Why integrity matters or why people will buy from GekkoScience once they are ready to sell even if it isn't really economically viable to buy small units for home use.Home mining might be dead. There maybe no real reason to buy anything for the home market but that won't stop Novak and Sidehack. If you are still really looking to support something good before home mining eventual dies a slow agonizing death. Then please check out these guys. They have a modest plan, a singular vision and skills to make it happen and they are doing it with their own cash.
What I meant was, BFL kept getting sales a year after the whole world should have known not to trust them because of their marketing team. Their ads were very visible and any n00b looking for a miner would probably find their stuff first. Of course if you followed up on literally any claim they pushed about their product line you'd find it was an outright lie, and I'm still impressed they weren't called to account on that a lot sooner. But the only advertising we've ever done for anything we've ever made was posting here on the forums. No SEO optimization, no banner ads, just building stuff that doesn't suck and trusting the numbers to speak for themselves (and also satisfied customers, that helped too). I've done exactly zero advertising for our miner line as well. I've mentioned it to a few people when they ask me what I'm up to, and then this forum thread. That's it.
Also, I recall a study someone did where they interviewed a bunch of people entering the job market and asked why they went into their respective fields - because it was fun and interesting, or because they sought wealth. 20 years later they tracked down the same people and measured their financial successes. Of the original sample, I believe there were 300 millionaires in the group; of them, 299 went into their jobs based on a genuine interest and only one because it was a path to riches. I like those numbers. Tells you a lot about human nature - you're a heck of a lot more likely to be successful if you enjoy what you're doing than if you're doing it specifically to be successful. Novak and I are both pretty much constantly broke, but we're definitely enjoying the work. I'm hoping that, between his project and mine (these miners), we can start snowballing bigger, but what matters most (beyond "being able to pay the bills") is that we keep being entertained by the job - and that we don't compromise quality or integrity for the sake of short-term profits. With what we want to do, there's literally no good reason to go down that road.
Also, we've got about a dozen old S1s running around already. Thanks though. I wouldn't turn down more smoked-out S5... heh heh...