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Future of MTV - Discussion

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freak300
Traffic Value: $56,564.16117 Germany
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28/09/2022 16:26
I am setting up this thread for users to discuss ideas/suggestions for the future of the company and to collect information on the current (financial) state of the company and where optimisations could be made.
freak300
Traffic Value: $56,564.16117 Germany
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28/09/2022 16:50
The first topic I would like to discuss is users' engagement in the management of the company and cost cutting. As some of us have pointed out before it would make sense that users (especially larger holders) will have some sort of voting power. I think to do this we can use pre-existing mechanisms within the platform so there is no real need to program this mechanism into the platform. What time period would you guys be comfortable with and is the management willing to consider users opinions/give us voting power?

I don't know about other users, but I personally don't understand where the business really stands. I am missing some sort of a clear overview of which websites cause which costs and which aspects of the website cause unnecessary costs (such as unnecessary backlogs of data, etc.). Does the management have specific information on how much it costs to run a site like for example PTC-Share? Does the income MTV earns through PTC-Share at least cover the running costs PTC-Share causes or are costs just bundled together in one monthly bill? The reason why I am asking this is because it seems to me that a lot of unprofitable parts of the business need to be exposed as such. I don't believe that the $5-$10 these sites generate in profit for MTV cover the server costs, etc. 

Does the management have more detailed information on this and is there a way for us to access this information ourselves somehow? 
MisterDD
Traffic Value: $7,429.94412 Croatia (LOCAL Name: Hrvatska)
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28/09/2022 21:09
@freak300

congratulations on great idea and topic.
When it goes to improvements, as I said there is enough one big giant that would solve all non-needed sister sites on the side, all that is in my hands and I am able to provide idea for free and discussion for further improvements if anyone interested. I will personall fund it.
I would invest into further improvement of MTV-PV if they decide to clear debt or involve new things, after all we all want the same, to boost this giant on top where its his place, one more time.

Hope more people joins conversation.
Hoppa61
Traffic Value: $73,032.40453 Netherlands
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28/09/2022 22:21
I like the idea, but first I want to know what the current management thinks about this.
Would be a waste of time if they don't agree.
freak300
Traffic Value: $56,564.16117 Germany
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29/09/2022 06:11
Yes we need more communication with the management. I remember them saying that they have to find employment elsewhere and that they won't be online as much, so it might be difficult to get an actual hold of them...
freak300
Traffic Value: $56,564.16117 Germany
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29/09/2022 12:30
Another topic I would like to bring up is the question of what further low market entry projects could be started to earn more income. Some of the ideas I have had I will just list below. 

First one of the things I have thought of is to provide some affiliate links from companies such as links to Amazon's partner program, or all other sort of programs, even things such as links to Forex brokers or others that some users may would like to open accounts with anyways. These sites many times pay pretty big commissions. These links could be clicked on by users before ordering products from Amazon or other sites and generate MTV extra profits. 

As far as finding other ways to increase income goes I would like to point out why I believe video games might not be the ideal way to generate significant profits. I know the management likes to rely on video games and is actively developing two. I technically have no problem with this, however video game development is a highly competitive space that requires high capital which is bound to the product for months/years, high marketing expenses and possibly years to refinance the investment. 

I have suggested this idea before: Why not develop physical products and sell them through e-commerce platforms like Amazon or eBay. A lot of these products can be sourced with relatively low capital expenditure and can be sourced and sold relatively quickly. A project like this could be crowdfunded as well and include the community in the development process. Whenever a batch of the product is sold the next batch could be crowdfunded again and the users paid a lower more realistic return on the investment while MTV has a solid net gain.
dguy
Traffic Value: $15,993.01608 Canada
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29/09/2022 18:49
It looks like your mutiny is being ignored grin
orlan12fish - Administrator
Traffic Value: $5,500.61933 Guatemala
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30/09/2022 01:20
I'll start by sharing the spreadsheets and explain how to read them.

We have two spreadsheets. One is for MTV&PV, where we track the bulk ad sales, income from the results cards and such.

PV&MTV Accounting Sheet

I colored the tabs that are mainly used. I enter the results and bulk ads sales manually into the green tabs.

The one that is the most relevant to you would be the blue colored tab "Dev Funds". There are three tables in it:
1) Tracks the daily results showing the total revenue made from the sites
2) Shows the average revenue (7-14-30 days) and shows the daily average per month
3) Shows the total revenue made per month

The next spreadsheet also comes with the PV/MTV info, so this next one is even more relevant, because it shows the revenue from PV/MTV/PTC (worth to mention that PPMG revenues are added manually by Marc on MTV's results card so they are considered in the sheets)

PTCshare Accounting Sheet

Here you can follow the color format again. The one you might be more interested about is the blue tab. Green tabs is where I enter the daily results manually, kind of a calculator to get the final results for the Dev Funds tab

In Dev Funds, you have 3 tables too:

1) Daily revenue log
2) Monthly average
3) Monthly revenue log
freak300
Traffic Value: $56,564.16117 Germany
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30/09/2022 06:38
@dguy I don't really care tbh. I don't have anything invested here anyways right now and it doesn't look like I will in the future.
dguy
Traffic Value: $15,993.01608 Canada
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30/09/2022 06:59
Another thing this thread could be used for is people could offer a proposal here for a 'vote'. Depending on the like/dislike number or maybe if the likes are above a certain number, then the management could open it up for further scrutiny and discussion
dguy
Traffic Value: $15,993.01608 Canada
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30/09/2022 07:12
@freak,

I think this is the situation we have created for ourselves. Things are shaky and that makes big money nervous. Money likes to go for safety first (return of investment) and return on investment second. If people think they won't get their money back, it causes them to withhold spending which makes the site exactly what it is now, starved for cash. People lack confidence in the site. Until we can figure out how to restore that confidence, we will need to rely on what cash flow we have now.

The big money is in confidence though
Columbine
Traffic Value: $53,683.67577 Germany
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01/10/2022 05:16
@dguy:

You are absolutely right. But it doesn't make any sense when WE try to figure out. This is the job of Marc DeKoning or Slosumo. They should find a solution - as soon as possible.
kejdi
Traffic Value: $11,007.43755 Albania
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01/10/2022 06:09
It looks like they are obsessed with gambling and I can agree with it as it could be a really good resource,online casinos are on the boom but it lacks the perfect marketing campaign.Such campaign can only be made at Bitcointalk.org through a signature campaign,a lot of gamblers there willing to spend a lot in crypto casinos like Playbitcoingames.
slosumo - Administrator
Traffic Value: $28,438.4426 Slovenia
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03/10/2022 07:33
I'll be (Sort of) brief for now, as just got back to work after being sick for a few days, and have a lot of work to catch up to.

I applaud the care and intention to do good/improve things, but in reality "more opinions or voting on things" is not going to change anything. There's definitely always room for more improvements/thoughts and "more heads think better together", but if there's no room for actually executing on those things, it's not going to really help change things, and is plainly said, a waste of i.e. my already limited time to try and gather all of these specific stats and write detailed reports here.

I've tried to help share more thoughts/insight into where the busienss currently is in the past month in a bunch of topics, and some extended thoughts in the discord – and I will not spend my time repeating myself here again, as those should help explain many points/questions, explain the various limitations etc.

If we knew we were able to utilize any new investments in an efficient way, and be sure they have a high chance of a return for investors, we'd simply open up the FTQ or open more funding projects. But with some things out of our hands or being very uncertain, we're not going to make decisions that “lure money from investors in”, and have a high likelhood of us not being able to guarantee a return on investment for many reasons.

In my view, people who invested time/money/effort in PV/PTC have just same right to have a chance to keep getting some money/earnings back as anyone who did so in FTQ. So as long as PV&PTC are at least covering their own costs (they are, especially if you take into account the added promotional/”overflow” value of them getting some new clients into other websites, offerwalls etc.), we're not going to just shut them off.

In terms of server costs, it's indeed practically impossible to exactly tell the costs apart as thigns are bundled together, and how things work is a complicated setup.

But roughly speaking our server costs were ~$4500/m (yes were, some improvements are finally coming), and based on those the following would be a very rough breakdown of “per-site”:
- PV+ MTV ~$3000
- PTC – a few hundred $
- PPMG/PBG Probably $100 or less
- the rest is more global cost (so could attribute it to mtv/pv) of keepign this setup alive, having some redundancy, safety net such as rollbacks etc. are not not really negotiable to “turn off”

Without PV&MTV the whole setup could probably easily be made to be around $1000, but it's not an option for us to turn those off, and the cost to “fully” rework them to a more modern architecture would be just abusrd in terms of labor cost, that it wouldn't make a return on that investment for 2-3 years at least.

We've been mentioning potential reduction in costs since April, and it's been dragging on, and we cant' really speed it up. Not having fulltime SA/Main programmer, we are “at mercy” of their availability/time, and before you say “find someone else to do it then”, lol -> to find someone of the same expertise to be able to understand the system and do the same improvements, onboard them etc., could easily cost in the $20k+ range. So we simply have to wait on that.

Luckily just last week we've gotten first set of improvements that already reduced costs by ~$300, and might reduce by up to another $700 by end of October, once the new reduced instance reservatiosn take place.
Additional reductions in cost (projected potentially an additional $1-1.5k), still require some work to be done, using my favorite, but most-appropriate word - hopefully by end of November the latest.
------------
All in all to see any sizeable improvements, the business really needs people willing to do the work for no/minimal or result-based pay. Every single improvement you guys think of, needs work to be executed – either programming, design, management, marketing, etc.

For example, affiliate links are a great idea, but they won't just work and convert like that by simply posting them. Our userbase in general is very poor and not great purchasers. I've tried to sneak in an affiliate deal here and there every now and then when I'm able to, but they usually convert like crap – for example the current Surfshark one, is surprisingly not converting at all, and it's an otherwise really quality one.

Affiliate links, offers, ads etc. these are all a whole massive subset of work (especially for our niche and type of low-quality website/users) if you want to properly optimize it and actually make it work. Creating and testing tons of creatives, links, preparing articles, managing email lists, adding in programming/Design work to implement etc. etc. It's not just “post once, and we'll get a few K”.

What I would absolutely support and try to help get started when I can, is trying to get some of you willing to help out in some productive areas.

Just as an example, Orlando has taken an initiative to begin developing our PBG/PPMG blogs, which will not only serve as SEO bulding for those sites, but also represent opportunity for blog posting, advertising and affiliate deals, once there's enough quality content post, and it has someone actively improving/working on that.

Similarly, we'll pursue a similar low-cost solution for PV/PTC/MTV with opening up blogs when we can find some extra time from SA, as they could present a neat and easy opportunity for some income via the same – particularly selling space/guest posting for high DA backlinking – it's also one more reason why shutting of PV/PTC would be silly, as they can still have a lot of value for things like that. So that's one example of a low-cost product we'd like to start getting going, and has a lot of potential upside if developled & work put in for a year + -> but it needs someone passionate and willing to put in the work to bring it to that level.

Once we get the basics of that setup (which also is not really of negligible work/cost, as it requires settings up some sort of security, or internal emails for marketing purposes etc.), I think that'd be one of the areas where members from community willing to help, could.

Recently there's also been a member who expressed interest in helping with some programming work – which is great! BUT, with things like that, it's literally likely easily around $10k cost to setting things up, onboarding them etc. to be able to contribute, as we'd have to rework certain things to not expose security risk with new/unknown people, have to manage/confirm their work etc.

So a lot is possible, but again.... it all requires work. And work costs. And getting quality work without funds is hard. “Then Crowdfund that money” -> who will invest without guarantees of a return? Who will be able to setup all of that and manage it, without money for that?

It's all a giant circle that is not easily broken, not without someone sacrificing a lot of their time. I'm personally done with that, at least to the extent I have done for years until recently, but I'll do my best to try to get some of these things started in November. When I do, I'll check in here – don't expect me to be very active in this thread until then – got a lot of clients to sort out to get by, before heading for a proper vacation in ages end of October.
dguy
Traffic Value: $15,993.01608 Canada
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03/10/2022 12:42
I know it might be risky but what about working with schools/interns? You could offer real-life programming experience credits in exchange for low cost or no cost work with their teachers supervising their results.
slosumo - Administrator
Traffic Value: $28,438.4426 Slovenia
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03/10/2022 12:52
For any sort of new/Random programmers, read one of my last paragraphs, it's not just a plug in & play - setting up the environment etc. would easily take ~2months of person work hours from various people and cost ~$10k to even prepare.

interns/Schools nice idea, but on top of the above, that sounds like way more paperwork, accounting, applying, legal etc. work as well. Highly doubt spanish office could properly sort this out in the first place.
richiem
Traffic Value: $680.27326 Philippines
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04/10/2022 00:30
I would be interested writing for MTV blog when that is available.
bpc1234
Traffic Value: $62,710.15909 United States
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05/10/2022 21:03
I'd like to revisit the idea of incrementally eliminating the number of RPs over time. 

Even just $10 a week or whatever amount will add up over time.

No programming needed. 
Open an MTV account called "no longer circulating" or whatever, move $ into it once a week or month and buy them at current price. 

Those RPs can be permanently taken out and total number of RPs changed when there is programming time every so often.

I would donate the first $10 to get it started. Take it out of my balance.
freak300
Traffic Value: $56,564.16117 Germany
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06/10/2022 12:44
Thank you for the post Slosumo. When we really look at what you have said it's basically a confirmation of what I have said before. PPMG has made $580k since its launch and only costs $100/month to run (excluding staff, which I assume is minimal). It's the other websites that cause most of the costs as well as the offices and staff. The FTQ could be paid of with the income PPMG is producing as well as the debt in PV/PTC-Share. 

You said we can't rework MTV which is true, but I don't even know why it would be necessary to do so? When you look at most users here, they basically only use the forum and RP market anyways. A few might play the coin flip game but even this has been making less and less income over the years. 

Why not ask users to leave a preferred payment method for how they can get paid their FTQ profits and BAP refunds and close the sites down, let most of the staff go, safe those costs and pay users the excess income in profits? Require users that own RP's to own at least, say 500k RPs and pay them dividends once the debt is paid off? There is no need to run this website to do so. Instead a small blog/forum could be hosted here to keep users updated and one person could send the payments. No need for staff other than for PPMG and payments/blog posts. 

You said that the sites could be used to sell guest posting, etc. Who will buy them though? I am not trying to say that your idea isn't right in theory but I just don't think it is practical tbh. No one is buying ads even right now for the traffic, most buy them to earn a ROI. And as far as the affiliate links go: I would use an Amazon link if it was posted on here. I am shopping with Amazon all the time. They pay up to 15% commission. Imagine me or someone else buys a $1000 TV through the link. That would be up to $150 in commissions and the link stays valid for 30 days after it has been clicked on and this for all purchases. 

I really think the problem isn't that it can't work but I think we need to just decide to finally throw away the unprofitable ponzi elements of the business that cost too much. We can't take them with us in the future anyways if this is supposed to be a profitable and legal business. You said that people's votes don't matter but I actually think they do. Let them decide on the future. Do they want their investments back or stay stuck here forever? 
dguy
Traffic Value: $15,993.01608 Canada
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07/10/2022 01:55
There is value in ptcs and pv. I think you should sell those off. That will help with the debt
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