Another server added

[mario]

It's been a while since my last blog post.

In the meantime, Gixen has continued to grow, and is now a small system spread across 4 servers. In the future, further growth will likely require even more hardware. So far, this is not a problem - Gixen users do subscribe to mirror service, and this income coupled with ads surpasses the costs. The software is made in a way that it can scale quite well just by adding new boxes, so I don't anticipate any big growth problems in the future.

Now looking at the present number of servers required, one cannot not to remember the first server Gixen ran on. Here is the shocking revelation: it was an inexpensive virtual dedicated server, rented for 30$ per month. It didn't last long, but that's the one everything started from. Many will find this quite funny, but few times in life I was so excited like when the daily income from advertisements passed the 1$ mark.

Looking back and comparing my thoughts at the time and what I think now...

First, I felt from the very beginning Gixen would be success. I knew it wouldn't make me any serious money, but it continuously gave me a great satisfaction. Gixen is one of the things I rarely get tired of.

Second, I have to admit I thought at the time the competition would crumble after a year or two. This proved to be wrong - auctionsniper still has traffic five times Gixen's. Don't get me wrong - after year and a half this is great, as I remember times when this ratio was 200.

But the question remains - why does it take this long? Do users feel auctionsniper fees are negligible? Do they still see Gixen as a new player in arena? Or they signed up for auctionsniper a long time ago, and are lazy to switch? Time will tell. If nothing else, it's good to see that, according to Alexa charts, Gixen is the only sniping service that's still growing.

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts, feel free to follow-up on this post.

[samhale123]

People just haven't really heard of sniping I guess.
On that other sniping website they themselves have won an award for undiscovered websites.
Thats just the thing- I'd never heard of sniping websites. Sniping software yes, but not websites.

I'll try and bring some more exposure to the site


Sam

[nochkin]

It always nice to hear such things from people who love what they do. I really understand you on that.
Money income is just a part of the project, your own satisfaction is another big part which keeps you running.

As far as AU. I think most people are lazy and don't want to switch. "if it ain't broken, don't fix it".
The other thing, some people honestly think that if they pay, they get a better service. So they think that if your service is free, that means it's not so good. There is nothing you can do besides growing and let your own customers to show the truth to others. It's just a matter of time.

Anyway, congrats on this milestone!

[Cupid]

I agree with nochkin, people are naturally conservative, they find something that works for them, they get used to what it costs and they stick with it untill they have a real problem with it, only then will they look around for a better deal... We all know they would find it here, quite easily now that gixen has a high page rank with google.

Further I think that the fact that you are still growing while others are not, is probably an indication that you are attracting the majority of the new snipers, together with a few of the disguntled ones from other sniping snipes.

Congratulations on your continued success, long may it be so !
_________________
Mark

[mario]

Thank you Mark, and you're probably right...

[agentsteel53]

I only recently got into the auto-sniping business (maybe Oct 07?) and when I searched google for a site that would help me do it, gixen was the first free site... tried it out once, it did the job (sniped $261 on an item that about one second later went to $288)... figured I'd keep in mind, especially given that it was free.

was sorta off eBay for a bit, especially given that I went through an interval of unemployment. (Dang USA economy!)

only a few weeks ago did I return to Gixen. Since then it has not only won me a few auctions, but totally has changed how I approach eBay. Rarely now do I make a minimum bid (just to keep the item in the "items I am bidding on" list, which is a neat collective on eBay)... most of the time I just browse for the item, set up a snipe, fire and forget; and hope that when it ends I win!

I know what price I am willing to pay - the rest of the world really does not need this knowledge. Gixen has totally freed me from the responsibility of the "manual snipe" - some of which I placed as far in advance as two minutes!

thus, for me, Gixen was the first choice - never played around with Auctionsniper, etc. Hmm, time to extend my "subscription"