Just updating my password. Still alive. Still covered in latex.

:3

I dropped support for the site nearly two years ago and left it with the other developers to take over. I believe none of them wanted it so the domain has expired this month.
I am not sure what is happening with the server, I have not run the server for a good three years. All user data is encrypted on it like passwords. Emails and usernames are plain text but I believe the database is encrypted anyway. I will erase the VMs from the mainframe within the next 72 hours.

I would like to thank all the users of the site for the support over the years. I know it has been rough some months.
I'd also like to thank the developers for their hard work creating the site and maintaining it over the years. Patreon members also thank you for your kind support. We did not want to run ads on the site or block video streams with video ads so thank you for your support. Without you all the site would never had been a thing.
I am proud of the site and what it stood for. I set it up because I believe in freedom of speech and expression (that and I was working on event streaming site at the time so this allowed us to develope the technology and test it). No other site at the time allowed such content to be streamed other than ones behind paywalls. And in a time of a clamping down on free speech it was important to me to do this.
I am also proud to have owned and operated a site within the top 100,000 website ranked on Alexa as well as helped push for HTML5 video support on a few large browsers (that we did not end up using lol).


Jack,

Any users waiting for email confirmation to join have been enabled.

I am taking a long and possibly permanent break from the fandom.
Close friends (people I actually talk to), if you wish to keep in touch you can ask for my email address via Notes, I will check back in 48 hours to see if there are any, if not, well there wont be any so...

Will be giving FURSTRE.AM to one of the devs to take over while I am gone. I will keep Fursuiter.net under my arm though I won't be on it offering support or fixing problems, though none ever arise from that site anyway, hardly anyone uses it...

Both sites cost me more than I can afford now. If there is no support what can I do... If the dev does not want to take on $50 a month of their own money going out then FURSTRE.AM shuts down towards the end of the month. That site must have cost me the same amount a fursuit would have cost...

Fursuiter, idk. I will keep it on a small VM but idk the future of that site either.

Jacktail.co.uk will stay online, I will keep selling fans till I run out of stock. From then I will only be selling boxes of fans made to order. The low sales over the last few months has meant that my PayPal has ran out of money. With a few people trying to scam me too I have lost money on a few recent orders.

If you must know, I am just tired. 3 years of this fandom has taken its toll. I am not a nerd, so this shit is tiring. Putting up with some people within the fandom is tiring. Drama is tiring. Being the person I am online, is tiring. I need to change. I need to move on. It is for the best.

Good night.

Debating going atm.

Should I?

Miss me? Probably not...

So after a busy few months at uni I can finally work Furstre.am and Fursuiter.
While I can't do much with Furstre.am I am trying to push the development of it.

So my primary focus will be Fursuiter.net

Fingers crossed ill go to CFz this year for the day. Will be taking leaflets or postcards to hand out and saying Hi to a few mates there.
Will be taking my DSLR for sure, but also tempted to take my gimbal and video camera and have some fun with that. Not 100% sure yet though...

So yea... Whats going on? Anyone else here going to CFz?
Got any ideas for the sites?

Jack,

Over at Fursuiter.net we are working on a new project but I need help from all my friends to make it happen.

I really believe in this site and where it can go so along with my own funds as well as investors we are starting a new promotion campaign.
This is where you come in.

If, you go to meets where there are fursuiters or conventions please sign up and become a spokesperson!
What is involved?
Not much, just got to spend a small part of your time at the event handing out a pack of flyers promoting the site.
Some meets and cons will also allow us to put a poster or two in the fursuit rooms, you will need to put these up and take it down too, again depending on if we are allowed.

Will this cost? No. Me and the investors of the site are covering printing and postage costs.
We will either be sending out meet sized packets of flyers (between 20-50 flyers depending on the meet) and con packets (anywhere from 100 to over 1000 flyers per pack plus posters).

You can apply by contacting me directly. Please list the meets and cons you go to as well as dates and your location.

Please also share the site with people you know and this journal!
I really appreciate the support but wish there was a bit more. I guess that everyone has that with projects like this :p

Jack,

https://furstre.am/stream/jacktail
https://furstre.am/stream/jacktail
https://furstre.am/stream/jacktail

247 con music streams. Just having a play, might make it permanent.

So I am finding it hard to pay for FURSTRE.AM atm :/

The Patreon is not doing so well as we have lost quite a few $$ from it over the last 2 months.

I know we have not done much with the site over the last year, and that there are a few problems with it.

But the developers don't have the time to fix the issues and I can't find anyone willing to help for free as well, can hardly afford to run the site let alone pay for dev work.

I don't really have any options other than monetizing the site atm with advertisements :/

When I first started the site. It grew quite fast. For saying that I was new to the fandom, not well know etc...
It had a few popular artists on it streaming even when it was the horrid html tables with the IRC embed chat.

It had a purpose, it was needed. A safe place where anyfur could live stream without the problem of outside trolls stumbling upon the stream or the site administrators banning them for the prons. And that was its USP. A safe live streaming site for the fandom.

So it grew, a follower of on of the artist that used the site then worked on developing V1.
It was great, proper user accounts, settings page, real stream security and able to grow without me having to set each user up.
We saw that bring many users onto the site, over 2000 within 4-5 months. We started having some event streams like UncleKage's Winestream that still goes on today very successfully. We use to host (and I hope soon they will start again) a monthly Furry night club in LA.

There were some problems. So we created V2. A lot better on the backend and added a few more features. We then added our own chat. It worked well for what we needed. But users wanted more. We then improved with V2.1 with better user interface. V2.2 having another new chat, the one we see today.

And that is how it is today. A year and a half on, nothing new. About 8-10 months ago a new site popped up.
Picarto.tv
For a few months everything on FS was great, mroe and more users, never not having someone stream live. Had 100-300 viewers average.

But as Pic started to grow, many art users on FS started to leave.
And for one good reason....


When I first created FS, a few people pointed out that it just being Furry will limit the site. It will mean users who don't always do Furry would have to use it and suffer ridicule or something or go back to LiveStream for those none furry streams.
So while my intention was to open FS and turn it into the next LiveStream site from the beginning, we did not do it fast enough.
Competition came along and tripped us up pretty much.

So from then, we have had a steady decline as more and more use Pic rather than FS. And the majority of furry streams are art. So it is the biggest wedge of users.
While other streams like gamers still come in, the site has never been popular for fursuiting stuff like fursuit makers.
There are a few on there like my good friend who makes all the purdy cats. Really it is not something that is done a lot as it is quite a protected thing.

Really, all that is left is a small amount of art streams, a dozen gamers and the weekend shows as well as the monthly.
Don't get me wrong, I fully appreciate these users. And I don't hate others for moving. It is a free market.

Other sites now have better features, more users etc so it is more worth them going there.

Sadly the developer left FS, a new one has been appointed but work as usual gets in the way.
At the moment, FS nearly breaks even every month.


We have somewhat hit a problem where due to the user decline, we lose income as the amount of donations lowers.
But because of large shows on the weekend and the regular monthly one, we need higher spec hardware and connection speed.
We have also become a very stable and reliable platform. While there are the occasional datacenter hiccups like we had a few weeks ago. We still hit between 99.99% and 100% every month.

But that it at a cost. A cost which means we nearly break even, and that we can't afford to pay for development of the site or advertising of the site. Which is a problem.

Even if we were to move it back to the EU (pissing off a lot of US users) to a server that could still support the site bandwidth and hardware wise. It is still only $20-30 a month saving. Probably lose that as US users (only because of their ISPs own fault) would stop supporting the site.

So what does one do?
I have already sank enough money into the project that I could have actually bought a half decent fursuit by now.

The site is online and running as it is. But for how long I don't know.
I manage to put in the spare cash once in a while to support it. Most of my profits from my online store selling fursuit accessories does this. That was meant to fund me being able to go to meets and cons, but it doesn't.

And what do I get out of it?
Well I am not after getting popular from it for sure. I am not after financial support from it either.
TBH I no longer know what I want from it. I hardly ever stream on it now too (probably down to me getting 4K monitor, any gaming I do I don't want to do at peasant 1080p any more so I have overheads for streaming).

The idea for FS was that it would grow, the users then supporting it allowing it to host more events such as con streams.
While we get a few on there, we can't host ones like AC as the site is not large enough for it and not known enough for cons to know to stream there.


I have a feeling that soon. Running along this knife edge that we are going to slip.
That means having to take out the most expensive thing which is the server. Downgrading it to either lower the service quality or lowering the capacity. If you do either, we lose money because quality means less people will use the service, and capacity means the weekend shows, which again means we lose more money. We then have to lower the server again, resulting in a loop and then finally hitting the point where we can no longer afford the streaming software server side, and that is game over. There is no going back. It is dead.

Everything we worked hard on, invested time in and lot of money in has gone.
And I have no idea what to do right now to save it from this.

And like this journal, IDK how to end it just like IDK how to fix this problem.
All of which is my fault. I did not take the advise of growing the site to a larger audience and it is why we are now here...

I need help promoting the site. Social media and me posting on Reddit does naff all really.

So looking for help promoting the site to people who would be interested in the site and the user content.


I'd love to get posters into Fursuit lounges at cons, but need someone who can get a conversation with con staff because I am getting no where.

Anyone able to help or know someone?

https://fursuiter.net
https://fursuiter.net
https://fursuiter.net

http://fursuiter.net/
http://fursuiter.net/
http://fursuiter.net/

Concept site, but allows you to share photos and follow people.

Please leave feedback on the forum http://forum.fursuiter.net/

Just out of interest :p

While there system is not very good.
(Allowing anyone to subscribe for a day and then un-subscribe but still access content with that time)
The whole practice of people being able to get that content for free will still exist and always has done.

It is called file sharing.... Your subscribers can share files with others and boom you have the same problem.
No matter what you do there will always be that problem..

So don't start having a go at Patreon saying it is their fault, they should be taking that site down etc because it wont happen.

While the site is obviously broken, this glitch has been their since day one (of which I pointed out a while back), nothing will change. Other than making it a little harder for people to access it.


So stop over dramatizing it....

I need help making patterns.

I am okay at taking things from pattern and physically making them, but the pattern process confuses the hell out of me :p

Anyone able to help?

Thanks

What to see who else is shiny in SL!

Just had a massive delivery of stock so bigger than normal discount!


http://jacktail.co.uk/product-category/fans/
http://jacktail.co.uk/product-category/fans/
http://jacktail.co.uk/product-category/fans/

Also the micro fans have an even bigger discount for limited time only!


I am also trailing something, buy me something via my Amazon Wishlist and ill send you fans at a higher value.
Check out my FaceBook page (and Like it) to see more information!
http://www.facebook.com/Jacktail.co.uk

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/.....peaker/7409352
.https://marketplace.secondlife.com/.....peaker/7409352
https://marketplace.secondlife.com/.....peaker/7409352

Look how cool that box is!

xD

A puddle....

So if you love latex like I do, going to be working on some actually shiny stuff soon in my workshop.


So if you want something for material cost, and to support me..., go follow my AD Twitter account, @JacktailAD

Do note, that account is NSFW, and is quite personal sometimes.

If you don't Twitter, or AD Twitter I will post some info on here now and then!

I made a graph to represent why I think I at least don't fit in with the social side of the fandom when it comes to meets and cons.
After writing 3 paragraphs on why I think I don't fit in, I came to the conclusion that no one would want to read it.

So here is my summery.


I don't think I fit into the social quirks of what society, and what I feel, a "Furry" is.
And if I look back I did not join this "fandom", in that sense. I didn't come here for the Anthropomorphism, the art or the porn.
I came here for the fursuits and the (online) community.

So while I am not (what I would class as) a "Nerd", I am a "Geek".
This graph I think represents how I see it better than how I cold explain.
http://s7.postimg.org/bj57l3acr/Capture.png

The Green to Red numbers have a mixed meaning behind them. A mix between acceptance (within our "modern" society) and level of what ever this is classing.

As you can see I placed myself in 3-5. But I class Furries as 7. And really I could just about shade in half of 6.
So while I am not a "Nerd" per se, I am a very small bit of it?

I think a good example is con badges and "fursonas". I don't have any of them things. I don't like them very much, I think they are really "nerdy". While I do have an Avatar of a "Furry". I don't have the same connection that I feel most people within this fandom have. The way I see it the majority create a character around their "fursona". While mine is just an animal I like. I does not represent me, I am fat, slow and not good looking while Cheetahs are the opposite of that. I guess in a way it is me trying to be something I am not?
Oh shit that probably did not help my argument....

So yea, not "Nerdy" enough for this IRL socialising.
That or I am just a socially inept idiot....

Probably the latter.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIYt3NPWIAAF5xd.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIYt3K2WoAApPB-.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIYt3B1WwAAvW6h.jpg


0_0


I think a few of my latex friends will like this :p

So I neglect my accounting duties, a lot.

Today I back tracked 6 months worth and found out (after thinking I was in profit) that I am in fact, -£30.

A whole year of being open, 1000s of hours working on creating ideas, developing, prototyping, manufacturing and supporting my store. And I am in the red....

I understand that new businesses don't generate millions in their first year. But I planned each product on my store to turn over a small enough profit that it made it worth doing.
I wanted to save up and pay for cons and meets. But it is just not happening.

What I think is the problem here is that I planned for having a few dozen orders a month, but in real numbers I am getting 1-4.
And to make enough profit I have to buy supplies like the fans, USB cables etc in packs of 20 to 50.
I also did not take into consideration the development costs too.

I have spent a bit on things like resin casting equipment and supplies to not really use them.
Have had great ideas of things to use it, want to make some generic fursuit teeth and claws but just not got around to it yet.
I also spent a bit on things like the blush cheeks. They come in packs of 50! Then have to buy the LEDs and put them on myself as you can't just buy them in pink or red. Also dip them in adhesive to protect them from moister. Lot of time went into that kind of stuff as people were interested in buying them. No one has yet..


IDK.... I did not expect to be rolling in money, I never did this for the money. But at least go towards paying for conventions.

Guess the only options I have are to give up and sell off stock, keep trying with new ideas and fingers crossed turn a profit, or raise prices...

I think things like the fans are priced very well. DVC are like double the price of mine.
I only started doing this so I could help people in the UK and EU get stuff like what they sell (electronics mainly) but not pay stupid shipping charges. That and gave me something to do at night, instead of playing on the computer.



That and FURSTRE.AM is not getting enough donations. I am having to fork out a bit for it as well as some of the other staff.

hmm. IDK what to do.
Not asking for handouts, just advise really....

I have been using this site for a mere 2 years now.
But since day one I have supported it by not blocking advertisements on the site. I actually bought a few over the years.

Actually the ads are very useful to find services. And that is why I like the ads that what we use to have here.
It worked well, businesses could promote their service, and keep a website online and people can find new services within the fandom.

A great ecosystem where everyone wins.

But, the new Google ads?
They don't help users, they don't help business within the fandom... So they only help the site.
Now, I had a go with it, allowed it to show on my browser. I wanted to support the site. After all, I use it a lot so it is only fair.

But when those ads, become intrusive into my browsing experience, make me throw up because of the disgusting content, that is when I draw the line.

There is a much better way of generating income for the site. You had it, before Google ads. You still have it, but you are very close to losing it.
Because Google ads, means more people blocking, more people blocking ads makes your current ads, worthless....

As someone who runs sites, and soon to run one very much like yours, I know it is hard to do things like generate money, make users happy and keep everything oiled up.
But you need to realise before it is too late that users are not happy with this.
I don't care about the UI crap, the better code. Because they don't support this site like ads do.
So when I am un-happy with ads, I know many others will be.

It is up to you to with what your next step it. I can only hope it is the right one.
Because it is only downhill from here, not for the site, but for the users when you have to start charging them to keep using it, when your ads fail to generate anything.

Have a good day.
Jack,