Topic: BitCoinTorrentz.com - Torrent Download Service - page 21. (Read 57198 times)

Ok, I have fixed the multiple status error. The site now reliably shows the status of simultaneously downloading torrents.

Members can also purchase bandwidth - just visit the members area, and take a look at the column on the right. Once you have topped up your account with a few GB of bandwidth, subsequent downloads will be deducted from this until you have no prepaid balance left. Once you run out, you will go back to having to pay on each use - until you top up your account again.

You are of course free to continue paying per use if you wish, but pre-paying is much faster than sending individual payments and having to wait for the bitcoin network to confirm the transactions each time. As long as you have enough bandwidth credit, the torrent will start immediately after you click download.

Another advantage of prepaying is that sometimes payments can take longer than 5 minutes, so the more individual transactions that you do, the more likely one of them is going to be delayed - which may result in you losing a few bit cents. Prepay means no waiting, no delays and no dropped payments.

Prepaying for the service also minimizes the cost of transaction fees compared with sending multiple transactions.

If anyone has any feedback on this, don't hesitate to post.

Just thought I'd post a quick update to let people know the status of the next update. I am about 80% done, and the two major changes are the correction of the multiple status pages error, and the implementation of a "download bandwidth" balance, that users can top up with a single payment. Users will still be able to use the existing pay-per-use facility.

Should be ready in the next 24 hours or thereabouts.

 
Actually the current model works pretty well and fits the way bitcoin works anyway - the extra bitcoin transaction fee is fairly trivial - perhaps you could just highlight the fact at the point of sale - though anyone using bitcoin now already expects these fees anyway. I doubt there are people using your service who don't expect the normal 0.005btc fee (or whatever it is).
It seems a lot of extra work for you just to save people 0.5p (I remember half pennies from the 80s - I could get a black jack in my 10p mix mag in those days for a ha'penny)
My personal problem with using bitcoin is that I run it within an Ubuntu virtual machine within windows, so sometime I have to wait a minute for it to open before I can pay - but if that's the most secure solution then I have no problem waiting.

I don't know if I would be happy storing funds for people to be honest, not in a wallet on the server anyway. What I was thinking of doing is creating a "virtual" account on the server that users could load funds to. Payment would sent the same way as currently, to an offline wallet. If you want to withdraw, it wouldn't be an automatic process as I would need to verify and send the payment from my local machine where the coins are being stored. It's not the best way, but I really don't want a bitcoin wallet stored on this server. If it gets hacked, seized, or fails in some way I have no recourse and would be liable for the loss.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I am reconsidering. I don't know if I am happy storing coins at all, on or offline. It just opens me up to unnecessary risk and makes the accounting a hassle. I like TTBit's suggestion about buying download credit bundles though. That way you can pay for some bandwidth with your couple of bitcoin and use it as you need it, topping up when necessary. And the good part is that I don't have to hold coins for users, bringing extra liability, as they are being paid in exchange for future use of the service so can be considered assets rather than an expense that may have to be paid back at some point. What do you think?

I'd like to be able to just send you a couple of bitcoins, and then wait for it to be used up and then top it up as and when- though you may end up with people using you as a wallet service, or just somewhere to store their bitcoins, which may impact on your security concerns - if you are storing lots of bitcoins in user accounts then perhaps you would become attractive for hackers to attack. As it is now there is nothing to attract any sort of attack.
But it's certainly an addition I'd be interested in if you could show you were secure.

Thanks for trying out the service. I am glad you find it useful. I am aware of the bug you mentioned about downloading multiple files (see a few posts above) and should have a fix sorted out by next week.

I'm also working on better payment methods to reduce transaction fees and I really like your idea about buying bundled bandwidth credit. I might consider this for the next update. Thanks for the suggestion!

nice service.

I would prefer to buy a block of GB, rather than send for each download.

also, a better way of downloading more than 1 file at a time. You cant have one tab download file 'A', while another tab downloads file 'B'. Each tab gives status of 'B'.

The server is now back online.

My apologies about this. The server is down because of unscheduled maintenance due to a fault at the hosting company's datacentre. They have not given any timeframe for how long this maintenance is going to take. Hopefully it shouldn't take more than a couple of hours, but it's after working hours there now so it could be tomorrow before it is sorted out.

Once again, please accept my apologies for this inconvenience.
I will update this thread as soon as the fault has been fixed and the site is back online.

Server down? I'm craving me some torrentz!

#2
chunk-ish^^

It might be worth a try to check out the return using a smaller deal (like 1 college or something). That way we we could judge how well the service is received and calculate wether it might be applicable to raise more money (count on me for a chunk ) by issuing more shares and going larger-scale.

Maybe they'd be interested in giving us a good deal in order to eventually sell a bigger one. Can't hurt to ask, I'd say.

Hmm, strange. Sorry about that. PM me the link to the torrent you are referring to and I will check it out.

@molecular: Yeah, you are right. That is the exact demographic we are targeting. I saw that thread when it came out, it certainly piqued my interest. But it is considerably more expensive than this service could afford right now. I wonder if a smaller deal could be worked out? I might PM the guy. It's certainly worth keeping in mind for the future at least.

I just downloaded a torrent and received the message "The file you are looking for has expired or does not exist!" - this was after a couple for hours of checking back after I started the download. Not Sure what happened and it was quite a small file (200MB or so), so I'm not worried about the money, but you may want to check what happened.

Just thought I'd drop this in here since we have been thinking about how to market:

"Selling Advertising to 200,000 + US college Students": https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.577703

It's probably way out of our financial possibilities, but it'd be a large part of our possible target group, right: "college students behind bittorrent-filters"?

I'm not advocating this, I think we're growing just fine as it is, but maybe it's fun to discuss the idea...

I changed it because the guy who runs coinabul is someone I grew to like (I talk to him regularly) and he asked that favour, combined with the fact the the sig-space is only 300 chars and it wouldn't fit both ads without using url shortener, which I didn't want to do. I asked him not to be sad when I switch back to bitcointorrentz

I didn't put the ad there originally for the referrer money. I doubted from the beginning people would use it much. I myself often remove referrer info from ads before going to the page (or just enter the page's url manually). I don't exactly know why...

Here's my referrer stats for everyones info:


I will put the bitcointorrentz ad back in a couple of days. Probably without my referrer info... it just leaves a bad taste somehow.

EDIT: Using this logic, I should probably also remove the coinabul referral info. However, if someone actually uses that to buy an ounce of gold there, that'd be considerable revenue for me

I see you have changed your sig, I guess the affiliate program wasn't working out for you. There has been some limited referral activity though, about 10 referral downloads out of a total of 289. I have never operated a referral program in my life, so I have no idea how this stacks up to others. Don't suppose you have any suggestions on how it might be improved?

That's a comepletely different story. Totally different.

Yes, and yes.

It would require a much greater level of server resources and expense, as you would have to provide a guaranteed amount of disk space, bandwidth, ram and CPU time for each contract. You would have to set up a recurring billing system and figure out a way of providing remote access to multiple instances of a torrent client via some sort of web fronted or else provide access via a VNC/RDP protocol. You would essentially be providing a limited VPS service.

It is much different, as the user typically has complete control over the client, or sometimes even limited control over the OS itself. Seedboxes are, as the name would suggest, aimed at those who want to seed excessive amounts to private trackers and who have quite a high level of technical knowledge with regards to servers and the bittorrent protocol. Nobody who owns a seedbox would use it to download public torrents for example, where as 100% of the torrents downloaded so far through BitCoinTorrentz are public.

The target market for BitCoinTorrentz is the per-use market, those who are more interested in downloading torrents rather than seeding them and who don't want to pay a regular subscription. It is much easier for a person with limited knowledge of torrents to use my service than it would be for them to purchase, configure and use a seedbox correctly. And it is MUCH cheaper.

There are swathes of providers offering VPS and seedbox services that I wouldn't bother trying to compete with. You wouldn't have a hope of getting even a fraction of the market share without having multiple dedicated servers or a small datacentre of your own. It is expensive to scale, and considering the volatile nature of bitcoin and the much greater fiat costs involved, it would be a very risky business to be involved with.

As far as I am aware, there is no website that offers a simple, straight forward, per-use remote download service in exchange for bitcoin. I have found my niche, and I think I will stick with it.

Correct.

BitCoinTorrentz is intended to be a single-use remote torrent download service to help users who are unable to use the bittorrent protocol due to ISP restrictions, firewalls, or poor download speeds. It is not aimed at those who want to upload large amounts of data in order to achieve better ratios on private trackers. A seed-box is a better alternative is this is what a user wants to do, but requires a monthly subscription that can sometimes be prohibitively expensive for the average user.

Also, users are not afforded any protection or anonymity by seedbox providers. You have to pay typically in USD, requiring a valid credit card and billing address. If anything untoward occurs, the provider will instantly hand out all private information they have on record for the user.


Correct.