Box Overview leaves from Habr: postmortem
Honestly, I have been sitting for half an hour and cannot figure out how to start this post. Although, since I started it, there is no problem.
I want to say a not very nice thing: coming to us ... ugh.
Nobody goes to us, of course. This is us leaving. With habr.
Since Habr was our only platform, then, accordingly, the Box Overview team from September 9, we will no longer publish on Habré.
The reasons
I do not want to blame anyone and swear. In my opinion, confusion is to blame. As it is impossible to discuss the actions of the administration on the Habré, let's stop here.
')
Of course, we are not going anywhere. Experience, contacts and knowledge will remain with us. But hand on heart, where we still find such an audience as a habr? You can create a site, but to achieve attendance, even in 100k, this business is not one year, or even two. You can develop our community in contact and for a long, long time after each article to answer questions about how to place an order in the store. On MySKU, to put it mildly, they don’t really love me and are unlikely to be happy. Experience colleagues AlexeyNadezhin says that LiveJournal for reviews is completely disastrous. In short, the Habr is unique, and there is nothing to replace it with. Therefore - alas.
How it all began
vvzvlad : It all started with the fact that I wrote about everything for the sake of fun - I developed LJ. I had two phones and a Philips shaver at the same time, and I wrote about it in LiveJournal, and at the same time participated in the competition . Even the player won. In principle, this is not very relevant, but it was the first experience of writing reviews.
At that time I often drove to China, since it was 5 hours away by bus, and on this basis we became friends with the Russian department of the Chinese store NowSupplier. I helped them with the localization of goods, and a little illegally helped them cash money. They threw off the payment from Yandex money and WebMoney to the account of my IP, because these companies could only transfer money to Russian companies. I transferred from the current account to my bank account, and they then charged at my ATM from my card. However, I still paid the income tax, and the amounts there were only about 100k per month.
Then there was the idea to write a post about how they have everything arranged, under this case I got an invite for Habr (thanks to BarsMonster ), and once again went to them, I wrote about them:
August 17, 2011: Chinese online store from the inside
Habraeffekt brought down the site of the store, and brought a number of orders. Despite the subsequent disassembly with the Chinese hoster, who blocked them for the DDOS attack, everyone liked it and wanted to repeat it.
Remembering that I can write reviews, and there was a lot of interesting equipment in the store's warehouse, I spent several hours, first sticking the tablets, and then convincing the store director through an interpreter that I needed to give this tablet, because I would write about it Mega-cool review, which will bring many, many purchases, if you convince the host that a sharp increase in attendance is not an attack by Russian hackers. Convinced Worn with the tablet for a month and a half - it was my first tablet, and the first device on Android (another 2.1, which was then updated to 2.3), and then wrote a review:
October 7, 2011: Dropad A8X - interesting price / performance ratio
Perhaps this can be considered the first review - the starting point. By the way, there was already geek-porno there.
However, after a while, NS first dissolved the Russian department, and then scored on an online store, focusing on some of its local site and aliexpress. The site worked for some time, but then it stopped opening. However, I already had a whole article in the portfolio, and some kind of statistics on attendance and sales from one review. I do not write it, because I stupidly do not remember, alas. There were about 10-15 orders.
Taking up a Google translator, I wrote in several popular and not very Chinese stores - TinyDeal, SunSky, Pandawill, BuySKU, BuyInCoins, DealExtreme, DinoDirect, TomTop, FocalPrice. They answered, as far as I remember, only from the first four, the first two agreed to send only some trifle, but Pandawill and BuySKU decided to take a chance - the first sent a tablet Ainol Novo 7 Paladin , and the second a copy of Sonim Land Rover S8 . I didn’t really need the phone, and it was a pretty bad copy, without protection against water, so I gave him a crash test — I drowned it, I poured it into plaster, and then I crushed it with a machine.
Then there was the first review of the android phone - June 12, 2012: Zopo ZP100 , which I wrote a record amount of time by my standards at that time, something about a month. They sent it, as I recall Pandawill. There, the number of orders was already about 100. I was not paid, but they offered to choose any equipment from their store at any time.
I always took the choice of technology seriously — spent hours digging forums and comparing different models from the site for price and performance. Now the main firms have more or less taken shape: Xiaomi, Zopo, THL, Jiayu. And then they all had one phone number over which it was not very clear, if they called this phone the same name, if it’s the company that produced one phone and called it the same way it did, it’s the same model as catalog, but with a different logo - buying a china phone was parctically a game of roulette.
But it was possible to fight this: comparing all 50 models of phones from one store, it became clear that 45 of them are absolutely the same outdated garbage, though cheap, 3 are cool, but too expensive, and the two remaining ones are cool, though one of them was constantly in the status of "pre-order", and sometimes did not begin to be sold, or did it after six months, as Jiayu G3, by this time falling into the first category. This is the phone that was the most interesting and without pre-order I asked for a review. One of these elections was July 9, 2012 Haipai I9220 - How the Chinese copied the Galaxy Note, but it turned out 5 "tablet
It was not very expensive, it had a great GPS with a ceramic antenna, but not a very good screen. Therefore, it was bought as a navigator in the car, and he did it perfectly. By that time, I had an agreement with BuySKU about the referral program, and earned almost $ 1000 from 300 purchases with something. After that, the administration of the store ohrenel from my commission and reduced the percentage of remuneration 4 times (from 9 to 2 with something percent), so this amount still remains my record. True, I did not particularly strive to beat him, nor did I try to deliver him.
Funny. In the process of all this, I was sent to the RO a couple of times, but not because of the reviews themselves, but because I wrote comments with a small letter. Photos, by the way, I did everything myself - this was one of the “tricks” of my reviews, along with photographing and describing the insides of the phones.
After some time, we agreed with Philips, and they also sent a couple of things - for example, a BT-column for the phone (I still regret that I sold, I liked it), a few headphones.
It was easier to work with Philips than with stores - there was no deadline hanging in the distance, no one expected a lot of sales from me, the PR agency was satisfied with just a good review. I still do not know whether it is possible to somehow measure the effect of such a review, or is it too small for such a large company? Then it was not very interesting - a couple of tablets, a phone, BT-keyboards. Is that was interesting Imax B6 , charging, which could give the data to the computer. By itself, it was not very interesting, but the article made with its help - “Dotting Li: Do we need lithium battery training?” Was very interesting and gained a rating of +284. And then thunder struck.
“Free Cheese or Why so many reviews of Chinese Android tablets?”
User Kpyto conducted an original journalistic investigation in which he condemned shame ... Well, he just received a package from BuySKU, to which the Chinese attached a leaflet offering a discount on their next purchase in exchange for a review somewhere.
Well, he laid it out. A small srachik appeared in the comments to the post , and by evening all those who wrote the reviews were transferred to the RO, and the reviews are hidden in the drafts. The very fact of this is not so terrible, I came out of the RO by the next week, wrote a topic about managing the kettle from the browser in the sandbox. I do not know why there is the date of August 8, it was October 7 or 8. By the way, the topic itself, written during the night, also had far-reaching consequences - a year later I had a voice on my phone ... But this is not about me now. It became clear that, in general, the freebie with devices for review ended. I had a written review, but not a published one, and after clarifying with Boomburum that it is possible to publish reviews without references, I posted it by removing the links. He did not score a rating, and even though the tablet was normal, it was completely uninteresting. As far as I remember, this was my last article about tablets, because I was finally firmly established in the thought that it was useless garbage, which does not replace either a laptop or a phone. I remain in this confidence to this day, and so far no one has been able to dissuade me. Therefore, I don’t write about tablets - if I’m not interested, then the article is uninteresting. Reviews as such in Habr ended, but there were projects that did not mean links. For example, I was brought for a couple of months just released at the time of Samsung Note II. In general, it was brought for a regular review, but since it was already a month after it went on sale, there were plenty of reviews for the new product. And then I made a mistake - waiting for the phone, I began to read these reviews. By the time he came to me, I knew almost everything about him, and could write a review without taking him out of the box. But I was not interested - I could not write anything that could not be read in other reviews. It was a terrible two weeks - I used it every day, I liked it, but I could not write a single sentence about it. In the end, in desperation, I disassembled it: November 5, 2012: Opening of the Galaxy Note II is all about hardware :
And then I figured out myself how the stylus works there: December 3, 2012: How the Galaxy Note stylus works , having drawn all the illustrations on the touchpad itself:
I also wrote about the alternative firmware and external battery to it, I put it in a box, honestly admitted that I leaked the review and waited for the courier who would take it:
Although, looking back now, I understand that this was not so bad — certainly better than another standard review. After the letter, they forgot about me for three months, and I finally took it out of the box, put in a SIM card and took some advantage. A week after I got it, they remembered me and sent a courier: (The same company also offered to make a channel on YouTube, but apparently it did not work out.
Vika from "Pistachio", if you read - hello! :)
Tariff plan "Review"
After some time, the administration of Habr, apparently having developed a unanimous opinion regarding the reviews of equipment on the site, rolled out the Reviewro plan in the next update , apparently by analogy with Appstorro.
It was not very expensive - only 7 thousand in 3 months, and I decided to try, like it, to be a company.
The funny thing is that several Chinese stores took advantage of this tariff - DX and someone else, but because of the lack of understanding of the specifics of the Habr posts, almost no one saw them.
After closing, we spent another three months using the blog at the old price, and then we were transferred to the standard Startup tariff with a corresponding increase in value. We discussed whether to pay for it, but in the end we decided that by collective efforts we would pull it, especially since it was interesting for everyone, and no one refused to pay for a “subscription” for new gadgets.
frag1k :
If you skip the sticking times in IT magazines (paper!) And the appearance of the Internet, then you need to start by getting to know vvzvlad . Our first contacts were in the community of another well-known habrauzer DIHALT - Easyelectronics . Vlad wrote reviews on hand tools for embeds, and I mastered electronics and designed simple devices like sound amplifiers or digital thermometers.
It was the summer of 2012 and my hands itched, and it also occurred to me to try myself in writing reviews. A few weeks spent in search of the "victim", the manufacturer who will provide the device for a test to an unknown author. But the reputation of Habr still worked and one Chinese company agreed to send its portable amplifier-DAC to the test. I prepared that first article for a little over a month, checking and re-checking each paragraph for semantic and grammatical errors. The article scored the necessary minimum, hit the main page and for the first day went beyond 30 thousand views. Can you imagine how much joy the guy, who just turned 16 years old, and his article scored 30,000 views?
FiiO E17 Alpen Portable Amplifier / DAC Review
After these results, the desire to write further crossed with the purchase of the first smartphone. There was a lot of time, so he chose long and carefully, and as a result he didn’t lose (he told me why). Having written the article, I even managed to make some money on the commission. True, then for me 300 dollars seemed like fabulous money. Somewhere between the first and second article, on the eve of the new year, I suggested Vlad to write the same article about the phone in his newly created blog, where I later wrote to this day:
Jiayu G2 - a great price / size / functionality ratio!
As a result, the writing of reviews remained for me a hobby, occasionally generating income. All the devices I wrote about in a year and a half - three phones, three tablets, an amplifier, all of these are things that I used for a long time, which really came in handy and I liked them.
lfrolov : My acquaintance with Chinese devices came in December 2011, when I just wanted to eagerly buy a tablet. Having read reviews on Habré about tablets to holes, I hardly made my choice and bought myself Ainol Novo 7 Advanced. Incidentally, this was my first purchase from an online store, and even from China.
Then, by some miracle, I was brought to the site of reviews of Chinese devices, where, after reading the articles, it occurred to me "why am I worse?". After that, I wrote several reviews of the tablets, then it became very close to me - and I asked for an invite to write reviews on Habré: Window N70 and Ainol Fire .
After some time, by luck, I got for free my first mini-computer UG802 . The situation was a bit comical - I did not have a TV or a monitor with HDMI to prepare a review. I was rescued by a friend who allowed him a day to sit and test the whistle, for which he thanks a lot!
There were more reviews of mobile phones, both popular and not so . I am ashamed to admit, but having the opportunity to use any smartphone, I continued to use my Samsung E2370 “brick”. And only in the face of Lenovo P780 I could find a worthy replacement.
I sold almost all the devices that I had, but did not have a significant salary increase - the money was spent on the blog, on updating the photo equipment park and all sorts of trivia.
How we met with Zyxel Russia
Actually, this story is not exactly about Zyxel, but about how, hiding behind our reviews, someone wanted to get a freehand router for themselves. One day Ilya Hrupalov, the brand manager of ZyXEL Russia, wrote to me and attached this correspondence to the letter.
From: Gumerov Adel [adelgumerov@yandex.ru]
From: Khrupalov Ilya A. [I.Khrupalov@zyxel.ru]
From: Gumerov Adel [adelgumerov@yandex.ru]
From: Khrupalov Ilya A. [I.Khrupalov@zyxel.ru]
From: Gumerov Adel [adelgumerov@yandex.ru]
From: Khrupalov Ilya A. [I.Khrupalov@zyxel.ru]
From: Vlad Zaitsev [vvzvlad@gmail.com]
Fortunately, everything ended well - Adele Gumerov did not get a router, but we became friends with Zyxel, and, not wanting to write about ordinary routers, I chose a Uberdevice to organize an access point in a cafe with a check printer: Zyxel N4100 - Access point ... with a printer
The special blog "Technology and Innovation Blog", or the story of a broken prize
Somehow, while walking around the sites, I came across the " Runet Blog - 2013 ". Without thinking twice, he left the application, not really hoping to get something. There were already a lot of cool projects, and a vote was implied that we would not have mastered - neither the public nor the subscribers we had at that time did not have much. Left and forgot about it. A month later, something came to me like this:
A special tsimes consisted in the fact that they sent me a letter 6 hours before the start of the awards ceremony, and before “Bersenevskaya Embankment, 6, p. 3” I had to get at least 9 hours. And then on the plane. Other authors less, but not much.
AlexeyNadezhin rescued - he agreed to attend the presentation and get our prize and my part of the buffet :) And of course, send me all this.
This is exactly where the problem came out - the pillow as a result of traveling by mail was settled, and from the “figurine” (in quotes - because it is not a figurine, but I don’t know how to call it correctly):
After that, I met my namesake from Mail.ru - Any Zaitseva (and we also have the same middle name, and they took me for her brother a couple of times), who agreed to send us a new prize in return for the one that crashed. But apparently the production or delivery of one piece was delayed a bit, and I received it after I arrived in Moscow. media_magnit , hello!
With Mail.ru, we did not cease to be friends, I and several other people from Habra somehow even slightly spoke at their seminar for authors on “safety engineering” at Habré, and what can and cannot be done. For example, on the first photo media_magnit leads the introductory part of the seminar, and on the second Zelenyikot and BarsMonsterafter the end, they are arguing about the missiles, and Boomburum in the background depicts a witness from Fryazino:
As we gun printed
I wanted to take a 3D printer for review, and we even agreed with the creators of Picaso 3D-Builder , about a cycle of 5-8 big articles about their printer and 3D printing in general, but they suddenly disappeared, no longer responding to letters and messages . It was very disappointing, considering that for the sake of this cycle I refused all other offers for this time. He even sketched an approximate plan of articles:
Which remained in the draft for ever.
Apparently, this type of negotiation did not prevent them from doing business, but I no longer want to have any business with them.
But then I took and figured out what kind of printers are, and wrote about it: March 3, 2013 Popularly about the genealogy of 3D printers. Who is who?
After a long time, the article wandered through different sites, sometimes with quite serious edits:
But the question is not about her, but about the gun. When 3DPHome suggested that I should test the UP Mini printer, I had already burned out, and I didn’t really want to write about it. But do not give up the opportunity to try a 3D printer!
In general, the reason for printing a pistol was the fact that I ran out of options for what else could be printed on a printer. And then just arrived in time for the topic with its source code. I even managed to download them before the site was blocked and on the same evening I put it on print.
We printed it for three days, and for another week I wrote a topic explaining how it still works: How the Liberator works (Yes, we printed the gun)
The effect was rather unexpected - 150k article views per day, +266, almost 300 comments. Contrary to the opinions of comments, no reaction from law enforcement agencies followed, no one called or demanded that the weapons be handed over, and the mask shows also did not break into the apartment.
But about the gun shot video Nomobile :
Opinions were divided in the comments:
And after some time they came from the Russia-1 TV channel, who were just filming a story about 3D printers for the Morning Russia program.
You cannot embed it here, so you will have to click on the link (from 26 minutes) if you go to see it.
The next day, a girl from 3DPHome called me and asked if this was the article that I promised them. They apparently did not particularly want to be a company associated with the printing of weapons. No, I wrote an article about the printer itself, but it did not receive a fifth of the popularity that the article about the gun: a 3D UP printer! - review and first print .
And the gun ... the gun is at home. A son is playing with him.
Finding and losing a site
At some point in time, we decided that we needed a website. We wanted a separate platform where we could publish news and short articles that we didn’t want to litter the Habr, and wanted to give an opportunity to comment on those people who didn’t have a full account on Habre. I had experience with ModX (and I still consider it to be the best in the number of possibilities and the simplest in terms of deep customization). We chose and bought a suitable HTML template :
After that, I sat down, scoring all the other classes, and in three days pulled the design. It took a few more days to transfer articles (good, simple plugin for transparent transfer of text Habr <-> ModX was written a long time ago ):
Another three days - to set up all sorts of buns, such as a tag cloud, RSS, convenient multi-level comments, links to the original article and “share” buttons. There are no screenshots of the site besides this:
The history of the site is tragic and short. Having made it at a shock pace for 6 days, having transferred all the articles there, a week later, when I tried to do something in the hosting control panel, I demolished the site database.
This menu item, without any warnings or questions, installs a new database, overwriting the existing one. There were no backups. The second time to make a site from scratch, I have no desire.
Statistics and publications
Honestly, for all the time of existence, we have not earned money and have not learned. Of course, we were not altruists, but in 95% of cases we took only the device for an overview. For me, the blog was primarily a way to get some new gadget in exchange for an article about it. There were several cases when I was offered money, but it did not work out - those devices that they wanted to give were either completely inadequate or were personally uninteresting to me.
But it cannot be said that we take the least. I refused all offers that meant returning the device, and there were quite a few such offers. Even more likely, more - I was constantly offered “we give you 5 thousand and a device for a week”.
It was not very interesting to me, because almost all of what I described I used myself, and I really liked these devices. The only time I took the device with the return - it was Note 2, about which I told above.
In conclusion, I want to show some graphs from the admin panel of Habr. Unfortunately, they only have statistics for the last year, so the peak of views from the article about the gun is not visible.
Audience: Post
views:
Blog index:
It flatters me that we lasted longer than any other review company. Apparently, the time has come to give way to other companies, such as the Agency of Marina Rozhkova and the MadRobots and Medgadgets stores .
We wish them good luck and reviews at +344. And the Box Overview team says goodbye to you, dear readers. Thank you for being with us these 20 great months.
I want to say a not very nice thing: coming to us ... ugh.
Nobody goes to us, of course. This is us leaving. With habr.
Since Habr was our only platform, then, accordingly, the Box Overview team from September 9, we will no longer publish on Habré.
The reasons
I do not want to blame anyone and swear. In my opinion, confusion is to blame. As it is impossible to discuss the actions of the administration on the Habré, let's stop here.')
Of course, we are not going anywhere. Experience, contacts and knowledge will remain with us. But hand on heart, where we still find such an audience as a habr? You can create a site, but to achieve attendance, even in 100k, this business is not one year, or even two. You can develop our community in contact and for a long, long time after each article to answer questions about how to place an order in the store. On MySKU, to put it mildly, they don’t really love me and are unlikely to be happy. Experience colleagues AlexeyNadezhin says that LiveJournal for reviews is completely disastrous. In short, the Habr is unique, and there is nothing to replace it with. Therefore - alas.
How it all began
vvzvlad : It all started with the fact that I wrote about everything for the sake of fun - I developed LJ. I had two phones and a Philips shaver at the same time, and I wrote about it in LiveJournal, and at the same time participated in the competition . Even the player won. In principle, this is not very relevant, but it was the first experience of writing reviews.At that time I often drove to China, since it was 5 hours away by bus, and on this basis we became friends with the Russian department of the Chinese store NowSupplier. I helped them with the localization of goods, and a little illegally helped them cash money. They threw off the payment from Yandex money and WebMoney to the account of my IP, because these companies could only transfer money to Russian companies. I transferred from the current account to my bank account, and they then charged at my ATM from my card. However, I still paid the income tax, and the amounts there were only about 100k per month.
Then there was the idea to write a post about how they have everything arranged, under this case I got an invite for Habr (thanks to BarsMonster ), and once again went to them, I wrote about them:
August 17, 2011: Chinese online store from the inside
Habraeffekt brought down the site of the store, and brought a number of orders. Despite the subsequent disassembly with the Chinese hoster, who blocked them for the DDOS attack, everyone liked it and wanted to repeat it.
Remembering that I can write reviews, and there was a lot of interesting equipment in the store's warehouse, I spent several hours, first sticking the tablets, and then convincing the store director through an interpreter that I needed to give this tablet, because I would write about it Mega-cool review, which will bring many, many purchases, if you convince the host that a sharp increase in attendance is not an attack by Russian hackers. Convinced Worn with the tablet for a month and a half - it was my first tablet, and the first device on Android (another 2.1, which was then updated to 2.3), and then wrote a review:
October 7, 2011: Dropad A8X - interesting price / performance ratio
Perhaps this can be considered the first review - the starting point. By the way, there was already geek-porno there.
However, after a while, NS first dissolved the Russian department, and then scored on an online store, focusing on some of its local site and aliexpress. The site worked for some time, but then it stopped opening. However, I already had a whole article in the portfolio, and some kind of statistics on attendance and sales from one review. I do not write it, because I stupidly do not remember, alas. There were about 10-15 orders.
Taking up a Google translator, I wrote in several popular and not very Chinese stores - TinyDeal, SunSky, Pandawill, BuySKU, BuyInCoins, DealExtreme, DinoDirect, TomTop, FocalPrice. They answered, as far as I remember, only from the first four, the first two agreed to send only some trifle, but Pandawill and BuySKU decided to take a chance - the first sent a tablet Ainol Novo 7 Paladin , and the second a copy of Sonim Land Rover S8 . I didn’t really need the phone, and it was a pretty bad copy, without protection against water, so I gave him a crash test — I drowned it, I poured it into plaster, and then I crushed it with a machine.
Then there was the first review of the android phone - June 12, 2012: Zopo ZP100 , which I wrote a record amount of time by my standards at that time, something about a month. They sent it, as I recall Pandawill. There, the number of orders was already about 100. I was not paid, but they offered to choose any equipment from their store at any time.
I always took the choice of technology seriously — spent hours digging forums and comparing different models from the site for price and performance. Now the main firms have more or less taken shape: Xiaomi, Zopo, THL, Jiayu. And then they all had one phone number over which it was not very clear, if they called this phone the same name, if it’s the company that produced one phone and called it the same way it did, it’s the same model as catalog, but with a different logo - buying a china phone was parctically a game of roulette.
But it was possible to fight this: comparing all 50 models of phones from one store, it became clear that 45 of them are absolutely the same outdated garbage, though cheap, 3 are cool, but too expensive, and the two remaining ones are cool, though one of them was constantly in the status of "pre-order", and sometimes did not begin to be sold, or did it after six months, as Jiayu G3, by this time falling into the first category. This is the phone that was the most interesting and without pre-order I asked for a review. One of these elections was July 9, 2012 Haipai I9220 - How the Chinese copied the Galaxy Note, but it turned out 5 "tablet
It was not very expensive, it had a great GPS with a ceramic antenna, but not a very good screen. Therefore, it was bought as a navigator in the car, and he did it perfectly. By that time, I had an agreement with BuySKU about the referral program, and earned almost $ 1000 from 300 purchases with something. After that, the administration of the store ohrenel from my commission and reduced the percentage of remuneration 4 times (from 9 to 2 with something percent), so this amount still remains my record. True, I did not particularly strive to beat him, nor did I try to deliver him.
Funny. In the process of all this, I was sent to the RO a couple of times, but not because of the reviews themselves, but because I wrote comments with a small letter. Photos, by the way, I did everything myself - this was one of the “tricks” of my reviews, along with photographing and describing the insides of the phones.
After some time, we agreed with Philips, and they also sent a couple of things - for example, a BT-column for the phone (I still regret that I sold, I liked it), a few headphones.
It was easier to work with Philips than with stores - there was no deadline hanging in the distance, no one expected a lot of sales from me, the PR agency was satisfied with just a good review. I still do not know whether it is possible to somehow measure the effect of such a review, or is it too small for such a large company? Then it was not very interesting - a couple of tablets, a phone, BT-keyboards. Is that was interesting Imax B6 , charging, which could give the data to the computer. By itself, it was not very interesting, but the article made with its help - “Dotting Li: Do we need lithium battery training?” Was very interesting and gained a rating of +284. And then thunder struck.
“Free Cheese or Why so many reviews of Chinese Android tablets?”
User Kpyto conducted an original journalistic investigation in which he condemned shame ... Well, he just received a package from BuySKU, to which the Chinese attached a leaflet offering a discount on their next purchase in exchange for a review somewhere.Well, he laid it out. A small srachik appeared in the comments to the post , and by evening all those who wrote the reviews were transferred to the RO, and the reviews are hidden in the drafts. The very fact of this is not so terrible, I came out of the RO by the next week, wrote a topic about managing the kettle from the browser in the sandbox. I do not know why there is the date of August 8, it was October 7 or 8. By the way, the topic itself, written during the night, also had far-reaching consequences - a year later I had a voice on my phone ... But this is not about me now. It became clear that, in general, the freebie with devices for review ended. I had a written review, but not a published one, and after clarifying with Boomburum that it is possible to publish reviews without references, I posted it by removing the links. He did not score a rating, and even though the tablet was normal, it was completely uninteresting. As far as I remember, this was my last article about tablets, because I was finally firmly established in the thought that it was useless garbage, which does not replace either a laptop or a phone. I remain in this confidence to this day, and so far no one has been able to dissuade me. Therefore, I don’t write about tablets - if I’m not interested, then the article is uninteresting. Reviews as such in Habr ended, but there were projects that did not mean links. For example, I was brought for a couple of months just released at the time of Samsung Note II. In general, it was brought for a regular review, but since it was already a month after it went on sale, there were plenty of reviews for the new product. And then I made a mistake - waiting for the phone, I began to read these reviews. By the time he came to me, I knew almost everything about him, and could write a review without taking him out of the box. But I was not interested - I could not write anything that could not be read in other reviews. It was a terrible two weeks - I used it every day, I liked it, but I could not write a single sentence about it. In the end, in desperation, I disassembled it: November 5, 2012: Opening of the Galaxy Note II is all about hardware :
And then I figured out myself how the stylus works there: December 3, 2012: How the Galaxy Note stylus works , having drawn all the illustrations on the touchpad itself:
I also wrote about the alternative firmware and external battery to it, I put it in a box, honestly admitted that I leaked the review and waited for the courier who would take it:
Although, looking back now, I understand that this was not so bad — certainly better than another standard review. After the letter, they forgot about me for three months, and I finally took it out of the box, put in a SIM card and took some advantage. A week after I got it, they remembered me and sent a courier: (The same company also offered to make a channel on YouTube, but apparently it did not work out.
Vika from "Pistachio", if you read - hello! :)
Tariff plan "Review"
After some time, the administration of Habr, apparently having developed a unanimous opinion regarding the reviews of equipment on the site, rolled out the Reviewro plan in the next update , apparently by analogy with Appstorro.It was not very expensive - only 7 thousand in 3 months, and I decided to try, like it, to be a company.
The funny thing is that several Chinese stores took advantage of this tariff - DX and someone else, but because of the lack of understanding of the specifics of the Habr posts, almost no one saw them.
After closing, we spent another three months using the blog at the old price, and then we were transferred to the standard Startup tariff with a corresponding increase in value. We discussed whether to pay for it, but in the end we decided that by collective efforts we would pull it, especially since it was interesting for everyone, and no one refused to pay for a “subscription” for new gadgets.
frag1k :
If you skip the sticking times in IT magazines (paper!) And the appearance of the Internet, then you need to start by getting to know vvzvlad . Our first contacts were in the community of another well-known habrauzer DIHALT - Easyelectronics . Vlad wrote reviews on hand tools for embeds, and I mastered electronics and designed simple devices like sound amplifiers or digital thermometers.
It was the summer of 2012 and my hands itched, and it also occurred to me to try myself in writing reviews. A few weeks spent in search of the "victim", the manufacturer who will provide the device for a test to an unknown author. But the reputation of Habr still worked and one Chinese company agreed to send its portable amplifier-DAC to the test. I prepared that first article for a little over a month, checking and re-checking each paragraph for semantic and grammatical errors. The article scored the necessary minimum, hit the main page and for the first day went beyond 30 thousand views. Can you imagine how much joy the guy, who just turned 16 years old, and his article scored 30,000 views?
FiiO E17 Alpen Portable Amplifier / DAC Review
After these results, the desire to write further crossed with the purchase of the first smartphone. There was a lot of time, so he chose long and carefully, and as a result he didn’t lose (he told me why). Having written the article, I even managed to make some money on the commission. True, then for me 300 dollars seemed like fabulous money. Somewhere between the first and second article, on the eve of the new year, I suggested Vlad to write the same article about the phone in his newly created blog, where I later wrote to this day:
Jiayu G2 - a great price / size / functionality ratio!
As a result, the writing of reviews remained for me a hobby, occasionally generating income. All the devices I wrote about in a year and a half - three phones, three tablets, an amplifier, all of these are things that I used for a long time, which really came in handy and I liked them.
lfrolov : My acquaintance with Chinese devices came in December 2011, when I just wanted to eagerly buy a tablet. Having read reviews on Habré about tablets to holes, I hardly made my choice and bought myself Ainol Novo 7 Advanced. Incidentally, this was my first purchase from an online store, and even from China.
Then, by some miracle, I was brought to the site of reviews of Chinese devices, where, after reading the articles, it occurred to me "why am I worse?". After that, I wrote several reviews of the tablets, then it became very close to me - and I asked for an invite to write reviews on Habré: Window N70 and Ainol Fire .
After some time, by luck, I got for free my first mini-computer UG802 . The situation was a bit comical - I did not have a TV or a monitor with HDMI to prepare a review. I was rescued by a friend who allowed him a day to sit and test the whistle, for which he thanks a lot!
There were more reviews of mobile phones, both popular and not so . I am ashamed to admit, but having the opportunity to use any smartphone, I continued to use my Samsung E2370 “brick”. And only in the face of Lenovo P780 I could find a worthy replacement.
I sold almost all the devices that I had, but did not have a significant salary increase - the money was spent on the blog, on updating the photo equipment park and all sorts of trivia.
How we met with Zyxel Russia
Actually, this story is not exactly about Zyxel, but about how, hiding behind our reviews, someone wanted to get a freehand router for themselves. One day Ilya Hrupalov, the brand manager of ZyXEL Russia, wrote to me and attached this correspondence to the letter.From: Gumerov Adel [adelgumerov@yandex.ru]
To: info@zyxel.ru
Subject: Zyxel LTE6100, Zyxel Keenetic Giga, Zyxel Keenetic 4G for reviews
Hello, dear representative of Zyxel Russia.
My name is Guderov Adel, I am a popular user of the resource habrahabr.ru. I mainly write reviews for mobile phones, but I became interested in these devices, because Now they are very attractive in terms of functionality and application. Can I get the following 4G device models for reviews from your company: Zyxel LTE6100, Zyxel Keenetic Giga, Zyxel Keenetic 4G
After posting reviews, they will appear on the main page, after which I will notify you.
Further communication with me I recommend to keep on this e-mail
From: Khrupalov Ilya A. [I.Khrupalov@zyxel.ru]
To: Gumerov Adel [adelgumerov@yandex.ru]
Hello, Adele.
Thank you for your interest in our products and the proposal to write reviews on it.
Before we get to the question of the transfer of devices, is it possible to find out your nickname on “Habré” and get acquainted with your other reviews there?
From: Gumerov Adel [adelgumerov@yandex.ru]
To: Khrupalov Ilya A. [I.Khrupalov@zyxel.ru]
My nick is vvzvlad
From: Khrupalov Ilya A. [I.Khrupalov@zyxel.ru]
To: Gumerov Adel [adelgumerov@yandex.ru]
Sorry, Adele, is Vlad Zaitsev your nickname?
From: Gumerov Adel [adelgumerov@yandex.ru]
To: Khrupalov Ilya A. [I.Khrupalov@zyxel.ru]
Yes sir. I will be ready to consider options for delivery, return and a list of devices that you are ready to send.
From: Khrupalov Ilya A. [I.Khrupalov@zyxel.ru]
To: Vlad Zaitsev [vvzvlad@gmail.com]
Hello Vlad
We were approached by a certain Adel Gumerov with a somewhat strangely issued (see correspondence) request. He even called me back personally and claims that you are not just familiar with him, but also publish his reviews under your name, that guarantee letters are issued on your behalf, etc. I would be grateful if you comment on the situation, especially if this is a valid offer. . I can call back if you tell me a convenient time.
From: Vlad Zaitsev [vvzvlad@gmail.com]
To: Khrupalov Ilya A. [I.Khrupalov@zyxel.ru]
Hello!
Good thing you wrote. No, there is no such author in Box Overview, and neither I nor other authors know the person with that name. All reviews published on my behalf were written by me personally. I can say the same about other authors.
Fortunately, everything ended well - Adele Gumerov did not get a router, but we became friends with Zyxel, and, not wanting to write about ordinary routers, I chose a Uberdevice to organize an access point in a cafe with a check printer: Zyxel N4100 - Access point ... with a printer
The special blog "Technology and Innovation Blog", or the story of a broken prize
Somehow, while walking around the sites, I came across the " Runet Blog - 2013 ". Without thinking twice, he left the application, not really hoping to get something. There were already a lot of cool projects, and a vote was implied that we would not have mastered - neither the public nor the subscribers we had at that time did not have much. Left and forgot about it. A month later, something came to me like this:A special tsimes consisted in the fact that they sent me a letter 6 hours before the start of the awards ceremony, and before “Bersenevskaya Embankment, 6, p. 3” I had to get at least 9 hours. And then on the plane. Other authors less, but not much.
AlexeyNadezhin rescued - he agreed to attend the presentation and get our prize and my part of the buffet :) And of course, send me all this.
This is exactly where the problem came out - the pillow as a result of traveling by mail was settled, and from the “figurine” (in quotes - because it is not a figurine, but I don’t know how to call it correctly):
After that, I met my namesake from Mail.ru - Any Zaitseva (and we also have the same middle name, and they took me for her brother a couple of times), who agreed to send us a new prize in return for the one that crashed. But apparently the production or delivery of one piece was delayed a bit, and I received it after I arrived in Moscow. media_magnit , hello!
With Mail.ru, we did not cease to be friends, I and several other people from Habra somehow even slightly spoke at their seminar for authors on “safety engineering” at Habré, and what can and cannot be done. For example, on the first photo media_magnit leads the introductory part of the seminar, and on the second Zelenyikot and BarsMonsterafter the end, they are arguing about the missiles, and Boomburum in the background depicts a witness from Fryazino:
As we gun printed
I wanted to take a 3D printer for review, and we even agreed with the creators of Picaso 3D-Builder , about a cycle of 5-8 big articles about their printer and 3D printing in general, but they suddenly disappeared, no longer responding to letters and messages . It was very disappointing, considering that for the sake of this cycle I refused all other offers for this time. He even sketched an approximate plan of articles:Which remained in the draft for ever.
Apparently, this type of negotiation did not prevent them from doing business, but I no longer want to have any business with them.
But then I took and figured out what kind of printers are, and wrote about it: March 3, 2013 Popularly about the genealogy of 3D printers. Who is who?
After a long time, the article wandered through different sites, sometimes with quite serious edits:
But the question is not about her, but about the gun. When 3DPHome suggested that I should test the UP Mini printer, I had already burned out, and I didn’t really want to write about it. But do not give up the opportunity to try a 3D printer!
In general, the reason for printing a pistol was the fact that I ran out of options for what else could be printed on a printer. And then just arrived in time for the topic with its source code. I even managed to download them before the site was blocked and on the same evening I put it on print.
We printed it for three days, and for another week I wrote a topic explaining how it still works: How the Liberator works (Yes, we printed the gun)
The effect was rather unexpected - 150k article views per day, +266, almost 300 comments. Contrary to the opinions of comments, no reaction from law enforcement agencies followed, no one called or demanded that the weapons be handed over, and the mask shows also did not break into the apartment.
But about the gun shot video Nomobile :
Opinions were divided in the comments:
And after some time they came from the Russia-1 TV channel, who were just filming a story about 3D printers for the Morning Russia program.
You cannot embed it here, so you will have to click on the link (from 26 minutes) if you go to see it.
The next day, a girl from 3DPHome called me and asked if this was the article that I promised them. They apparently did not particularly want to be a company associated with the printing of weapons. No, I wrote an article about the printer itself, but it did not receive a fifth of the popularity that the article about the gun: a 3D UP printer! - review and first print .
And the gun ... the gun is at home. A son is playing with him.
Finding and losing a site
At some point in time, we decided that we needed a website. We wanted a separate platform where we could publish news and short articles that we didn’t want to litter the Habr, and wanted to give an opportunity to comment on those people who didn’t have a full account on Habre. I had experience with ModX (and I still consider it to be the best in the number of possibilities and the simplest in terms of deep customization). We chose and bought a suitable HTML template :After that, I sat down, scoring all the other classes, and in three days pulled the design. It took a few more days to transfer articles (good, simple plugin for transparent transfer of text Habr <-> ModX was written a long time ago ):
Another three days - to set up all sorts of buns, such as a tag cloud, RSS, convenient multi-level comments, links to the original article and “share” buttons. There are no screenshots of the site besides this:
The history of the site is tragic and short. Having made it at a shock pace for 6 days, having transferred all the articles there, a week later, when I tried to do something in the hosting control panel, I demolished the site database.
This menu item, without any warnings or questions, installs a new database, overwriting the existing one. There were no backups. The second time to make a site from scratch, I have no desire.
Statistics and publications
Honestly, for all the time of existence, we have not earned money and have not learned. Of course, we were not altruists, but in 95% of cases we took only the device for an overview. For me, the blog was primarily a way to get some new gadget in exchange for an article about it. There were several cases when I was offered money, but it did not work out - those devices that they wanted to give were either completely inadequate or were personally uninteresting to me.But it cannot be said that we take the least. I refused all offers that meant returning the device, and there were quite a few such offers. Even more likely, more - I was constantly offered “we give you 5 thousand and a device for a week”.
It was not very interesting to me, because almost all of what I described I used myself, and I really liked these devices. The only time I took the device with the return - it was Note 2, about which I told above.
In conclusion, I want to show some graphs from the admin panel of Habr. Unfortunately, they only have statistics for the last year, so the peak of views from the article about the gun is not visible.
Audience: Post
views:
Blog index:
It flatters me that we lasted longer than any other review company. Apparently, the time has come to give way to other companies, such as the Agency of Marina Rozhkova and the MadRobots and Medgadgets stores .
We wish them good luck and reviews at +344. And the Box Overview team says goodbye to you, dear readers. Thank you for being with us these 20 great months.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/229635/
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