:40 am Thinking about it though, mass emails are a bad idea. sam 04/02/20 7:40 am ya i wouldnt risk mass emails.. eeee sam 04/02/20 7:40 am however, sam 04/02/20 7:40 am if we have a good plan and stuff sam 04/02/20 7:41 am we can immobilize like 10 of our people sam 04/02/20 7:41 am and divide up the webmater list sam 04/02/20 7:41 am with the same consistent plan sam 04/02/20 7:41 am so they dont have to negotiate |
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Great work, Joker! :/ |
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sam 04/02/20 7:41 am but rather persuade bryant 04/02/20 7:41 am What this means of course is that we'll lose the good sites and keep the weak ones. bryant 04/02/20 7:41 am Strong sites will go off and test the market. May well come back, but they'll go. sam 04/02/20 7:41 am we'll make exceptions for strong site sam 04/02/20 7:42 am and try to get the weak sites to below 2.5 sam 04/02/20 7:42 am so we average 2.5 sam 04/02/20 7:43 am that means like megagames makes 15k instead of 30k sam 04/02/20 7:43 am not too bad bryant 04/02/20 7:44 am Here's an example of where our problems will be. Babynames has 759k viewers. Even at a 10cpmU it's less than 1/2 where she is now. Put her at a 5 it's $3795.00, at 3 it's $2277.00. sam 04/02/20 7:44 am yeah i see .. she was an expensive site huh sam 04/02/20 7:44 am well, we might have to make an exception for her bryant 04/02/20 7:45 am Lemme go through and plug that model in to see where it works nicely and where we'll have snags. bryant 04/02/20 7:45 am I've got all the data in front of me. sam 04/02/20 7:45 am perfect.. im going through the stuff too.. just thinking bryant 04/02/20 7:45 am Only thing I'm missing is what we pay some of these guys now. But hopefully Bill will have something on that this week. sam 04/02/20 7:46 am i can help u w/ that if u need somehting sam 04/02/20 7:46 am did you ever get the esimtation from bill that was sent like 2-3 weeks ago bryant 04/02/20 7:46 am For Megagames it would actually be a good model. 6MM viewers would be $15k as you said. That's not too bad. sam 04/02/20 7:50 am works good for altavista too sam 04/02/20 8:06 am did you get the email concerning astalavista sam 04/02/20 8:14 am guess what sam 04/02/20 8:14 am i got someone to bite already sam 04/02/20 8:15 am on $2 cpm sam 04/02/20 8:15 am big site sam 04/02/20 8:36 am should we make the monthly payout variable? meaning that up or down, $1 to $2.5 cpm on the dialy uniques.. or should we keep the same scale sam 04/02/20 8:36 am and have a max sam 04/02/20 8:45 am Moreaulf: (4:43 PM) Hi sam. It's going allright. the $500 saved me for this month. Exitpopup running on the new datacenter Gamepages under move now. How's it going for you? eFront? sam: (4:43 PM) its going okay.. really difficult.. ad market is very bad.. even valueclick is not taking more clients sam: (4:44 PM) we probably have to renegotiate everyones contracts..or we wont be able to survive sam: (4:44 PM) :/ Moreaulf: (4:44 PM) I hear it from all over :( Feels like it's no use not even having banners on the pages somehow. It cost more than it gives to try get sam 04/02/20 8:46 am [this is the way im approaching things.. and lot of sympathetic ears out there] sam 05/02/20 12:48 am any thoughts on the email? i was going to add ac ouple more things but wanted to run it by u sam 05/02/20 1:49 am iBLAMEj00: (9:45 AM) I got 0.63% CTR with cj and .52% with valueclick. iBLAMEj00: (9:45 AM) How about just make it required that ads can't be placed at the top or the bottom. sam 05/02/20 1:53 am oops to the wrong person sam 05/02/20 7:04 am were u able to talk to brian this weekend bryant 05/02/20 7:07 am No, he hasn't been on. I sent him some ICQs and emails, but not sure if he got them. Going to see if I can track him down tomorrow so I can go over strategem at least on the sites he has. sam 05/02/20 7:08 am ive done 3 sites already.. easy sam 05/02/20 7:09 am one of the webmasters wants to work for us $200/month or so.. so i asked him to renegotiate .. and ill give him some euroipean sites.. he's excited..then afterwards, he'll work for g3 and deploy stuff..anything.. just go in the website code and change stuff when we need to sam 05/02/20 7:10 am i just need to get a contract ready i think sam 05/02/20 7:21 am we're very close on megagames.. tim & i are working.. he agreed to $ /unique.. just getting the price lower. mame.dk would probably agree to it too sam 05/02/20 12:11 pm we have a sweet proposal we're working out w/ harsha:) sam 06/02/20 12:20 pm please give me a recap of todays negotiations sam 06/02/20 12:47 pm but anyways, to recap, here's how i want the contracts to incorporate the backpay: 1. Retroactive with the new schedule until they got paid last. 2. Take it as lump sum thats payable @ the end of their contract. If they doint agree to new payment terms, here are the options: 1. They can walk -- no hard feelings; we're even. We'll provide another month or so of free hosting. 2. They can take the banners and we do the non-banner creatives + free hosting I want all contracts to began @ no later than feb 1. Basically, tell them that if we don't get everyone's cooperationg, we might have to file Chapter 11 because the market has changed and we cant be in business if our expenses are higher than what banner revrenues make. It's worse out there then they think; even valueclick wont accept new customers. sam 08/02/20 6:48 am update? bryant 08/02/20 9:20 am Beyond the numbers I told you yesterday, AthlonOC wants out, theSeek, Riva3D, Classical and Astalavista seem to want to stay. sam 08/02/20 10:03 am we'll accomodate athoc most likely sam 08/02/20 1:14 pm i had a few q's toi ask u about the addendum sam 08/02/20 1:14 pm almost done getting them drafted sam 09/02/20 6:42 pm hey sam 10/02/20 1:14 am are you there? btw, almost done w/ the addendum.. need to have it proofed. Will, we have another deal structure that came up.. you might want to take a look at it. bryant 10/02/20 1:35 am Yeah, where is it? sam 10/02/20 1:49 am basically, the deal came up w/ freeskills.com been working with andy sam 10/02/20 1:49 am they had 100k and they were just going to ride it out and not budge sam 10/02/20 1:52 am after a long battle, this was agreed to: sam 10/02/20 1:52 am * no ipo clause, no returning the site, no $$ back to them, no monthly payments to them, they dont work on the site anymore * we give them a % of the site's revenue as royalty forever (5%) sam 10/02/20 1:53 am what do u think of that structure :) bryant 10/02/20 1:53 am I always get a little fidgety around the term "forever" in contracts, but other than that it's a pretty sweet deal. sam 10/02/20 1:54 am i agree.. but its like software royalty or something.. perpetualy royalty sam 10/02/20 1:54 am the sites that want to walk, maybe we dcan throw this at them bryant 10/02/20 1:54 am Yeah, I agree. I think it's a great deal. bryant 10/02/20 1:54 am Heh, for us anyway. sam 10/02/20 1:55 am i know.. andy and i were fighting with them all morning.. theyre making my bronchtitis worse:) sam 10/02/20 1:55 am and they suggested it.. and i told andy great.. pounce on it right away :) bryant 10/02/20 1:55 am Heh, a little slice of my life there! Bronchitis is fun stuff. sam 10/02/20 1:55 am its getting really bad.. hard to breathe.. and lot of coughing sam 10/02/20 1:56 am did yours ever go away? bryant 10/02/20 1:56 am Yeah, I basically perpetually have it. sam 10/02/20 1:56 am oh really bryant 10/02/20 1:56 am It goes away here and there if I take antis, but only for a week or so. Then it's back. sam 10/02/20 1:56 am i havent seen a doctor yet.. maybe i should bryant 10/02/20 1:56 am Oh yeah. bryant 10/02/20 1:57 am I don't mess around with that stuff anymore. All my problems started with the flu. I blew it off and it snowballed. =) bryant 10/02/20 1:57 am Steam helps a lot. So if it gets real bad take a hot shower or bath. sam 10/02/20 1:58 am i just did .. i feel better.. btw, i think it bronchtitis.. whats the symptoms bryant 10/02/20 1:59 am You can feel it down in your chest/bronchial tubes. It almost feels like you've sucked a little water down, esp when you take a deep breath. Lots of coughing, difficulty breathing, sometimes you lose you voice a bit. bryant 10/02/20 1:59 am You can either be coughing stuff up or not. bryant 10/02/20 2:00 am Doc will put you on Amoxicillin or Biaxin or something. Should clear up in a few days. bryant 10/02/20 2:00 am They don't have the first clue how to beat mine. Mostly because they have no idea what's causing it. sam 10/02/20 2:01 am that sounds like mine.. i cant develop it in 2 days can i ? sam 10/02/20 2:02 am i should go to the doc today bryant 10/02/20 2:02 am Only real danger is bronchitis turning into pneumonia. Other than that it's just a pain in the ass. sam 10/02/20 2:02 am after i get u the addendum:) bryant 10/02/20 2:02 am Oh sure - any cold or flu can turn quickly into it. bryant 10/02/20 2:02 am Tons of water helps too. bryant 10/02/20 2:02 am Heh. sam 10/02/20 2:03 am my heater in the apartment sux too sam 10/02/20 2:03 am when its on i cant breathe sam 10/02/20 2:04 am maybe it has bacteria? bryant 10/02/20 2:04 am What kind of heater? bryant 10/02/20 2:04 am Is it also a humidifier of any sort? sam 10/02/20 2:06 am no.. just central heating bryant 10/02/20 2:08 am Hard to say. Could just be the dry air though. I can't go to the mall, movie theaters or anything like that - dry air shuts me down instantly. Last movie I saw was Remember the Titans, literally took me a week to recover. bryant 10/02/20 2:08 am Make sure to tell the doc about the breathing problems with the hot air on. sam 10/02/20 2:08 am really? wow.. and i was actually enjoying benig sick so i get to stay home for the first time in forever bryant 10/02/20 2:09 am Heh sam 10/02/20 2:09 am i should really take care of this thing then sam 10/02/20 2:09 am secretly, i was wishing it got worse:) bryant 10/02/20 2:09 am Heh bryant 10/02/20 2:09 am As long as it doesn't stick around forever that wouldn't be too bad. sam 10/02/20 2:10 am ok i msged drazen to pick me up to go to the doctor.. let me get the addendum over. any other updates on the other sies? bryant 10/02/20 2:10 am Nothing huge, most everyone is willing to stay happily. I'm trying to knock out BabyNames and maybe SomethingAwful today. sam 10/02/20 2:10 am oh btw, jerry was telling me SA wants to work for us sam 10/02/20 2:11 am and i told jerry then Will can do a two in one deal sam 10/02/20 2:11 am make him an employee and his site comes along bryant 10/02/20 2:11 am Asta is willing to take a $ cut, have to deal with him over email - phone call didn't go so well. Neither one of us knew what the other was saying. sam 10/02/20 2:11 am and jerry said it would take some doing but it could be doable sam 10/02/20 2:11 am hehe bryant 10/02/20 2:11 am OK, I'll put some thought into how that might work with SA. sam 10/02/20 2:11 am i definitely wnanna keep asta.. great unique sam 10/02/20 2:11 am i thought about this for SA: bryant 10/02/20 2:11 am Yeah, he seems to want to stay. sam 10/02/20 2:12 am 25k uniques * 30 = 750k * 2.5cpm = 1600 add another 2000 or something for salary 3600/month or even 4000/month = 48k/year w/ benefits sam 10/02/20 2:12 am that way we can pay him more than what we'd pay him normally bryant 10/02/20 2:12 am Do we have an idea of what he would be doing? sam 10/02/20 2:13 am ill fwd uy the msg from jerry bryant 10/02/20 2:13 am ok cool. sam 10/02/20 2:30 am does that give u an idea of how jerry wants to use him? im not sure if it will work myself.. sam 10/02/20 2:30 am but hey we reduce the $ sam 10/02/20 2:31 am are u sure his contract says 2cpm? bryant 10/02/20 2:31 am It doesn't say that, but it works out to that. sam 10/02/20 2:32 am 6 million pageviews and 12k/month? bryant 10/02/20 2:32 am 8m/16k a month I think. sam 10/02/20 8:43 am hey came back form the doc..long line..they gave me medicine.. sam 10/02/20 8:43 am coughs died down a little bit:) just been on the phone collectinng, etc. sam 10/02/20 8:44 am ill send u the addendum soonnn.. :) btw, scott p. is working on 4-5 deals (ad contracts) and maybe you can take the sites assigned to him and divide it between u and brian if you guys are on pace alrady |
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sam 10/02/20 8:44 am since u guys are on pace..and we dont want to teach him about all this in a short time..and i'd rather he concentrate on revenues..and u guys are making good progress alread bryant 10/02/20 8:45 am Yeah, no problem at all. Was he on the spreadsheet you sent or was it just Brian, myself you and Tim? sam 10/02/20 8:45 am he was on it too bryant 10/02/20 8:45 am OK cool. I'll coordinate with Brian and we'll split those up. Revenues are good. sam 10/02/20 8:46 am yeah.. im having him pursue ad networks and about.com type of deads.. he's having good luck with b2bworks.com, engageb2b, and work.com.. the hot deals sam 10/02/20 8:48 am Bman: (4:46 PM) I have been swapping calls with a lawyer type who wants to help us settle our payables. I want to offer 10% to akamai, alexa, global center, maybe cais and a couple others. sam: (4:47 PM) how much doe he want? sam: (4:48 PM) btw, Will Bryant seems very good at that kind of stuff.. maybe he can do that, if the lawyer wants too much [you might want to talk to Bill S. to see if its something u can do :] bryant 10/02/20 8:50 am Will do. Might be worth trying in-house before we pay an atty. sam 10/02/20 10:54 am can u give me joanna's icq sam 10/02/20 10:54 am (im @ home) sam 13/02/20 8:26 am will i added lkanguage to cancel ipo-outclauses sam 13/02/20 8:27 am did you see that bryant 13/02/20 8:28 am Yeah, it looks good - although we may have to doctor that a bit for some people. BabyNames for example wants to retain an out in the event of a BK. sam 13/02/20 8:28 am yup.. no prob bryant 13/02/20 8:28 am Like the clause though - for the most part it means less doctoring on the individual deals. sam 13/02/20 8:28 am can u handle that (doctoring it up for special cases) also, we want to stricken out all the IPO money bryant 13/02/20 8:29 am Certainly. sam 13/02/20 8:30 am im trying to get a hold of the about guys.. we're going to accept their last offer @ 215k (they owe us double that).. cuz we dont have time.. and payroll is due:) sam 13/02/20 8:30 am so we should be getting that out soon as well bryant 14/02/20 8:24 am I've got something on SA - want me to run through it real quick? sam 14/02/20 8:24 am yes bryant 14/02/20 8:25 am We can have him FT plus have him continue working on SA (both during and more outside the normal workday) for a little less than $6k a month. bryant 14/02/20 8:25 am It basically works out to $24k a year for the site, $45k a year for the employment. bryant 14/02/20 8:25 am But it would all be rolled in together obviously, so figure $5750 a month. sam 14/02/20 8:26 am well what if he doesnt work out as an employeee.. meaning we're taking a chance that he will. so i'd prefer to do 2 agreements.. one for website and one for employment bryant 14/02/20 8:27 am We can do that too. 24k and 45k. We might have to put some extra protections in for him that way (in case he gets fired, etc.). As is he's coming down from 16k to 5.75k, if we fired him he'd go from 16k to 2k. bryant 14/02/20 8:28 am But I think we can do that. sam 14/02/20 8:29 am thats still 70k/year.. did you try to pitch the 48k.. what did he say to that bryant 14/02/20 8:29 am He's highly motivated to try and help the company, be a liaison with the webmasters, help effect positive improvements across the board, etc. So my feeling is he's going to be a real asset. bryant 14/02/20 8:29 am He feels that's 24k a year to work FT or close to FT and he can't justify that. sam 14/02/20 8:30 am i just want to make sure we can pay ppl.. im cutting back on a few more ppl this week sam 14/02/20 8:31 am i had let Randy, one of the sales guys go yesterday.. but he begged to be stayed..saying he has 2 i/os coming in.. he did get one done today...so he has short stay sam 14/02/20 8:31 am our other webmaster relations people dont really make 45k.. for example, alex makes 24k/year.. and pinocho less. how about this. 2$ cpm on uniques on his site + 35k/year job sam 14/02/20 8:32 am which is the range we're paying webmaster relations people sam 14/02/20 8:32 am and we're doing that as a favor to put more $ in his pocket sam 14/02/20 8:32 am not just as a job bryant 14/02/20 8:32 am Well, it's all to be determined really, but I see him as more than just webmaster relations. sam 14/02/20 8:32 am everyone else we're not offering this sam 14/02/20 8:33 am he could very well be.. and if he does great for us, then he woulc get a raise like everyone else sam 14/02/20 8:33 am g3 started out at 36k and got a raise bryant 14/02/20 8:33 am I know Jerry met with him, I don't know what they discussed in terms of exactly what he'd be doing. bryant 14/02/20 8:34 am Hmm, how about 35k for a trial period then, you can define certain benchmarks, if he meets them he goes to 40, 45 and perhaps 50. bryant 14/02/20 8:34 am That way he's at 35 now, but he has a vested interest and opportunity to climb higher based upon metrics you define? sam 14/02/20 8:34 am well, the benchmarks are all subjective.. its obvious when someone becomes an asset.. for example, g3 sam 14/02/20 8:34 am he'll be entitled to raises.. and we have a precedence for giving people raises if they really help increase our bottom line in many areas sam 14/02/20 8:35 am i dont want to set a false expectations where he'll feel entitled to it.. then he'll be unhappy.. based on subjective evaluation bryant 14/02/20 8:36 am Yeah, different people different skillsets. I can only speak so intelligently about the skillsets of g3 and Rich. I do know that where g3 lacks is interpersonal relations/people skills and that's an area Rich excels in. They both have other skills with positives and negatives each. g3 for example is a great organizer, Rich may not be - don't know. bryant 14/02/20 8:37 am Basically he's come to these figures based upon what he feels he needs to sustain his quality of life and be able to work towards a gradual improvement. bryant 14/02/20 8:37 am I'll take 24k/35k to him, just want you to have the big picture as he relayed it to me. =) bryant 14/02/20 8:38 am I see your point though, the milestones concept for raises seems a little bit like a minefield for both sides in that light. sam 14/02/20 8:43 am i just called jerry sam 14/02/20 8:44 am to see what he used him for bryant 14/02/20 8:44 am ok cool - what did he say? sam 14/02/20 8:44 am really, its's not clear to me if we have any more campaigns to deploy sam 14/02/20 8:44 am and he said it was mostly for the website.. i asked expliclity what rich would be used for sam 14/02/20 8:45 am and he wasnt really sure.. do we need more expenses in webmaster communications? i dont know sam 14/02/20 8:45 am i asked him if we can use him in revenues in anyway.. he wasnt sure sam 14/02/20 8:46 am however, all that being said.. if you do : $2cpm on total daily uniques + employment contract for 35k/year we can do it bryant 14/02/20 8:46 am Yeah, I see the point. I guess the underlying issue is what do we have to pay to keep him. Clearly it's not $2k. So which makes more sense for us, seeing what we can pay him as a webmaster at a min, or going this route to keep him plus have him in-house for work. sam 14/02/20 8:46 am i dont doubt you that he has skills sam 14/02/20 8:46 am im just trying to find out what exactly he'd be doing sam 14/02/20 8:47 am and who he'd be reporting to etc. sam 14/02/20 8:47 am so try that out.. its not so far from your offer bryant 14/02/20 8:47 am Oh, I'm not pitching Rich Kyanka here. Jerry met with him and told me he's interested in seeing if hiring him is a way to go. sam 14/02/20 8:48 am and tell rich that while he doesnt think it's fulltime pay sam 14/02/20 8:48 am we're doing this as a favor to supplement and co-opt him sam 14/02/20 8:48 am we're not doing this for the other webmasters bryant 14/02/20 8:48 am I have. It's been my underlying theme. sam 14/02/20 8:48 am as a stand-alone candidate, we probably wouldnt hire him.. we'reputting more resources in sales sam 14/02/20 8:49 am keep trying.. im sure you can get him down more bryant 14/02/20 8:50 am I am too. sam 14/02/20 8:51 am Bill is making a list of other people for you to neogitate w/ after the websites are done. I think this is your calling card:) bryant 14/02/20 8:51 am np. Are those the people we owe? sam 14/02/20 8:51 am yep bryant 14/02/20 9:04 am If we can be creative with getting back pay to him, I can get him at 24/35 sam 14/02/20 9:04 am did you talk to him? bryant 14/02/20 9:04 am Yep. sam 14/02/20 9:04 am let me think about it. bryant 14/02/20 9:05 am ok bryant 14/02/20 9:05 am Back pay issue comes from upcoming tax troubles. All his $ was 1099 last year and he expects to owe close to or over $10k. He has 0. sam 14/02/20 9:06 am but we havent paid him anything for last year sam 14/02/20 9:07 am and he said he hasnt been paid from anyone else either bryant 14/02/20 9:07 am No, but other companies did at least early on. sam 14/02/20 9:11 am for him to owe 10k.. he should've earned @ least 40k:) bryant 14/02/20 9:11 am 2nd half of last year he got almost nothing because of the market problems and companies missing or failing to make payments. First half he took in close to $40k on 1099s. sam 14/02/20 9:12 am okay sam 14/02/20 9:12 am let me think bout the backpay stuff sam 14/02/20 9:12 am i told bill to send me all the $ stuff on all the websites..and im going to compile backpay info for everyone tonight bryant 14/02/20 9:12 am Did that last ICQ go through? It's acting really screwy on me and doesn't show it in our history. bryant 14/02/20 9:13 am The $40k first half 2k one.. sam 14/02/20 9:14 am yes it did bryant 14/02/20 9:14 am mame.dk is getting restless btw. We prepared to let them go? Or how do you want to handle that? We're looking for around $4k a month, they're looking for around $24k/mo. They're hosting their own site. They claim they can't live with $4k. etc. etc. bryant 14/02/20 9:15 am I've let them stew a bit and now they seem a little more anxious. How do you want to play it? bryant 14/02/20 9:16 am I haven't turned aggressive on them yet but that was my next play. Just wanted to touch base to see where they stand on your importance perception. sam 14/02/20 9:16 am how many daily uniques do they have bryant 14/02/20 9:16 am Having Jo pull that, one sec. sam 14/02/20 9:16 am not important really..but it is a big site.. 24k is way too much for that though sam 14/02/20 9:16 am we've never paid them 24k sam 14/02/20 9:17 am all our past payments to them have been less than 10k sam 14/02/20 9:17 am traffic increase doesnt mean we can monetirze it.. bryant 14/02/20 9:18 am 60983 unique viewers yesterday. sam 14/02/20 9:18 am 60*30= say 2 mil .. times even 2.5 = 5k.... hmmm sam 14/02/20 9:18 am tell them to test the market out ? sam 14/02/20 9:18 am brian is using that ploy sam 14/02/20 9:19 am tell them the market is zero out there.. tell them to test it out for a few days bryant 14/02/20 9:19 am It's hard to think about coming up on an emulation site. If they don't want to play in the real world we might think about some of the less friendly options. bryant 14/02/20 9:19 am Yeah, I've used that here and there too. Let me see what they have to say tomorrow and we'll play it from there. sam 14/02/20 9:19 am yeah.. the uniques are nice..but we cant really pay more than 5k.. we're prepared to let them walk, yes. bryant 14/02/20 9:20 am How much are you comfortable paying if they control their banner inventory? sam 14/02/20 9:21 am boy thats tough.. since we're not hosting either.. i really dont know where their tfaffic is coming fro sam 14/02/20 9:21 am we cant monetize the non-usa traffic in direct marketing yet bryant 14/02/20 9:21 am Yeah, it's an odd one. sam 14/02/20 9:21 am us companies dont want foreign addresses or names for d.m. bryant 14/02/20 9:21 am OK, that actually makes it easier. Lemme see how they respond tomorrow. sam 14/02/20 9:21 am im not sure if thats an option here sam 15/02/20 7:51 am i got all the info from bill finally.. so i should try to get this backpay stuff out to u guys today (late late) bryant 15/02/20 8:19 am OK great. Any further thought on the SA stuff? sam 15/02/20 8:19 am illcalculate the backpay and think about it at the same time sam 15/02/20 8:19 am http://www.efront.com/gfx/index3.shtml fyi, kinda what we'll be launchng shortly sam 15/02/20 8:23 am i have a mockup for u.. on how all the sites will look like (and so classical.net too) sam 16/02/20 7:13 am u there? bryant 16/02/20 7:15 am Yep sam 16/02/20 7:16 am can u talk to brian.. : bryant 16/02/20 7:16 am Brian Welch? sam 16/02/20 7:17 am ok check ur email.. see if u can think of a good solution.. and then talk to brian bryant 16/02/20 7:19 am Hmm, okay, I'll bring it up this evening when I talk with him. bryant 16/02/20 7:58 am Brian is covered. sam 16/02/20 7:58 am thanks bryant 16/02/20 7:58 am mp bryant 16/02/20 7:58 am np that is sam 17/02/20 7:45 am spreadsheet pretty helpful? sam 17/02/20 8:28 am kevin tells me Rich/SA also knows html.. so that's a + sam 19/02/20 2:20 am when u're around.. lets talk about SA bryant 19/02/20 4:10 am Have a few mins now if you want to talk SA. sam 20/02/20 1:42 am hey i got your msg..whenever you're ready sam 20/02/20 1:49 am have you been deluged with people yet :) bryant 20/02/20 1:51 am Heh, it's started a little bit. I expect it to reall snowball later this week. That's good though. They're motivated to come to us which makes the process easier to deal with. bryant 20/02/20 1:51 am So what are you thinking re: Rich? I know html is a thought for what he'd be doing. sam 20/02/20 1:52 am the 35k/ 24k sounds good.. just thinking about the backpay.. let me look real quick bryant 20/02/20 1:52 am ok sam 20/02/20 1:56 am have you given any thoughts to what we should do with mpog? (jonathan was asking me) bryant 20/02/20 1:57 am I haven't to be honest. I asked Jon to deal with it since from where I'm standing right now it feels like a conflict of interest. So whatever you and he figure out. =) sam 20/02/20 1:58 am im not really sure either.. :) i know u guys use the $ all for expenses and dont really make anything off of it.. ill talk to him.. i dont think its a conflict of interest really.. we're both trying to figure out how to get the most value from it ..its not like either one of us makes $ from it :) sam 20/02/20 2:16 am btw, on the chinese sites, i'd pay no more than $1 cpm on the uniques.. sam 20/02/20 2:16 am linda is online and msging me.. ill tell her to talk to you for central coordination sam 20/02/20 2:16 am do you think we could get away with 50 cent cpm for the chinese sites? sam 20/02/20 2:20 am lotus: (10:18 AM) ok, will we pay them today or tomorrow? so I can start negotiation for the new contract then sam: (10:19 AM) the funds wont be released until the new contracts are signed.. the new contract also has it in there the amount to be paid on signing for the 19th payment [if you could give her a hand or two..] sam 20/02/20 2:22 am lotus: (10:21 AM) but I don't have details about the new contract site by site sam 20/02/20 3:09 am btw, SA's stats are wrong.. weird.. he didnt do 7 mil imps in december. trying to come up with a figure right out and we'll make a deal wioth him sam 20/02/20 4:31 am what about this offer for SA: Make the contract retroactive. 11/9 start date 24k/year website 2500 already paid 3500 balance (to be paid immediately) + 2k (feb) + 2k (march) should take care of his taxes 35k/year employee [we're not offering this to anyone else.. ] bryant 20/02/20 4:32 am You mean make the site $ retroactive but start the salary now? sam 20/02/20 4:32 am yes sam 20/02/20 4:34 am basically null the previous contract with the new contract, balance due immediately + 35k/year job bryant 20/02/20 4:34 am Right, np, lemme see if I can track him down. sam 20/02/20 4:34 am do u think he'll go for it:) bryant 20/02/20 4:34 am Hard to tell. I think probably. sam 20/02/20 4:35 am btw, that spreadhseet is wrong.. so dont quote him the backpay from that.. the decemeber estimate was 5.7 mil pv for him, not 7 sam 20/02/20 4:35 am anyways, lets try that sam 20/02/20 4:35 am ive been talking to linda past hour or two.. if u could fwd her the addendum, etc. i'd appreciate it bryant 20/02/20 4:35 am Will do. sam 20/02/20 4:42 am also fyi, brian is telling me that the biggest issue thus far has been backpay@ the end of their contracts. i offered him two solutions: 1. make the contract retroactive and we'll pay in 60 days (because the payable is reduced) or 2. make the terms either less than $2 cpm AND we'll pay 8.1% of the backpay everymonth for a year. either way, we have a limited amount of funds to work with and that's the reality in case you run into the same issues. bryant 20/02/20 4:49 am ok great. bryant 20/02/20 5:08 am He would rather see the back money simply split up into monthly payments over 12-18 months. sam 20/02/20 5:10 am we can do that if he takes a $2cpm on daily uniques on his site + 1k/month for 18 months what do you think of that? bryant 20/02/20 5:10 am Instead of employment, or with? sam 20/02/20 5:10 am with bryant 20/02/20 5:11 am 2 instead of 2.5 - is that the difference? sam 20/02/20 5:11 am is that toorich? sam 20/02/20 5:12 am ya..thats the diff sam 20/02/20 5:13 am or 1k/mo for 12 months.. because we are paying it sooner sam 20/02/20 5:13 am than @ the end of the contract sam 20/02/20 5:13 am + he gets employment sam 20/02/20 5:13 am and allows us to actually pay it because reduces our cashflow bryant 20/02/20 5:42 am Rich will drop to 2.0cpmU if we will pay him $1k a month of his total back pay every month until it's complete. bryant 20/02/20 5:42 am We're basically out of dancing room with him. So let me know if that works for you. sam 20/02/20 5:58 am do you have a copy of his contract i can look @? i want to get reports run to figure out his back pay per the contract sam 20/02/20 5:58 am but that could be do-able sam 20/02/20 5:59 am even a non-signed electornic copy will do if u can email me sam 20/02/20 6:08 am okay.. looks like his total balance is 27,762 so, to recap: 35k/year salary f/t job employment agreement (at-will like everyone else, but you dont have to tell him that) + 2cpmU (looks like 1500/month) + 1000/mo until the backpay is met thats the best we can do right? bryant 20/02/20 6:11 am Yep. sam 20/02/20 6:11 am ok get it done bryant 20/02/20 6:14 am So how much do you want to give him tomorrow? $2,500 as listed on the Excel sheet. He says he has to have something to cover his rent. sam 20/02/20 6:15 am in the addendum, you can get rid of the feb 19 payment line and add 1k/month..and you can make all payments net 30 sam 20/02/20 6:15 am oh oops sam 20/02/20 6:15 am give him february's payment tomorrow sam 20/02/20 6:15 am (the 1k bryant 20/02/20 6:15 am ok sam 20/02/20 6:16 am and have him report to g3, ie employment etc. have g3 take care of it w/ mike frue paperwork, etc. sam 20/02/20 6:17 am i'm going to use him and kevin bowen as a tag team to deploy all campaigns in the websites...they know html, they probably work good together sam 20/02/20 6:17 am and bypass the webmasters |
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sam 20/02/20 6:33 am Explaination of the new contracts and payments if they ask: We've been able to collect a majority of the A/R (but not all) that was owed to us. However, because we did not want to have this drag on or incur a legal battle that could take awhile to resolve, we made payment settlements with our past advertisers that resulted in not collecting 100% of what we delivered. We have set aside the collections to pay the webmasters, however, because we only have a limited amounts of funds because of the collection settlement to pay out -- we must prioritize the payments to the websites that will stay part of eFront. In the meanwhile, since banner markets have dried up, we are and have reengineered our model to go after performace based marketing including direct marketing. Therefore, going forward, we need a new contract in place we can pay you on a stable basis without depending on banners. We need to get this in place in order to pay you before going forward; otherwise there is no sense in going forward for any of us. The moneys we earn from our new program will be the cash flow that drives future payments; hence the need to carry the backpay forward. sam 20/02/20 6:36 am i also gave your icq to Marc DSouza. He's worked with me in the past on webmaster stuff and he can renegotiate contracts for you and talk to webmasters.. just give him a bunch of sites to work with ( his speciality is mp3 sites ) bryant 20/02/20 6:36 am ok great. sam 20/02/20 7:12 am also, you should probably let the webmasters know that they can get a tax break because this is asset purcahse, not ordinary income. that will save them $$ on taxes too this is a long-term capigal gains.. it will make their taxes better by as much as 50% (depending on their tax levels).. no SS and unemployment taxes either sam 20/02/20 7:14 am so a person making 50k/year from us vs ad networks can expect to save in taxes: ad networks: ss + income + state+ unemployment = 25k in taxes with us, probably 7500/year bryant 20/02/20 7:40 am What terms did you all agree upon with Harsha? bryant 20/02/20 7:40 am I know you and Tim were working on him, don't know where it was left. sam 20/02/20 7:43 am iBLAMEj00: (3:41 PM) The last time we talked I said that if he wants to play hardball, I'll need all his payment from exitfuel and bottomdollar since going with eFront =) sam 20/02/20 7:44 am iBLAMEj00: (3:43 PM) He keeps demanding $30k/month, that he needs that much. sam: (3:43 PM) did he go any l;ower? iBLAMEj00: (3:43 PM) Well, he kinda agreed to $10k/month and he gets the banner ads at one point. bryant 20/02/20 7:44 am OK. sam 20/02/20 7:44 am iBLAMEj00: (3:44 PM) But he couldn't accept not getting paid for back months. sam 20/02/20 7:44 am iBLAMEj00: (3:44 PM) And then he mumbled something about having to sell his Lexus. sam 20/02/20 7:45 am [i had told tim to offer harsha: 1.cancel backpay 2. he gets all banners on megagames for next 3 months after that its a normal deal back to the contract..] he claimed he could make $1.30 cpm on banners.. so the 3 motnhs of 100 million banners a month would make him 300k enough to cover the backpay and our payments for the next 3 months sam 20/02/20 7:46 am and after 3 months, the 30k would be doable because it would be around cpmU at the rate his site is growing.. currently, it's 5cpmU sam 20/02/20 7:46 am that was the last.. then the emails he's been sending bryant 20/02/20 7:46 am OK, I'll deal with him? bryant 20/02/20 7:47 am ignore the ? sam 20/02/20 7:47 am sounds good.. let me know if u need help .. ill be there.. like we did with SA ..:) sam 20/02/20 7:47 am fyi, we also got Harsha a Visa to stay in the usa or something (jerry got him) sam 21/02/20 10:24 am lowtax signed today. good job sam 21/02/20 12:47 pm hey im going to san fran for business deals tomorrow. marc D. is ready to work with you to try to get more people signed up, so let him help you sam 21/02/20 12:47 pm let me know if you need anything or there are any issues sam 21/02/20 12:47 pm if u need me tomorrow, my cell # is 714 227 5975 bryant 21/02/20 12:48 pm OK will do. Have some mp3 sites for Marc, I'll touch base with him tomorrow. sam 21/02/20 12:50 pm Marc: (8:48 PM) ya that sounds good... roy was trying some stuff with vc today...don't know how that's going... webmasters are speading rumors that we filed for chapter 11 btw [probably supports your theory and stuff..its all good, helps us negotiate better] bryant 21/02/20 12:51 pm vc? sam 21/02/20 12:52 pm heh i dunno what he's talking about.. lemme ask him sam 21/02/20 12:53 pm sam: (8:51 PM) what do u mean roy was talking to vc Marc: (8:52 PM) valueclick sam: (8:52 PM) btw, which wembasters were spreading rumor Marc: (8:52 PM) heard it from t-rex sam: (8:53 PM) oh, screw him .. he cheated us with the 1x1 pixel and i caught him 4 months ago.. and we kicked him out sam 21/02/20 12:54 pm btw, i did a deal with Defender, owner of one of the mp3 sites today.. he gets to maintain all of our mp3 sites.. for 1cpmU.. for a max of $2500 per month..he'll maintain 10 sites for us. i have to get him a contract.. sam 21/02/20 11:02 pm Hey have you been talking to Thomas about the renegotiations w/ the french sites? sam 21/02/20 11:43 pm Swedie (ICQ#20386173) Wrote: hey, I haven't recieved any money yet.. and I haven't recieved and email from Bryan as I suspected. bryant 21/02/20 11:45 pm Who is that? sam 21/02/20 11:46 pm just fwding you everything i get thats demonews.com bryant 21/02/20 11:46 pm I'll ask Brian about them. I asked him to touch base. On the ph with Astalavista right now btw. sam 21/02/20 11:46 pm k bryant 21/02/20 11:47 pm Can you live with breaking their back pay up every 3mos over like 18 months or something? sam 21/02/20 11:48 pm that'd be harder and a struggle to do.. but better than nothing.. we might not live upto it, but give it a shot...it has to start in 3 months though (obviously) sam 21/02/20 11:54 pm hm his backpay seems wrong (astalavista) do u have his contract handy bryant 22/02/20 12:01 am looking for it now. bryant 22/02/20 12:03 am $8k base at 6mm pvs, $1100 for ever 1mm above base. sam 22/02/20 12:04 am the new figures would be 5650 for feb 19 19150 backpay balance bryant 22/02/20 12:04 am I show them as; 11/00 - 11,901,703 12/00 - 9,892,823 01/01 - 8,780,933 sam 22/02/20 12:05 am no..because in january he used his own banner and put ours at the bottom. he also had no webguide in january we count webguide impressions bryant 22/02/20 12:05 am That's a little bit less. Hmm. bryant 22/02/20 12:05 am Ah right, okay. sam 22/02/20 12:05 am and you have the nov and dec figures reversed bryant 22/02/20 12:06 am Hmm, that's strange. I've got the system reports printed out and they're dated. Must have been a bug or something. sam 22/02/20 12:06 am but thats the new figure according to base level pay i dont think bill gave me the right spreadsheet.. he's prorating the payments upwards in the same manner its prorated downwards.. so on big amounts, i'd doublecheck bryant 22/02/20 12:07 am ok sam 22/02/20 12:07 am ok..either way, if u reverse the nov and dec, its the same payments sam 22/02/20 12:07 am also, the figures go through an internal audit check for cheating, refreshes, pops, etc. traffic usually does that (drazen used to) bryant 22/02/20 12:07 am If we tack on $1k per month, that's the rough equivalent of paying them a 2.5cpmU anyway. That work? bryant 22/02/20 12:08 am MIght be easier than more every 3. bryant 22/02/20 12:08 am Less impact. sam 22/02/20 12:08 am oh u mean no backpay then? bryant 22/02/20 12:08 am Yeah, we'll stop it when their backpay is done. So we don't have to pay it forever. bryant 22/02/20 12:08 am They're at a 2.0 sam 22/02/20 12:09 am ohh.. i see..hm.. only thing is we have to pay more every month right..than every 3 months? sam 22/02/20 12:09 am (cashflow) bryant 22/02/20 12:09 am I'm just thinking paying less per month might be easier than larger amounts every 3. sam 22/02/20 12:10 am okay. im okay with that.. and we'll stop it when his backpay is done? bryant 22/02/20 12:10 am Obviously we're going to work as many backpays at the end of the contract (or deal out at cents on the dollar) with most sites, Asta is a keeper though. sam 22/02/20 12:11 am okay.. you should probably have the flexbility to do what it takes.. just remember the parameters.. the less the better, the more in the future the better sam 22/02/20 12:11 am it will allow us to meet our obligations bryant 22/02/20 12:11 am Certainly. Actually, giving them $1k a month is less than paying them a 2.5 sam 22/02/20 12:12 am yeah.. they get good uniques bryant 22/02/20 12:12 am 2.0 = 6814 (+1000 = 7814), 2.5 = 8517.5 bryant 22/02/20 12:12 am They were demanding all the back money up front before they sign anything. sam 22/02/20 12:12 am he didnt go for every 3 months? sam 22/02/20 12:12 am aha ok sam 22/02/20 12:13 am just so u know, he tried to run different ads on the top banner.. and i dont hhink he could find a suitable outlet..he's running text links there now bryant 22/02/20 12:13 am We can do like $3k every 3 (they want like 10k every 3, lol), but I just think it might be harder on us when it hits. bryant 22/02/20 12:14 am per mo on this one minimizes the impact. Basically it equates to us agreeing to pay them a 2.29cpmU for a while. sam 22/02/20 12:14 am yeah.. 1k/mo is fine i suppose. try not to do more than 5-10 of those.. cuz then thats 5-10k/month extra for however long.. also, we're more in a cashflow hole now...it could be alot better in 3 months because we have invested people and resources into diversifying our revenue streams bryant 22/02/20 12:15 am Yeah. I only see a few sites I'm willing to talk to about that type of arrangement. Asta is one of them. sam 22/02/20 12:16 am ok.. u might have a pot for each gruop.. like some sites, nothing some sites @ end of contract only some sites every quarter over 3 years or 18 months some sites 1k/mo sam 22/02/20 12:16 am helps us spradit bryant 22/02/20 12:16 am That last group should end up being less than 5 sam 22/02/20 12:16 am also i changed the SA cntract after u had sent it bryant 22/02/20 12:16 am What part? sam 22/02/20 12:17 am i made it so that "total is 27,762, payble atthe following schedule: 2500 for the first month and 1000 for every month thereafter until whole is satisfied" also added net 30 that way his next 1k isnt due until april 30 sam 22/02/20 12:17 am make sense? bryant 22/02/20 12:18 am Yeah, it's a lot cleaner. Heh, rushed that one off. bryant 22/02/20 12:18 am Cool. sam 22/02/20 12:19 am thats ok :) g3 was frantic cuz lowtax barged into his office saying where's the money. i told g3 to send him home and make hime come back lter:) bryant 22/02/20 12:19 am Heh bryant 22/02/20 12:22 am Hebus is ready to remove any/all illegal content. Any issue with bringing them online? sam 22/02/20 12:22 am no not at all sam 22/02/20 12:22 am lets do it bryant 22/02/20 12:23 am Thought you were in San Fran today? sam 22/02/20 12:23 am first flighth is booked.. next one is @ 10:50.. so i might as well work while i wait bryant 22/02/20 12:30 am What did Hebus have on there causing the problems? sam 22/02/20 12:31 am not really sure.. i didnt even know there was anyting causing a problem.. marcF just told me that this morning..but i would imagine maybe celeb pics bryant 22/02/20 12:44 am 5650 for 2/19 and then 19150 backpay, right? Or does the 19150 include the 5650? sam 22/02/20 12:45 am yup thats right.. 19k is separate bryant 22/02/20 12:45 am ok thx. Just getting their addendum out. sam 22/02/20 12:46 am great.. bill is asking me how much $ we're going to send out this week.. whats ur guess.. 30-40k worth of backpay? sam 22/02/20 12:46 am er feb 19 payments bryant 22/02/20 12:47 am Almost impossible to guess. I'd certainly say a fraction of the whole, but the question is how much. bryant 22/02/20 12:47 am I'd say 30-40 should cover us for this week. sam 22/02/20 12:48 am ok great bryant 22/02/20 12:48 am If it starts to get close to that we'll tap dance a little bit and defer people to next week. bryant 22/02/20 12:48 am So I'll keep a running tab. sam 22/02/20 12:49 am actually id prefer to just get the contracts signed.. about is sending us 150k .. i signed the contract today.. so by the time it clears and all.. we should be ok bryant 22/02/20 12:49 am ok, then I won't worry about it. sam 22/02/20 11:20 am hey.. have you talked to jarretc (beautifulcelebrities.com). he keeps calling me. sam 23/02/20 10:51 am I'm talking to Scott/Gr right now sam 23/02/20 10:51 am brian was working on him i think right bryant 23/02/20 11:04 am Yeah, Brian was. sam 23/02/20 11:06 am i can get him on board.. im talking to him now.. he hates g3 :) bryant 23/02/20 11:29 am Heh. There's something to use. =) sam 23/02/20 11:32 am Actually Scott gavem e some good ideas. I asked G3 to setup a meeting with Jo. I want Jo to send out a weekly newsletter that actually has good information.. I think she can do a great job bryant 23/02/20 11:35 am Yeah, just mentioned that to her. She thinks it's a good idea. sam 23/02/20 11:37 am I want payment stuff, financial stuff in there, new sites, old sites, new campaigns, new ideas, etc. Should we do it so its a newsletter.. or should we do it like a egroups list so people can actually respond (mailing list) bryant 23/02/20 11:38 am Dunno. Lemme do a straw poll with the people I deal with tomorrow and see what they think. bryant 23/02/20 11:38 am Then again maybe that confuses the help desk issue. bryant 23/02/20 11:38 am We might want that to be the clear and only vehicle for communication. sam 23/02/20 11:38 am yeah.. plus if we dont respond or get busy..they'l think we 're not communicating bryant 23/02/20 11:39 am Yeah. Thinking about it now I think a one-way newsletter is better. It can link to the helpdesk address each time for questions, comments, concern. sam 23/02/20 11:39 am yeah.. we should do a nice html newsletter..not the plain text stuff that bill hodson used to send.. i never read that.. it was junk :) bryant 23/02/20 11:40 am Have to admit I didn't either. sam 23/02/20 11:48 am Scott -Game Rankings: (7:44 PM) Lets talk hosting for a minute. Right Now PSX Extreme and I and VGS are all on the sam server. PSX Extreme is moving out onto his own server. GR and VGS can move onto his new server and pay for hosting there instead of eFront paying for a dedicated machine just for GR and VGS. Cost would be $450 a month for hosting. I think that is cheaper than what you are paying right now for a dedicated machine. I am going somewhere with this.... [do u know if psxextreme passed on us] bryant 23/02/20 11:48 am Lemme look bryant 23/02/20 11:49 am Yeah, they want out. sam 23/02/20 11:49 am what was the last cpm we offered them.. 3? bryant 23/02/20 11:50 am Brian is going to take them 2.5-3. So there's still a shot. sam 23/02/20 11:51 am are you amazed that we have most of the people accepting @ 2 and such bryant 23/02/20 11:52 am I've been pretty surprised, yeah. bryant 23/02/20 11:52 am Glad really. More reasonable people than non-. sam 23/02/20 11:52 am so jarret is all okay huh.. what did he take.. 2? bryant 23/02/20 11:53 am Yep, .2 sam 23/02/20 11:53 am are most ppl taking backpay @ the end or mixed? bryant 23/02/20 11:54 am Mixed. Backpay at the end has been a stumbling block almost every time. sam 23/02/20 12:13 pm Tim loves the 75cent cpm idea for backpay idea :) sam 23/02/20 12:13 pm Once the contracts are done, if we need to reduce our backpay or debt on the books, we can offer that to more people.. or offer it to people now even :) sam 23/02/20 11:15 pm Swedie: (7:14 AM) Do you know when I will get payed .. I mean that 50% of a month deal you talked about that I'd be getting on the 19th of Feb. sam: (7:14 AM) yes.. monday/tuesday.. sam: (7:14 AM) hey let me fwd u to Will Bryant now sam: (7:14 AM) he's on [demonews guy.. looking for contract sam 25/02/20 9:12 am http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/50/16943. tml [harsha always said he could go to euniverse.. oh well] sam 26/02/20 8:56 pm BLAMEj00: (4:54 AM) Doesn't this guy have some kind of non-complete in his contract? http://beautifulsavers.efront.com Because these sites (and I'm sure others) sure do look like they are done by the same guy (just outside eFront). http://www.beautifulbikini.com http://www.elitesavers.com http://www.fabuloussavers.com http://celebritysavers.com http://www.sexyfreeamateurs.com iBLAMEj00: (4:54 AM) Actually, I checked and they are all registered by the same guy, Gabor Timis (same guy that's with eFront)? I'm sure he has other sites too, but I think the plan is to sell one to efront and promote the others. sam 26/02/20 8:56 pm tim sentme that..something to consider whenu talk to gabor sam 28/02/20 3:02 pm i believe Marc's last day is tomorrow (voluntary resignation cuz of stress).. I hope he find another job quickly. He was a good asset. At the same we have s4r to do all the tech stuff so that will help. We're going to outsource our hr/payroll/ar/ap/reporting/payables/etc. to ledgent.com so we outsource that too.. to streamline stuff.. do you have any experience with firms like that bryant 28/02/20 3:04 pm Sure don't. Only one I'm familiar with is ADP, but I don't even know what services they provide and being so large they probably aren't very cost effective. sam 28/02/20 3:06 pm ledgent uses adp too..so they'll continue to do ourpayroll through adp.. but they're an outsourced finance division..doing eerything a to z.. uyou just fax them bills, invoices, etc. and they put it all together. i had to cut bill's pay by 30%..and he said he'd have to find another job.. isaid i can understand..but i cant afford to accrue salary anymore.. we'll pay u full amount w/ payroll and thats it..so he'll start looking around but be professional and help us through this..and we're going to look @ ledgent i think bryant 28/02/20 3:09 pm Ledgent sounds good. sam 28/02/20 3:10 pm i just read mame's 'you have 30 mins' hehe.. like we'd respond for sure then :) bryant 28/02/20 3:11 pm Yeah, heh. I called them on saying we hadn't spoken since the first day, they claimed no other emails had gone back and forth so I found and forwarded some. They've been oddly quiet about it since. bryant 28/02/20 3:11 pm I've laid out what we can offer them again, so we'll see what they get back with. I literally half suspect a week from now we'll get another crazy email saying they're being ignored. sam 28/02/20 3:12 pm i think they'll accept.. what choices do they have bryant 28/02/20 3:12 pm Not many. I think they probably will too to be honest. sam 28/02/20 3:12 pm thats why i said.. hey ill talk to them.. i would basically say.. hey i understand blahblah..but market sucks.. do u have any better choices? i'd like to find out myself.. bryant 28/02/20 3:13 pm Think about Hebus at all? I don't know how important that one is (it seems to be a need-to-keep'er), and he's made it clear he can't accept even a 2.5. Thoughts on what to do with him? His biggest issue is getting monthly $ up and sustaining that. sam 28/02/20 3:14 pm oh ya.. i forgot.. lots going on.. lemme see. sam 28/02/20 3:14 pm we probalby need to get him on icq sam 28/02/20 3:14 pm chat conf sam 28/02/20 3:14 pm because i think the only way is to sam 28/02/20 3:14 pm keep talking him down sam 28/02/20 3:14 pm money is money sam 28/02/20 3:15 pm there's not too many choices sam 28/02/20 3:15 pm i want to say.. look hi-media kicked us out sam 28/02/20 3:15 pm your click-thru sucks sam 28/02/20 3:15 pm maybe you advertise on the english version..and we'll take the french version sam 28/02/20 3:15 pm we're losing lots of money on ur site bryant 28/02/20 3:15 pm Yep. He's around most of the afternoon, it might be effective for me to pull both of you into an ICQ chat and you can talk a bit. Make him feel important, he's getting the CEO, etc. etc. sam 28/02/20 3:16 pm yeah.. just keep talking him down mostly.. and say.. hey incrase your unique users.. sam 28/02/20 3:16 pm we're not capping it at 1600/month sam 28/02/20 3:16 pm increase your unique users..and that helps both of us sam 28/02/20 3:16 pm and we should show him our own french celebrity site we did in a day sam 28/02/20 3:16 pm as a back up :) sam 28/02/20 3:16 pm to say we might let him walk bryant 28/02/20 3:17 pm Is that what he is? I've never actually seen his site. Only time I loaded it was when it was back up briefly. sam 28/02/20 3:18 pm well wallpapers mostly sam 28/02/20 3:19 pm http://megagames.com/ps2/ harsha still has his own click-xchange affiliates.. sigh sam 28/02/20 3:19 pm ('win a ps2') |
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bryant 28/02/20 3:19 pm You anticipate the ranks are going to thin a lot more in the near term? sam 28/02/20 3:19 pm you mean employees? sam 28/02/20 3:19 pm its mostly under our control.. who we want to let go or not bryant 28/02/20 3:19 pm Yeah. You mentioned Jon maybe playing a backup in case of one departure. Just wondering what the general tone is out there. sam 28/02/20 3:20 pm its actually pretty good here sam 28/02/20 3:20 pm they're all happy we're doing this sam 28/02/20 3:20 pm something everyone agrees with sam 28/02/20 3:20 pm we're not killing revenue generating stuff or mission critical stuff sam 28/02/20 3:20 pm just the fat sam 28/02/20 3:20 pm they all said that sam you shouldve done it a month ago sam 28/02/20 3:20 pm oh you mean Jon is looking around? bryant 28/02/20 3:20 pm Cool. I'm not surprised I guess that Marc ended up leaving. Obviously he's been somewhat unhappy for some time. sam 28/02/20 3:21 pm yeah.. i already had marc crossed out in my financials i did this past weekend sam 28/02/20 3:21 pm cuz iknew he would.. and it was okay..cuz we didnt really needhim sam 28/02/20 3:21 pm since we have s4r sam 28/02/20 3:21 pm g3 was panicking a little sam 28/02/20 3:21 pm i said no.. stop.. use helpdesk.. fwd to s4r..simple bryant 28/02/20 3:21 pm Heh. sam 28/02/20 3:22 pm he was like oh they wouldnt want to etc. i said were paying them a pretty penny.. let themearn it sam 28/02/20 3:22 pm none of the people that left, we are going to replace sam 28/02/20 3:22 pm only one a layoff technically sam 28/02/20 3:22 pm so strategic reductions ;) sam 28/02/20 3:22 pm most of them think its their choice..:) bryant 28/02/20 3:23 pm That's usually the best scenario for everyone. Mutual breakup. sam 28/02/20 3:23 pm http://www.babe-site.com/babes/ bryant 28/02/20 3:24 pm Heh, funny how simple those sites are and how much traffic they move. sam 28/02/20 3:24 pm yeah.. of course jerry threatend to take comany down etc. like i expected etc. bill had worked something out with him payments over time etc. and he came back and said no, thats not acceptable (we gave him a senior secured note even for it).. and he wanted a $300k note.. ha ya riht sam 28/02/20 3:25 pm so i told bill.. add up all his stuff/exp. etc. take taxes out.. and pay him the backpay within 24 hrs.. and i guess there's a small severance since he washere from the begin. and thats due in 30 days sam 28/02/20 3:25 pm and basiclaly he owes the company a note for his stock bryant 28/02/20 3:25 pm He already all moved out? sam 28/02/20 3:26 pm so i took all his leverage away by saying we'll abide by the contract sam 28/02/20 3:26 pm pick up ur pay within 24 hrs as needed by the law sam 28/02/20 3:26 pm and in 30 days, we'll revoe his equity if he doesnt agree to terms on severance sam 28/02/20 3:27 pm he was sying'ill bring the company down.. i can cause problems, etc.' i was like'i dont care what you do.. its totally irrelevant.. do whatever u feel like.. we dont care.. we been through it all, as u already know.. we're going to follow our agreements and abide by it' sam 28/02/20 3:27 pm heh sam 28/02/20 3:27 pm yeah.. i gave him a termination letter today sam 28/02/20 3:27 pm because its the 25th sam 28/02/20 3:27 pm 27th sam 28/02/20 3:28 pm and he had severnace that built up half months pay every 2 months or something.. so he doesnt get his last one.. and it separates us for 30 days sam 28/02/20 3:28 pm lets the employees get all used to everything sam 28/02/20 3:28 pm then i can deal with him by playing hardball on the promissory note sam 28/02/20 3:29 pm hey u have to fight fire w/ fire :) bryant 28/02/20 3:30 pm Yeah. I know he had been working in other areas, so the change isn't going to be huge for ppl like Jon and myself. We had limited contact with him the last few months. Before it was almost daily, but obviously after the shift that wasn't needed. sam 28/02/20 3:30 pm yeah.. same here..he wasnt doing much last 2-3 months sam 28/02/20 3:31 pm and i asked dennis, bill, etc. in advance..and they didnt have any problem.. so i said ok..lets cut that out too.. bettr to cut our losses now.. cuz he was getting more and more demanding as the market was getting down..wanted pay increases, priortized before other employees, etc. i said noway sam 28/02/20 3:31 pm so is Jon okay ? sam 28/02/20 3:31 pm probably alot of changes for him.. but i want to make sure he doesnt go anywhere:) bryant 28/02/20 3:33 pm Yeah, as far as I know. Like everyone to a certain degree he and I have talked "what do we do if" and stuff like that but it's mostly been tied to "what if eF were to go under", etc. We don't talk about it much, mostly because he's got some pretty big distractions right now. Specifically his house and his Mom's health. bryant 28/02/20 3:33 pm I have to assume him going into a mortgage is a sign he's sticking around. I know he's still going through with that. sam 28/02/20 3:34 pm yeah i can undertsand that also im moving traffic from him to scott p... and having him do programming, ad server management and admin.. and programming for that something he enjoys.. and matt is happy about that too bryant 28/02/20 3:34 pm I think that will help. I know Jon has said a few times he's not really happy in traffic. sam 28/02/20 3:37 pm basically, it looks like 125k payrool, 125k webmasters, 80k s4r, 40k facilities, 30k misc.. 50% reduction in expenses.. without effecting revenues because of reduction in expenses.. so 400k/month .. we havent had a 400k month in like 10 months.. i think feb will be 500k.. and march im trying to push for 700k and april 1 mil..that way we start to save up some $.. and as soon as webmasters are done..we'll go through and reduce the debt too..negotiate, etc. like its 1mil.. 300k pillsbury, 150k cais, 200k backpay (im negotiating that rightnow)...200k misc.. so i want to clean all that up.. and cais is in dispute.. so i think a month or two..and it'll be wpiedout. sam 28/02/20 3:38 pm after everything settles down in a few days.. we'll probaly have an employee meeting.. so we'll get u guys on the phone..and go over everything sam 28/02/20 3:38 pm meaning we havent had a rev month that was as low as 400k in 10 months sam 28/02/20 3:38 pm dec was 800k..but 50% was uncollectible bryant 28/02/20 3:39 pm That will be great. It's concerning me a bit how long the sites are taking, but I've pulled Marc D. in to handle the initial talking to streamline the process a bit so hopefully that will help. All the sites seem to come around with time and a good deal of talking, but that takes time. I'm concerned about Brian leaving next week too. I talked briefly with Jon about maybe jumping in but he wasn't too comfortable with it. sam 28/02/20 3:40 pm i can jump in .. and marcd.. and we can pay brian a bonus for finishing even sam 28/02/20 3:40 pm like 1000/week as a consultant sam 28/02/20 3:40 pm so you have that option as well bryant 28/02/20 3:40 pm Yeah, I'll feel him out about that a bit tomorrow. Perhaps even ask it as a favor. We can really use him another week or two. sam 28/02/20 3:41 pm yeah im not sure if jon would be able to handle it.. i think brian got burned out on this..lot of friction.. and probably better to have jon focus on the tech stuff..so we dont lose him cuz of all that sam 28/02/20 3:41 pm yeah.. we'll pay himtoo.. so u have that option bryant 28/02/20 3:42 pm Yeah, I could tell pretty quickly Jon wanted no part of it. He's conflict averse, which I knew of course, but some of this isn't combative so I thought maybe. bryant 28/02/20 3:42 pm We'll get it all figured out sam 28/02/20 3:42 pm marcD is good at this kind of stuff..really good sam 28/02/20 3:43 pm i think we owe himfor nov/dec.. ill tell him that if u help out on this stuff, we'll get his nov money soon.. like 2k..and dec money in 30 days.. i had told him we'd work something out..so he'll be more than happy bryant 28/02/20 3:43 pm That's good to hear - I think putting him as the first line of defense should really help. A lot of time is spent just getting people past the initial shock of what they need to do. After that it's just working out the details. Which isn't always easy, but it's more time effective to break it out. sam 28/02/20 3:44 pm ok ill prep marcD.. he'll beperfect.. he handled like 20 affiliates for us.. in the affiliateprogram.. he made webmasters put up floating ads and all sorts of stuff.. so he knows how to talk :) bryant 28/02/20 3:45 pm Anyway, I better crash. Couple sites always want to keep talking late, but there are several that want first thing in the morning. So I'm going to get in as much sleep time as I can. sam 28/02/20 3:45 pm k..gnite bryant 28/02/20 3:45 pm Phone will be ringing in about 5 hours. Heh. That's good though, each one we cover makes the rest of the job easier. sam 02/03/20 12:50 pm i should probably get an attorney involved. i will call one tomorrow and get them started by giving them the babynames stuff. bryant 03/03/20 1:38 pm Still need that exit agreement template if you can shoot it over. sam 03/03/20 1:39 pm oh ya.. k sam 03/03/20 1:39 pm i cringed when i saw the to: also.. hopefully noone starts trouble:) bryant 03/03/20 1:39 pm If they do, we'll kill it quick. sam 03/03/20 1:40 pm on 2nd thought, it might not be so bad to have discussions going..and everyone sees stuff..and have an open air ..its a hard time to do it cuz they'll just complain about payments irght now:) its hard to kill it on an open-list w/ all the webmasters addresses.. sam 03/03/20 1:41 pm hopefully hebus signs soon.. im telling bill to set aside 10k for him already bryant 03/03/20 1:41 pm Well, I don't mean kill it quick by gagging them, I mean kill it quick by me contacting anyone who abuses this directly and making myself plain. bryant 03/03/20 1:41 pm They can talk in the egroups thing - doesn't need to be by spamming everyone. sam 03/03/20 1:41 pm thats true sam 03/03/20 1:42 pm use some marine techniques on them huh :) bryant 03/03/20 1:43 pm Heh, I'm just in a bad mood now, that's all. I went off on Jo too hard, but she just hasn't done that before and didn't know better. I don't know what happened to my suggestion they use a one-directional list, but hopefully it will happen now. I guess Greg just assumed she would know to BCC. It's her screw-up, I just think it could have been prevented. Especially had I realized she was mailing it before she did. bryant 03/03/20 1:43 pm Like I said, just in a nasty mood all around right now. =) sam 03/03/20 1:45 pm thats okay.. she said im sorry.. i said dont worry about it.. sam 03/03/20 1:45 pm kiss and make up with her :) sam 03/03/20 1:45 pm i dont think greg is technical so he probably didnt know what you meant bryant 03/03/20 1:50 pm Yeah, I'm not suggesting he dropped the ball at all. Jo and I are fine, I just made the point to her that even though someone (even me) probably should have mentioned to her to use BCC, she still should have seen the reasoning for that on her own. sam 03/03/20 2:01 pm i just emailed u the release. also, someone took the emails on the newsletter and invited everyone to the yahoogroups :) oh well.. i think we're wrapping up the signing of the biggest sites anyways. and also we'll use them talking on the yahoo groups as violation of the nda. sam 03/03/20 2:03 pm we should find the owner of the yahoo egruops list and kick them out :) bryant 03/03/20 2:05 pm Hmm, actually the egroups thing might be a positive. There's a lot of negativity in there from time to time, but it's also been a good way for them to vent. Better yet they either don't know we're in there or don't care - but it's a good way for us to keep tabs on general moods, etc. sam 03/03/20 2:06 pm thats true yeah.. and when things turn around, we can use that to deploy campaigns, etc. bryant 03/03/20 2:06 pm Better to have them talking in front of us than behind us. =) bryant 03/03/20 2:11 pm Actually this is great - someone starts yapping and we'll just direct them to the eGroup. Almost as if it was part of our own plan to foster better communication. sam 03/03/20 2:11 pm hehe yeah :) i think someone made this mistake back last year.. too.. and not one person responded. bryant 03/03/20 2:12 pm Actually I remember that. Was it Bill H.? sam 03/03/20 2:13 pm yep pcmech guy is a pain in the neck.. he called me 5 times and left msgs.. now he just emailed me saying he got the newsletter, etc. and wants to know where his counter proposal is .and lack of comm. is why he wants to leave efront, yadayada bryant 03/03/20 2:13 pm Strange reaction to the newsletter. That's an obvious attempt on our part to provide better communication. sam 03/03/20 2:13 pm wellthat i didnt respond back in a day to him or something sam 03/03/20 2:14 pm any idea how to approach him? im thinking about giving him the options: * buy his site back and pay us.. * 4 cpmU even maybe or something + we host to make it economical * something bryant 03/03/20 2:14 pm Yeah, they're all that way. As far as they're concerned, our worlds revolve around each of them individually. As if they're the only one out there we need to serve. bryant 03/03/20 2:17 pm Sounds good to me. Can't offer him much more than that. I spoke with a friend (lawyer) about all of this to see how far ppl could possibly go, and really - since we just can't pay the old rates and we're offering deals to keep ourselves from going under and in some cases we're letting people go - he says they really have no recourse. bryant 03/03/20 2:17 pm Said the only thing outside of renegotiating or leaving that they could do is simply not sign anything and hold out to see if the market corrects. bryant 03/03/20 2:18 pm But there actually can't be a class action suit. bryant 03/03/20 2:18 pm Which means that even if several got together to sue, they would have to pay fees out of pocket. Class action everything is free. bryant 03/03/20 2:19 pm Can't be one because the webmasters aren't a class that is. sam 03/03/20 2:19 pm really? bryant 03/03/20 2:21 pm So he says. We didn't go into it much, but when there's a segment of people who are clearly defined and not tied to the body they want to sue by common means (like same contract terms) - then they can't be treated as a class. sam 03/03/20 2:21 pm if they leave, can we make them pay us our equity interest in the website? sam 03/03/20 2:21 pm aha i see.. that makes sense bryant 03/03/20 2:22 pm I asked him that but he didn't really have a clear answer. It was something along the lines of "grey area, merits to both sides". He doesn't specialize in property or contractual law though, and I didn't want him talking to partners and charging me. =) sam 03/03/20 2:23 pm yeah.. i do have a new law firm i engaged today.. gotta pay like a 5k retainer and sign paper tuesday.. so we have multiple and easier to juggle bills.. plus this one i got them to take 33% equity for their bills:) bryant 03/03/20 2:24 pm He did say ppl would have a really tough time convincing any reputable firm to come after us. (1) because it's shakey ground with us offering people solutions and (2) because individualluy even with the bigger sites the potential award (which couldn't exceed what they're owed) isn't enough to really pay for any real action. sam 03/03/20 2:26 pm yeah.. btw, babynames never replied to a harsh email i sent them .. very interesting sam 03/03/20 2:26 pm i think they're bluffing us sam 03/03/20 2:26 pm did i fwd u the email bryant 03/03/20 2:27 pm No, don't think so. bryant 03/03/20 2:28 pm I think they have to be bluffing. I'm sure they talked to a lawyer, but I think they were probably told that there's nothing to gain from any action. sam 03/03/20 2:29 pm im @ my home comp so dont have it.. but basically they were requesting/demanding dns changes i emailed them and cc:'d their lawyer saying not only are we not going to approve the changes, we wont do a thing about it until the conflict is resolved. that they continue to violate our non-compete policies by having amazon links there and ignore our requests to deploy campaigns and holding our books hostage by disabling the l90 account so we cant complete our jan/feb financials.. that i am waiting on an agreement from robert (their lawyer).. and until this issue is resolved, i am turning off access to our property babynames.com to protect our data:) sam 03/03/20 2:30 pm then jennifer talked to tim sam 03/03/20 2:30 pm eckel sam 03/03/20 2:30 pm and he was going down on them too sam 03/03/20 2:30 pm so she got stressed and logged out sam 03/03/20 2:30 pm hehe bryant 03/03/20 2:30 pm Heh, wonder why she talked to Tim? sam 03/03/20 2:30 pm i told him to tell her about the house example, we dont have money or assets sam 03/03/20 2:30 pm i think from the egroups list from awhile ago they had communicated sam 03/03/20 2:31 pm which is good..cuz tim tells me everything.. and says everything we want to say :) bryant 03/03/20 2:31 pm OK cool, that's helpful. sam 04/03/20 1:22 am hey johan msged me.. were u able to talk to him bryant 04/03/20 1:23 am Which site is Johan? sam 04/03/20 1:23 am sub-net.com, seekmp3, anti-leech, mp3toplist bryant 04/03/20 1:25 am No, haven't had a chance yet. You can give him my ICQ and/or email so he hits me and not you tho. Will get to him asap. Hebus is arguing about some of the things in the addendum. sam 04/03/20 1:26 am we should stand firm.. what is he arguing about sam 04/03/20 1:26 am our biggest thing is we're giving him 10k right away.. he should be real happy bout that sam 04/03/20 1:26 am and use that as leverage bryant 04/03/20 1:26 am He wants all the stuff about waiving his rights and claims against eF taken out. Basically all of 2b. bryant 04/03/20 1:26 am He doesn't have any outs in his contract, but we still need that language in there. bryant 04/03/20 1:27 am He also wants Net15 and not Net30. bryant 04/03/20 1:27 am lol. bryant 04/03/20 1:27 am I'm talking to him, but I think he feels like he needs to work us down on every issue. sam 04/03/20 1:27 am ya that wont work.. tell him we need thisi because we cant have him come back and say you owe me more money bryant 04/03/20 1:27 am Crap like this is why I don't have enough minutes in the day. =) sam 04/03/20 1:27 am yeah i know ..thats what i gathered fromtalking to him :) sam 04/03/20 1:28 am he's basically ours.. tell him if we dont get it done in 24 hours, we'll have to apply the 10k for another webmaster..and he'llh ave to wait another month for his check :) sam 04/03/20 1:28 am cna i see the addendum.. it starts his new payment on march 1 right sam 04/03/20 1:32 am perfect bryant 04/03/20 1:40 am He's being difficult. He wants a clause in the addendum that says he gets to keep the domain name for the term of the agreement. bryant 04/03/20 1:46 am Sounds like he'll sign this, but he's also saying he's not going to give up the domain name until the contract is up. Obviously he's not within his rights to do that, so unless you have an issue I'm going to drop this subject with him if he'll let me. sam 04/03/20 1:56 am yeah drop the subject.. we want domain name in our name bryant 04/03/20 1:56 am We covered it, he seems okay now. bryant 04/03/20 1:57 am Told him it's like buying a car. He goes on the lot today and signs a deal - he leaves with the car and a promise to pay. If he pays he keeps it, if he doesn't, the dealership can repo the car. But he has the car while paying for it. No layaway plans in net acqusitions. heh. sam 04/03/20 1:58 am hehe bryant 04/03/20 1:59 am I see Johan's sites are on this release template you sent me. Are we cutting him loose? If so, what does he still want for you/us/me? bryant 04/03/20 1:59 am nm, wrong sites/person. sam 04/03/20 1:59 am no we're not cutting him.. that was stas.net's sites bryant 04/03/20 2:00 am Yeah, wrong group of sites. sam 04/03/20 2:02 am of the top sites: megagames ok mame pending freevote ok aracdeathome ok indiamasala gone somethingaw ok babynames limbo teenstation gone beautifulwallpapers limbo [this guy has like 10 sites and he uses our sites to direct traffic to his other sites..gabor timis.. we gotta stop this.. maybe have him throw all his sites together + noncompete] emux - no clue hebus ok animenetwork ok bresso - xaviersite ok shulu - skinz - ok sub-net - will be ok demonews - ok rpgamer -? bryant 04/03/20 2:02 am We cutting full checks for people whose contract are up and are leaving? Wavplace for example, we have $3270 on the books for them. sam 04/03/20 2:02 am thats not bad huh sam 04/03/20 2:02 am no we cant sam 04/03/20 2:02 am make it payment plan? bryant 04/03/20 2:02 am Yep, absolutely. Just wanted to check. sam 04/03/20 2:02 am or if they want all of it now.. make a deal.. like 50% or less even bryant 04/03/20 2:02 am Yeah, that's not bad at all. re: RPGamer, I just got an addendum revision back from his lawyer. I'll send it to you. |
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sam 04/03/20 2:03 am or even let them continue maintaining the site for another 3 month.. and pay them 1123/month sam 04/03/20 2:13 am forget that.. i'd rather let him walk.. sam 04/03/20 2:13 am what do u think bryant 04/03/20 2:13 am Hard to say. Decent site, but ugly changes to the addendum. bryant 04/03/20 2:19 am I'll ID the issues for him and see what he'll do. If he can't budge then we'll walk him I guess. So obviously theres; 3a - 'ownership of the website shall remain with the developer' 3c - 'accrue interest at the rate of 12%' and it needs a paragraph killing the outs he has. bryant 04/03/20 2:20 am Anything else? sam 04/03/20 2:21 am yeah add that paragraph killing his outs too. sam 04/03/20 2:22 am and make it state of california sam 04/03/20 2:22 am there's no way we're changing the jurisdiction to washington bryant 04/03/20 2:23 am I'm tempted to further mark up the one you sent me with the out killer and killing the jurisdictional issue and send that as-is. Present a problem? sam 04/03/20 2:23 am no not at all.. i just makred up what i saw quickly.. keep marking it up.. and do what you need to do sam 04/03/20 2:23 am but the out killer.. dont "highlight" that :) bryant 04/03/20 2:24 am Oh no, just going to quietly replace it with the 2b he has. bryant 04/03/20 2:24 am Woops, forgot to redline... bryant 04/03/20 2:27 am Is it just the compounded monthly part you want dead, or the whole interest issue? sam 04/03/20 2:28 am what do u think.. i was trying to do it so tthere's a balance and we dont cross everything out bryant 04/03/20 2:28 am Yeah, I agree. sam 04/03/20 2:28 am did astalavista sign sam 04/03/20 2:28 am cuz they still dont have our banners back up.. or maybe waiting for payments? bryant 04/03/20 2:29 am I think they're waiting for payment. sam 04/03/20 2:29 am ok ill ask bill bryant 04/03/20 2:48 am Hey, I just got an ICQ from one of the Penny-Arcade guys. I guess Jerry never signed and mailed their release. Is that something we can get done this week? I'm not even sure where the release is at this point. Jerry had it last I knew, but I bet I can track down a copy in my sent folder. sam 04/03/20 2:48 am ya send it off to me and i can probably do that bryant 04/03/20 2:51 am Just got it off. sam 04/03/20 3:05 am what was the last offer w/ pcmech.. do u know sam 04/03/20 3:08 am for rpgamer, the balance we have says 10k sam 04/03/20 3:08 am how did they get 21k sam 04/03/20 3:08 am oh i know how.. they didnt put our webguide up sam 04/03/20 3:08 am i dont think they'll cooperate putting new stuff up bryant 04/03/20 3:10 am No, I needed to talk to Brian today anyway, so I'll get the pcmech offer then. I've got to sit down with him and get caught up on everything he was working on and get all his docs. sam 04/03/20 3:24 am do u have pcmechs' contract in front of you bryant 04/03/20 3:24 am The original? sam 04/03/20 3:24 am i was wondering when it started.. and if it was a 3 year dea sam 04/03/20 3:24 am yeah bryant 04/03/20 3:24 am Yeah sam 04/03/20 3:24 am im writing back to pcmech.. to see if we can pull off a hebus-like math bryant 04/03/20 3:24 am Wait no - that's PCMedia. Don't have PCmech's sam 04/03/20 3:24 am pcemdia is pcmech sam 04/03/20 3:24 am same ting bryant 04/03/20 3:25 am ok, lemme pull it up. bryant 04/03/20 3:26 am Standard agreement. 3 year term starting 6/9/2000. No outs. bryant 04/03/20 3:28 am RPGamer just caught the 2b change. sam 04/03/20 3:30 am well tell him he made changes..and we made change sam 04/03/20 3:36 am cc:d you on the pcmech email.. tell me what u think sam 04/03/20 5:07 am hey do you know much about john graham's skills..just going through the employee list sam 04/03/20 3:02 pm fyi..i think marc F. is waiting for the newly revised addendum or something bryant 05/03/20 7:45 am Seems Jarret isn't so friendly after all. sam 05/03/20 7:52 am jarret..yeh he's a snake ..always pullsthe switcharoo on u bryant 05/03/20 7:52 am Yann Stettler is a real problem child too. bryant 05/03/20 7:53 am There are quite a few people trying to organize others. sam 05/03/20 7:53 am stettler's contract expired i think sam 05/03/20 7:53 am who's trying to organize? bryant 05/03/20 7:53 am Yann at least is conservative. He just wants to get people together to come to us and demand more communication. Jarret is trying to rabblerouse for the sake fo doing damage. bryant 05/03/20 7:53 am I'll gather some names. bryant 05/03/20 7:53 am Jarret for sure. I sent you his post. sam 05/03/20 7:54 am we shouldkill his account access immediately. bryant 05/03/20 7:55 am These people have such a deranged concept of how the law works it scares me. What's worse is they declare these concepts as fact and other people eat it up. It's genuinely frightening. Never seen so much stupidity. It's really like watching a herd of angry sheep. None of them know exactly why they're so worked up and none of them will stand out alone - but they're mad anyway. bryant 05/03/20 7:57 am Scott Bedard is calling for an organized effort but doesn't want to be leader, Jarret is openly saying he's ready to lead a "union" against us, "Dietrich" is suggesting they all pull banners at the same time and put disparaging comments up about us to force us into bankruptcy and embarass us. bryant 05/03/20 7:59 am Actually, "Dietrich" says he doesn't support that - but he's still suggesting it. bryant 05/03/20 8:01 am "J.B." from Emuplayer is supporting Yann on more constructive approaches. He feels (as do some others) that eF succeeding is them succeeding. Healthy attitude. sam 05/03/20 8:05 am we should stop killing their account access for violating the nondisclosure what do u think sam 05/03/20 8:06 am and tell them individually we have a record of everyone who's violating it bryant 05/03/20 8:06 am At some point we do need to start identifying problem children and separating them from the flock. Don't mean kicking them out per se, but make ourselves clear nonetheless. sam 05/03/20 8:06 am we should probably do that sooner rather than latter bryant 05/03/20 8:06 am The more I read from Yann, the more conservative I find him. I don't think he's one of the problem people at all. sam 05/03/20 8:07 am do we even have a problem with him? his contract expired.. just work out where he works for 4-5 months and we pay his backpay off? bryant 05/03/20 8:07 am I doubt it. He's just talking about wanting better communication. He doesn't seem bitter at all. sam 05/03/20 8:08 am marc said 5-6 are ready to sign..he just needs the addendum bryant 05/03/20 8:08 am Yeah, sent them once but the emails bounced. Servers been flakey recently. I'll send them again tonight. bryant 05/03/20 8:09 am I get a lot of ppl telling me stuff to me bounces periodically as well. Not sure what's up. sam 05/03/20 8:09 am should i tell scott we're going to terminate his access or should you bryant 05/03/20 8:09 am Bedard? sam 05/03/20 8:09 am or what do u suggest sam 05/03/20 8:09 am yeah sam 05/03/20 8:10 am and the addendums does have it so that they say they are signing this voluntarily, etc. so they cant get us for duress because of that bryant 05/03/20 8:10 am Lemme talk to him some more and see what he has to say. The thing about these folks is they're friendly in direct convos, but them turn around and cause problems. A little annoying. sam 05/03/20 8:12 am scott/gr took our banners off already basically, we have to tell him.. yes we're late in payments to buy the assets..which means we're in default and we have to work out a settlement. yet, you are violating the nondisclosure clause, which we take seriously and at this point, we have no choice but to terminate your access and possibly bringing the site down until the issue is resolved sam 05/03/20 8:20 am anyone else close to signing the contracts soon? sam 05/03/20 8:26 am we're very close to terminating your service agreement due to not servicing the site appropriate, ignoring the non-competes, and causing irreparable harm by ignoring the non-disclosure.. i'm about to send that to scott sam 05/03/20 9:56 am i think i have an idea for the whining webmasters.. sam 05/03/20 10:01 am i think i reached a deal with indianmasala sam 05/03/20 10:15 am marc is msging me he didnt get the addendum.. should i send it to him since your email is aving problems? do you have a latest addendum.. or should i send him what i have sam 05/03/20 10:15 am Marc: he might be sending it to marc@efront.com which is not my addy sam 05/03/20 10:15 am marcd@efront.com is the right addresss sam 05/03/20 10:48 am any luck on Johan? sam 05/03/20 11:16 am maybe you can give me an update on which webmaster you're having trouble with on terms.. and i can step in and help.. i got indianmasala.com almost worked out sam 05/03/20 11:50 am i think it would be best if you let jarret walk sam 05/03/20 11:50 am we have too much celebrity traffic as it is sam 05/03/20 11:50 am his traffic has little value to us bryant 05/03/20 11:59 am Well, walk or no. He seems to have people gathering around him. Scott Bedard has told people you're on him about breach of contract/disclosure btw. bryant 05/03/20 12:01 pm You really need to read this latest post. Did you get the others I sent you? sam 05/03/20 12:01 pm yes i did bryant 05/03/20 12:02 pm I'll forward this one then. It's a real problem. Jarret's up on a soapbox and people are following him. Something is going to have to be done. sam 05/03/20 12:03 pm im sure he's whining about us breaching contract and pointing out that he is doing that too bryant 05/03/20 12:03 pm He's going to talk to dblclick to negotiate a large deal for as many webmasters as will follow. They'll all cut all our stuff off, and as many of them that have control over their domain names are going to put in redirects. sam 05/03/20 12:03 pm haha.. good luck :) sam 05/03/20 12:03 pm i wish it was that easy bryant 05/03/20 12:03 pm I think he's actually breaking the law right now. bryant 05/03/20 12:04 pm Not sure though. sam 05/03/20 12:04 pm well, what do you recommend for all this? bryant 05/03/20 12:04 pm Directly interfering with our capacity to conduct business. bryant 05/03/20 12:04 pm Do we have access to a lawyer? sam 05/03/20 12:04 pm yes we do sam 05/03/20 12:04 pm we can havre a conf. call w/ you tuesday @ 930am sam 05/03/20 12:04 pm hows that sam 05/03/20 12:04 pm or too late? bryant 05/03/20 12:04 pm I think that's a good idea. bryant 05/03/20 12:05 pm Hmm, he has an addendum. bryant 05/03/20 12:05 pm Hasn't faxed though. sam 05/03/20 12:05 pm who does bryant 05/03/20 12:05 pm Jarret bryant 05/03/20 12:05 pm Just looking at his status. sam 05/03/20 12:06 pm does he say he doesnt? sam 05/03/20 12:06 pm oh ok bryant 05/03/20 12:06 pm He under 18? sam 05/03/20 12:06 pm yes he was bryant 05/03/20 12:06 pm Know if he still is? sam 05/03/20 12:06 pm i think he might still be bryant 05/03/20 12:06 pm That would help us I think. bryant 05/03/20 12:06 pm Makes his parents liable for his actions. bryant 05/03/20 12:07 pm Good way to put the fear of death in him. If we can talk to the lawyer tomorrow that's even better. He has people who have been more than happy to work with me getting behind him. bryant 05/03/20 12:07 pm I wouldn't say anything to him for the time being. bryant 05/03/20 12:08 pm Going to be interesting to see how people I talk to respond to me tomorrow. sam 05/03/20 12:10 pm oh i see jarret's post.. yeah sam 05/03/20 12:10 pm im not worried bout the boycott.. probably good sam 05/03/20 12:10 pm reduces our exposure and payment liabilities sam 05/03/20 12:11 pm and puts more pressure on them since they wont be able to cut deals w/ anyone in this market sam 05/03/20 12:11 pm bryant: Good way to put the fear of death in him. If we can talk to the lawyer tomorrow that's even better. He has people who have been more than happy to work with me getting behind him. [how do u mean he has poeople who have been more than happy to work..] sam 05/03/20 12:14 pm ohhh ok i see sam 05/03/20 12:15 pm maybe i can get tim eckel to post up there bryant 05/03/20 12:30 pm Just meant that people I'm actively working deals with are chiming in saying they're behind him on this. I'm just looking forward to seeing how they respond to me tomorrow. I don't intend to let them know I'm watching. bryant 05/03/20 12:30 pm Actually, there are already voices of reason. Skyler for example. sam 05/03/20 12:33 pm i have indianmasala almost wrapped up sam 05/03/20 12:33 pm i'd like to get freevote.com signed up asap sam 05/03/20 12:33 pm i hope nate is transferring that server bryant 05/03/20 12:35 pm He just wants to be free of the site, so I don't think he's going to be a real problem - unless of course people get him all worked up. sam 05/03/20 12:36 pm i just send nate a msg on the status of the move. anyway you can draft the release/waiver and we can get it out to fv.com and part of that would say immediately, we're taking over all bills, etc sam 05/03/20 12:36 pm i already got someone to run the site/ answer abuse, etc, @ 200/month sam 05/03/20 12:37 pm whatever happened w/ classical.net sam 05/03/20 12:38 pm looks like he took all the banners off sam 05/03/20 12:51 pm i like the doubleclick approach jarret is taking.. at least he's not talking legal action.. and he'll soon see that dblclick or anyone else wont accept new business doubleclick actually sent us a 90 day termination notice on the old contract a few weeks ago.. we'll be able to re-up though.. probalby on terms favorable to them sam 05/03/20 1:26 pm oh ya.. any word on the addendum? do u know if u revised anything after i sent it to u.. (so i can send marc the latest one) sam 05/03/20 9:37 pm u therE? bryant 05/03/20 11:38 pm What's up? sam 05/03/20 11:38 pm i was going to send an email to the yahoogroups sam 05/03/20 11:38 pm can you proofread it bryant 05/03/20 11:39 pm Sure. bryant 05/03/20 11:39 pm So we have someone who is English/French fluent? sam 05/03/20 11:41 pm alex.. why? bryant 05/03/20 11:45 pm Hebus is asking for a french translation of some of the paragraphs all of a sudden. sam 05/03/20 11:46 pm tell him we don't have the resources to do that? sam 05/03/20 11:46 pm alex is online if you like.. i can give you his icq bryant 05/03/20 11:46 pm ok cool sam 05/03/20 11:48 pm ok i sent you the email sam 06/03/20 12:02 am what do u think? any changes? will this help you in the negotiations? or hurt? bryant 06/03/20 12:02 am optimus-prime isn't responding to me, so I haven't been able to pull it down yet. bryant 06/03/20 12:06 am Yeah, I think that will help a lot. sam 06/03/20 12:06 am no changes needed? bryant 06/03/20 12:06 am I don't think so. sam 06/03/20 12:18 am yahoo gruops bounced the email back sam 06/03/20 12:19 am should i sent it to everyone through bcc or ask skyler to distribute it? bryant 06/03/20 12:19 am Maybe BCC then. sam 06/03/20 12:20 am i was thinking if we put it on yahoogroups.. people have to respond to that directly.. instead of thinking we're not there and attacking in open forum sam 06/03/20 12:20 am did you notice that noone replied to joann'as newsletter bryant 06/03/20 12:20 am Yep. bryant 06/03/20 12:21 am That's true. sam 06/03/20 12:21 am so what do u think.. bcc or send to skyler to post? sam 06/03/20 12:21 am ill just send to skyler :) bryant 06/03/20 12:21 am I think either way, but I think you're right about making it completely obvious we're on the forums is probably a good thing. bryant 06/03/20 12:21 am Yeah. bryant 06/03/20 12:52 am Looks like Hebus is not going to sign. bryant 06/03/20 12:53 am Looks like quite a few people that were going to FAX no longer intend to. sam 06/03/20 1:10 am because of the email we sent? bryant 06/03/20 1:10 am No idea why. bryant 06/03/20 1:10 am I can't imagine because of the email. bryant 06/03/20 1:11 am I suppose it's probably because of convos they're having amongst themselves. sam 06/03/20 1:11 am well what option do they have sam 06/03/20 1:12 am i think everyone was invited to the webmaster egroup from the newsletter emails or something.. not sure bryant 06/03/20 1:12 am Not sure. bryant 06/03/20 1:14 am Richard Benson of Freeskills is saying in the forum that he wants to give up the $, return options, and take freeskills.com back. sam 06/03/20 1:14 am NO WAY sam 06/03/20 1:14 am thats not a settlement sam 06/03/20 1:15 am his contract gives us the right to sell freeskills and we'll do that sam 06/03/20 1:15 am oops didnt mean caps:) bryant 06/03/20 1:15 am He's only putting that in the forum to cause problems. sam 06/03/20 1:15 am plus we dont negotiate in a forum bryant 06/03/20 1:15 am He already told everyone you said we could sell it. sam 06/03/20 1:15 am sure.. sam 06/03/20 1:16 am i wouldnt worry about him right now sam 06/03/20 1:16 am lets just sign up one at a time sam 06/03/20 1:16 am so hebus is dead? do you have his icq bryant 06/03/20 1:16 am Yep, that's how we're working. bryant 06/03/20 1:16 am 6299019 sam 06/03/20 1:17 am btw, working out a settlement doesnt mean giving the site back.. we should ask for the payments we made to them or soemthing as well bryant 06/03/20 1:17 am Yep, I'm not telling anyone out is an option. I'm also not saying that it's not. bryant 06/03/20 1:18 am I've had ppl ask for the sake of posting in the eGroup - just not answering. bryant 06/03/20 1:18 am There's no good answer to that. sam 06/03/20 1:26 am who is this pierre guy bryant 06/03/20 1:26 am Not sure. sam 06/03/20 1:27 am hebus has no issues.. we need to tweak his agreement a little sam 06/03/20 1:28 am btw, can you check hebus's agreement.. does it have an out clause of any kind sam 06/03/20 1:30 am also we dont have a payment problem with richard sam 06/03/20 1:30 am from freeskills sam 06/03/20 1:30 am we're on schedule sam 06/03/20 1:35 am btw, do you know who posted the email to yahooegroups? sam 06/03/20 1:58 am my email was bad i think too many choices for people now :( sam 06/03/20 2:10 am for jarret, we need to have someone complain about his copyright pictures.. and we can then issue him a 24 hour notice to take the pictures down or we have to shut the site off sam 06/03/20 11:01 am is the mood calming down sam 06/03/20 11:43 am i bcc'd you about babynames sam 06/03/20 1:04 pm im trying a new strategy sam 06/03/20 1:21 pm I killed accss to cinemadesktopthemes.com .. we killed the popup he's been running since day one for galttech. also, i've given orders to kill animanga's access. his contract expired; we just have to work out the backpay. any others that is giving us problems, let me know.. i'd like to kill access right away and have someone take it over while putting pressure on them to work with us. |
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Sweet, cut and pasted that's a 99 page Word file. |
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Hmm, that's a whole load of stuff... Enjoy it people! Joker. |
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Thanks, flamey. |
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#41 LOL Joker. |
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Wow. Thanks for the posting. Is what the original link (now broken) was pointing to? |
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#43 Yup all of it is in here now. Joker. |
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99 page? Did you paste as html? Use paste special and paste as unformatted text.. Makes a nice little 13 page file. |
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If you're following the thread on the SA forums (how long until that gets yanked, I wonder?), you'll see that the guy who was originally sent the logs claims to have a whole load more log files from them, totalling some 3+ Mb. No doubt they'll be up on a server near you soon. It would be kind of interesting reading the ICQ messages between those two this morning :) I wonder how they originally got out - hacking or an inside job? Perhaps one of their employees got fed up being offered worthless stock options. -- Bob |
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What utter scumbags. |
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Yeah, pasted 'em as HTML. Maybe not as compact, but at least they look pretty. |
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Right now the efront guys are frantically searching the net for a German-language cease&desist letter to send to Morn to get him to remove Joker's posts . . |
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I'm a little lost in all this as I don't pay much attention to the "scene", but it looks pretty dispicable. Next question. I hate assholes, how can i hurt these people with my $? V |
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