Blue's WordPress Blog

Or should that read “Moron Yuku Pricing”? I wonder…

Since my recent posting about the pricing for an ad-free Yuku message board, there have been some updates to the pricing pages because their customers and indeed their own staff don’t really understand the pricing model for Yuku or how it will be calculated(and understandably so).

The latest version of the Yuku pricing is set out here: http://www.yuku.com/home/goldpricing/

“Large Yuku communities that generate over 50,000 page views a month can participate in the Gold Ad-Free Community offering using easy credit card or PayPal payments. Advertising can be removed from community pages that serve Yuku ads at a rate of $0.20 per 1,000 pages served. Yuku serves ads on only half of all the pages in a community, and the Gold Ad-Free Community contributions are applied only to those pages. Pages that do not carry Yuku ads do not count against the contributions. The minimum contribution is US $1.00.”

So for your dollar, you’d get something between 5,000 and 10,000 page views per month, depending upon how exactly ezboard/Yuku are going to deliver those
ads to which visitors at which frequency. And if I understand the pricing correctly – though even Yuku staff don’t understand it – that would be over and above your $6 a month.

So how much would a board cost? Well we abandoned our ezboard after they lost a year’s messages but still have it on ezboard because they refused to refund our community chest. We now have a self-hosted vBulletin board. It’s not a huge board by any means, but the stats. are useful: in December 2007, we saw successful requests for pages at 541,147.

So on Yuku’s pricing formula – if I understand it correctly – the equivalent Yuku board would cost us:

Basic monthly cost: $6
Ads. served: (541,147-50,000)/2/1,000x$0.20=$49.12

Total monthly cost= $55.12

Total annual cost = $661.44

How much do we pay? $120…

Now like I said, our message board is not a heavy traffic board – it caters for a one make motorcycle model that’s been discontinued and which wasn’t a massive seller when it was being built. And yet the equivalent board on Yuku would cost us five times as much! And still no sign of the promised $3-$5,000 in revenue sharing for board owners – I wonder where that’s gone?

Leaving Yuku really is the only sensible option.

A fairly shocking discovery for anyone stupid enough to still be using ezboard would be the news that should their Gold Community go belly-up, their request for the backup – remember them? – to be used to restore it to its former glory might take longer than they might envisage and not go as smoothly as expected either.

Take a look at this message thread at the ezboard Help [sic] boards before ezboard, Inc. deletes it. On Monday, 9 July, one of the board admins. reports that a banned user has managed to hack their board and delete its contents. An ezboard Customer Services employee suggests opening a support ticket to request a restoral.

On Thursday, 12 July, another customer reports that they have done that but had heard nothing since. Another admin. also says:

 ”I’m worried about the restoral as well. It says that we’d be answered within one business day and we haven’t heard from them. If nothing happens before Sunday are we out of luck because they back it up every Sunday? We just need some action fast before everything is lost and we don’t know who to contact to see something done about it.”

Later the same day, another admin. states:

“We have sent in a couple of restoral requests this week and have received no response. I would normally be patient and wait but to my understanding this is a time sensitive issue. Backups are deleted every 2 weeks. So if the backup done this last Sunday happened after the attack then we’ll need the backup from the Sunday before which will be deleted this upcoming Sunday. I have thoroughly read the Restoral FAQ and according to it there is no reason that we should not be approved for a restoral. We were the victims of a malicious attack and we have proof that the person who did this was not any of the administrators but someone else.

“I don’t know if this is the proper place for this but since the restoral requests aren’t receiving any kind of response then we’re at a lost. Even if you can tell me what kind of time frame it takes for ezboard to grant a restoral would help. Its just waiting with no word on what is going on is really hard especially with such a time sensitive issue. Please understand our stress here. We’ve lost 3 years of great memories and valuable writings and to just sit and wait with no idea of what is being done about it is hard to do.”

On Sunday, 15 July a moderator from the board writes:

 ”…It’s been almost a week, and we’re well aware that the longer something takes, the less likely it is that we’ll get any significant amount of data returned to us. This is FOUR YEARS worth of memories…”

Of course as it was a Sunday, we know already that ezboard staff aren’t working, so it take until Monday, 16th before staff issue a holding reply.

Good news! On Thursday, 19th the ezboard staff report that the board has been restored! Except it hasn’t:

“I think that ezboard waited to long to give us our restoral and they backed it up after our hack.” 

Oh dear! Never mind, just before locking the thread on Friday, 20th, the helpful ezboard staffer makes an implied reference to the forthcoming weekend (i.e. no-one working) when they say:

“Please let the techs know via the ticket that is open, exactly what is still missing. I’ll keep an eye on the ticket and remind them on Monday to take another look.
There’s not anything more that we can do from here, so I am going to close this topic.”

So I suppose it’s not that surprising that one of the admins. then starts another thread saying:

“Dear EzBoard Re: CHARMED’S DESIGNATION

“Your lack of professionalism, and compassion have cost us our board. We begged, we pleaded, we did everything but bribe you and now we lost over 1 million posts, and almost 4 years of archived talent and information that meant the world to over 500 people!

“We are actively looking at other boards, as ezboard has proved that they cannot be trusted nor can they be relied on.

“It’s amazing you people can sleep at night. But, what do you care? As long as we pay our yearly Gold Community price, that’s all we’re good for.

“Thanks for nothing.

“Oh, and thanks for a LATE restoral which caused us to lose even MORE posts.”

At last! Someone’s waking up to smell the coffee!

The next day (21st July – a Saturday!), the same ezboard staffer writes:

“You shouldn’t assume, yet, that you’ve lost your board. The person who needs to look into doing a further restoral has been ill. We regret that there has been a delay as a result, but when the only person who is capable of troubleshooting this problem is unavailable, there isn’t much we can do but hope for your patience.”

[Emphasis added] 

Sheesh! So when ezboard, Inc. CEO Robert Labatt says back in September 2005 that they have 14,000,000 members and 500,000 communities, isn’t it worrying that they have only one staff member who can sort things out?

That staff member, having returned to work, then posted on 23 July, some two weeks after the initial request, to say that he had restored their community from the correct backup.

Not wishing to gloat – oh alright then, wishing to gloat – with my ’self-hosted’ message boards, I can choose from six daily backups to restore from should something happen to my message boards. And it’s oh so easy for me to do that. Likewise if I didn’t know how to set up and install phpBB, for instance, my hosts offer a one-click install and upgrade for it. How pleasant!

Look, I’ll be good to anyone who feels stuck on ezboard or Yuku: why not go to DreamHost instead and sign up for what is basically an unlimited hosting plan (in real terms) with none of that 20 page maximum nonsense at ezboard.

And I’ll tell you what: if you use the promotional code EZSAVE50 you can even get $50 off your first year’s hosting. Go on! Give it a try!

Dear Rob,

It’s been over a month since you (or someone from your local area purporting to be you) commented here in my WordPress Blog suggesting you’d like to give me a better understanding of what you’re trying to achieve with Yuku. I invited you to comment on any of the posts I make here and initiate a conversation.

Whether or not that comment was from you, I know that you and/or your colleagues at ezboard/Yuku regularly read this, the other version I publish on my Movable Type Blog, my LiveJournal and indeed the posts I make over on an Invision Power Board. Let’s not forget that in your situations vacant adverts, you claim to have a flat management style and everyone works with you. Given the small numbers of staff employed at your San Francisco offices, I can readily believe that to be the case.

So it seems strange that you’ve been so backward in coming forward, as they say, to address the points I raise in my blogs.

I’ve written about the continuing delays in getting Yuku ready for general public use, the strange set of access log entries that appear to be an authentication hack, adverts on Gold Trial boards, issues with your “near flawless” user migrations, the apparent high costs of running a Gold Community, the apparent lack of customer support on Yuku and some strange figures for the costs of Gold status on certain, key ezboards as well as a number of other issues.

None of these have produced any replies or explanations to help me understand the ezboard position.

So I thought I’d make a list of some of the points I’d really like to understand.

1. Advertising Revenue Sharing: when, how and how much?

One of the key elements – probably the key element – of your presentation at DEMOfall in September 2005 was your plan to share advertising revenues with the Yuku community leaders with a sum of $3,000 to $5,000 being mentioned. Now, that must surely be Yuku’s USP and should bring the users in en masse, I’d have thought. So why do you appear to have quietly dropped this most significant feature? If it’s still a live goal, please tell us when it will be implemented and how the revenues will be shared.

2. Free Gold ezboards: where did the money go and how many major boards are being effectively funded by the other boards?

I mentioned some significant sums being withdrawn by anonymous individuals or entities from the main ezboards, as well as their apparently having enjoyed free Gold status since July 2005, shortly after the May/June 2005 data loss and shortly after you yourself wrote:

“The attack does not change our long-standing policy of not providing refunds. This was agreed to by every user each time a service order was placed or payment made.”

So where did the sums I mention in this post go and how many major ezboard communities are effectively operating for free?

3. How much will a Gold Yuku cost?

Yes, I know you’ve said that it should be much like ezboard’s charges, but as Yuku is based on an entirely different architecture, how exactly will it be priced? And bearing in mind what your colleague, Sean Foote, wrote, why shouldn’t Yuku’s charges be significantly less than the charges fixed a long while ago for ezboard?

4. How much will YukuSupporter be?

This question must surely be easier to answer as ezSupporter itself was priced on a nominal basis anyway.

5. When will people be able to backup their boards?

Bearing in mind you wrote this on 23 June 2005:

“the new community engine has solved many of the issues that you have experienced on ezboard in the last year. It is faster, more reliable, offers automated back-up to your home computer, fast restorals”

Why isn’t this feature available on either ezboard or Yuku? One of your staff members has said it will be available “eventually”. And yet you promised it last year, both in your post-data lost messages and of course at DEMOfall.

6. Does ezboard backup its boards properly?

This was, of course, our major complaint last year when it became clear that no matter what you wrote, ezboard had not backed up our message boards safely or securely. If they had been, no hacker would have been able to access them remotely as you claimed.

After all, ezboard is now charged as a premium service when compared with other offerings in the marketplace. Shouldn’t we expect the features we get elsewhere?

7. When will Yuku, with all the promised features, actually launch?

I know you’re smarting from the way I’ve been ridiculing your inability to meet any deadlines or timescales, but you must have a plan for when you need or will be able to launch Yuku properly with all the features your original blog entry promised.

8. Will it be as slow still?

You’ve been promising improvements to the time taken to load pages on Yuku for months and months now and yet it’s still like treacle in winter. Is that as good as it gets? If not, when will you be revealing the new, quick Yuku?

9. How soon after Yuku is launched will ezboard be closed down?

Bearing in mind your advertisement for someone to support ezboard on a contract basis was only until the end of 2006, how soon after you launch Yuku properly will you close down ezboard? As you should be well aware from posts on ezboard and Yuku, there are many boards that don’t want to leave the old platform behind. What are your plans for dealing with those boards?

10. Does ezboard intend to employ sufficient help staff for its customer base and does it intend to have them actually help their customers?

We’ve read the new policy for the Yuku Help Forums and yet people haven’t seen the promised support there. Let’s not forget this is only a small subset of your customer base and there are – please correct me if I’m wrong – no ezboards migrated over yet.

Your staff have also said that the full complement of Yuku support staff hasn’t been put in place yet, so when will there be sufficient customer support people in position?

11. Why is ezboard so expensive?

This in part is tied up with earlier questions, but the main elements are covered in my post here. Why is ezboard so, so expensive compared with other hosting arrangements?

12. Does Yuku see itself as a successor or even a challenger to MySpace?

I’ve mentioned the emphasis that’s being put on profile pages on Yuku as it seems to be postioning itself as a MySpace clone. Why is that emphasis there on profiles rather than community? It’s clear from the order you’ve carried out development that profiles are your main priority. Is it the $580M paid by Murdoch?

13. Why did someone from an IP address associated with ezboard apparently attempt an authentication hack using usernames and passwords only used on ezboard?

My post on this subject is here. It’s no secret that ezboard has access to both usernames and (unlike a vBulletin installation, for instance) passwords for all its users and the ezMods have regularly signed in with your customers’ details to troubleshoot issues. The details are very worrying and frankly disappointing. What is ezboard, Inc.’s position on this? 

14. Given that ezboard’s job ads. state that everyone works with the you, did you sanction the authentication hack as you must have known about it, surely?

The question here is in the heading above. If you were unaware of what took place, what have you done since in terms of your staff and the authentication hack? Or was this in no way connected with ezboard, Inc.?

15. What’s the state of play with the FBI investigations into the claimed hack?

You wrote at the time of the May/June 2005 data loss that the FBI were involved. Given the clear and precise information the hacker must have had, surely any perpetrator must have been apprehended by now? If not, why not?

—oooOOOooo—

You’ve read all these points before – especially the details of the apparent authentication hack that seems to be bookmarked by you and your staff – so you should be able to comment here fairly quickly, I’d have thought.

I’ll look forward to your point-by-point reply.

Yours sincerely,

Richard

Or, ”Why is ezboard So Expensive?“

For those of you wondering about the cost of running a Gold ezboard Community, you might like to have a look at some information from various sources.

ezboard reveals its headline pricing on this page. Now, ezboard’s 12 month rates are only available to existing boards renewing so we’ll take their basic rate for starters.

This, they say, is $6 per month for 10,000 “Visits/Month”. Except it’s not. If you read on, you’ll see it’s actually page views which is much, much different to visits. For instance, to post a message on an ezboard, you’ll probably have bookmarked the board home page, so you’ll go there (1), then click into the forum you want to post in (2) then compose a new thread (3), then confirm and publish it (4). Four page views as an absolute minimum. Of course, as a Gold Community owner, you don’t get access to the actual logs or ‘proper’ web stats., just the information ezboard chooses to give you.

Let’s have a look at an ezboard Gold Community. Let’s take for instance the NikeTalk board mentioned in Robert Labatt’s Yuku blorum.

Opera tells me that the NikeTalk home page is 15,672 bytes with inline elements of 24,724 bytes which I assume means a total size of 40,396 bytes (39kb). Now NikeTalk is a very popular message board, so I’m just using their home page size as an example.

So if another ezboard with a similar design gets those 10,000 page views a month, the amount of bandwidth consumed will be 10,000 x 39kb = 381MB of bandwidth for which the board owners would pay their $6.

For $10 a month with ezboard, that community gets 25,000 page views, or 952MB of bandwidth (or put another way, less than 1GB of monthly bandwidth). All non-standard images for headers, buttons, etc. and any photos the community wanted to use would have to be stored elsewhere, of course, because ezboard provides a massive zero bytes of storage space. Oh and if the community grew well, they’d notice that after 20 pages of threads, old ones would simply be pruned by ezboard.

Now compare that with, say, DreamHost’s $9.95 a month plan. Quite apart from the 20GB of storage (which increases weekly by 160MB), you also get 1TB of bandwidth per month (again growing by 8GB a week). Add an open-source or free message board system and you’re away.

Sorry, let me just read that again … yes, with DreamHost you get 1,024 times as much monthly bandwidth as you get at ezboard.

Yes but wait. ezboard is having to recoup all those startup costs it had when Labatt and his chums at Labrador Ventures took over (we’ll obviously have to ignore DreamHost’s startup costs). What startup costs? Well, according to an article from Sean Foote at Labrador Ventures (he’s a Partner there and is also on the board of directors of ezboard, Inc., so he should know), he quotes Robert Labatt, ezboard, Inc,’s CEO as saying:

“When we went to rebuild EZboard, we went with open standards and open source code for some applications and our startup costs were maybe $1,000, not including man hours … drastically less than the hundreds of thousands of dollars the company had originally spent.”

[emphasis added]

Yes, but what about all those servers – surely they must cost a bundle? Well Sean Foote says:

“Though hardware remains the largest expense for companies such as EZboard, servers now cost just $1000, rather than the $10,000 per piece of equipment they commanded in 1999.”

Ah but what about all that bandwidth cost? Again, Sean Foote notes that:

“…bandwidth costs are down significantly…”

which probably explains why companies like DreamHost are offering 1,024 times the bandwidth for the same price as ezboard charges.

Now think again about Labatt’s “rubber ducky” post in his CEO WordPress Blog. Then consider his claim that in September last year they had 500,000 communities growing at 6,000 communities per month. Now re-acquaint yourself with ezboard’s charges per Gold community (not forgetting that non-Gold boards and trial Gold boards all carry paid-for advertising).

I’ll leave you with a quote from Robert Labatt:

“Today favors not the first-time entrepreneur or the big VC fund, but the serial entrepreneur or early stage investor who, with a couple hundred thousand dollars or a couple million from well-off friends, can finance a company himself,” says Labatt. “It’s do-it-yourself entrepreneurship.”