Oddity of the day, I guess.
'Tis one of those things that may mean nothing, but may mean everything, and I couldn't rightly decide whether a new post was warranted or a reply to this one would be OK.
Yesterday, Cyberwings was listed as a Platinum partner of Plesk at
http://www.plesk.com/html/partners/channel/platinum/index.htm with logo and all. (Their individual page was :
http://www.plesk.com/html/partners/channel/platinum/cyberwing.htm.) As of now, Plesk seems to make no mention of them and their personalized Platinum partner page has disappeared. Could just be an weird technical thing, but thought I might mention it somewhere, just in case.
Was at the chat two nights ago and it left me with a somewhat suspicious feeling. The lifetime plans and the Zap5X promotion seem as if... whelp. It doesn't seem as if it could be possible. I've thought about the overloading of servers theory - I do think it is correct in at least someway.
Just as business goes : had whipped up the following one year scenario, assuming everything stayed as it was prior to the unlimited / lifetime sale. I was reading on the Plesk messageboard where one of the cyberwings people, I believe, had mentioned 400+ accounts per box. The math just doesn't seem to come out quite right. Let's say, 500 people per server, with an average cost per year to the customer of $3.50 or so. (This is ignoring the fact that resellers with a virtually unlimited number of accounts exist.) That box takes in $1575 per year. The box itself, with everything, cost perhaps $575. (Make it easy for me. ) IIRC, one of the CW people had mentioned in the chat : 1.) There are over 13,000 customers. and 2.) They have 2 OC48 lines. They also have 6 or 7(?) employees, IIRC. (They actually talked in the chat about hiring more for this summer.) Keeping with the math above, up until now, they've taken in $45,500. Will be very, very conservative and only subtract $7,000 for the boxes themselves. That leaves us with $38,500. Will again, be very, very conservative and say that they've managed to get Cogent to give them 4.x times the bandwidth of a 1000 Mbps link for 1.25 times the 1000 Mbps price. That is $12,500 per month. 12 months of service == $150,000. Would leave a net of $-111,500. Will say they got a good deal, and their hosting and office space cost $1,500 per month / $18,000 / year.. Down to $129,500. Even if they were to triple the number of customers using the same hardware and connection, they are left with $136,500-$129,500 = $7,000 per year.
Shawn has said he is financially independent and does not get paid. Leaves with 5 or 6 employees. (Many, many assumptions made, but... ;D) For a months worth of work, assuming the business triples, each employee would get about $100, or a yearly salary of $1200, assuming Shawn isn't pouring gads and gads of money into the company. Would think that most employees would want to make at least $25,000 / year. This seems to leave Shawn, if he is paying his employees, with - in the best case - a loss of $143,000 per year with business tripling.
It just seemed weird me that they now are offering plans ranging into the hundreds of dollars for "lifetime" accounts. (Add another fee to get 5x everything, too.) Given the above math, Shawn's reluctance to answer questions, the new plans, I just... it's starting to feel fishy to me. I'd purchased an account for myself, way back when, figuring that even if I got one month's worth of service, the price would be worth it. OTOH, even if they got a full half of their customer base to buy a relatively expensive plan (say, $100), that would only net them $750,000, which seems like very little for so much work and so many people to be involved in a scam.
It could be (and I hope very much that it is) that Shawn is a wealthy philanthropist, who is giving back to the world in some way. ???
I just had thought that the thing about them not being on the Plesk page anymore might've been worth posting about, and I've rambled on forever. Please do forgive!
Eck. It's late. I'm going to bed.
Cheers, all!
Edit : Too late for proper linking. ;D