"Courage and perseverance are important if one is to run anything resembling a news organization...the folks at theOtaku.com have demonstrated themselves to have ample quantities of both."
~ TCJ (The Comics Journal)
"A couple years of experience in the Otaku circle have taught me at least one good lesson--to trust Adam."
~ myO member
"Adam is actually a decently accomplished troll."
~ Allamorph
"The scale of Adam's cunning genius is truly frightening."
~ TimeChaser
My buddy Ryan just released a promising Bomberman-inspired game for the Xbox 360 and is giving away a gazillion Microsoft points in a fun comment contest on his blog. Take part, you can also read my entry!
Check out the main page.
Also, comment if you have any ideas that OTHER people could pursue.
Am psyched to get Kei back in the fold here at theO.
Interesting.
theO's hosting bills have been killing us.
The problem is there's not much to trim. We push a lot of traffic and images and could be paying a lot more.
So I took a shot and contacted our web host with a simple, ridiculous request. It went (roughly) like this:
"Hey guys, we've been a happy customer for years but was wondering if we could get a discount on our server? Our goal is to save $60 a month with you. If not, and we'd hate to do this, we might have to shop around for a better deal. Just wanted to give you a heads-up."
They responded within 10 minutes giving us the full discount we requested. Woohoo!
Lessons:
- It never hurts to ask, no matter how ridiculous your request is
- When you ask for something ALWAYS give a specific number. Don't leave it to them. I'm sure if I was vague, I would have gotten a discount but maybe $30/month instead of $60/month
- People are lazy, they'll often just give you what you want rather than haggle
- Keeping an existing customer is MUCH cheaper than attracting and winning over a new one
We still need to cut costs but this was a good first step.
In our never-ending battle against phantom PMs, we fixed another bug. Respond if you still encounter them.
