Quote from: QBTC on February 02, 2014, 01:15:21 PM

Quote from: Uniqueorn on February 02, 2014, 10:50:55 AM

Quote from: Damelon on February 02, 2014, 10:31:42 AM

I have no problems with someone being critical about funds, but as regards to marketing a critical mistake is made: it's treated the same as a technical funding.

When you fund a technical or development effort, it's easy to put measurable parameters: "If we spend X, we expect to get Y" and that is cold hard fact.

With marketing, especially at the start, this is very hard to do, and sometimes downright silly. Anyone who has any experience looking at marketing analytics knows that at some point you just can't say: "X happened because of Y".

That means that sometimes money is spent unnneccessarily. That's what bad marketeers do! And most people, I am sad to say, tend to judge marketing and PR by that standard.

The other side is, that marketing gets subjected to over-auditing.

I believe in this case, this is happening. I'll be blunt: if people want hard facts on what the result of marketing efforts like LTB minutes and conferences would be, you won't be able to get them. I can tell you that if you don't get good people out there, Nxt has a major problem.

Take the Miami conference. If you'd have audited Nifty and JustaBit up front about numbers, that would have been silly. Even now, when we know that they have made very good contacts, it's still silly. All they can say at this moment is that things are in the pipeline. If you take the hard line now, you'd say: "you don't get funding, because you don't have results". And that would mean they wouldn't be able to get those results.

I sense a large amount of distrust towards the marketing efforts from some corners. Distrust is something different from critical questions.

I'll be blunt once more: marketing at this point needs trust up front. That means funding without too many questions, based on the fact that you know some people who know what they are doing are taking care of it. I put it to you that some developers in here would get blind funding because of their reputation and there wouldn't be as many questions asked as there are of marketing.

Also, from a "division of power" perspective, I would be less than happy if the person who does the audit also is the person who takes the end decision about actual spending. That is putting jury and judge together.

I'm not going to beg for PR funds, but I do want people to know that I really dislike being put in a place where I feel I have to defend my talents and job and explain I'm not evil.

+1

Those who are skeptical of funding marketing: ask yourself, where would NXT be without the work we've done already? People don't just randomly discover yet another cryptocurrency.
Just look at how reluctant the exchange has been about adding NXT because it requires a bit of additional work, yet we have got more to add us, which has lead to a big increase in users.

Look at all the info we have got out there which has made people trust NXT whereas just 1 month ago the consensus in the crypto world was that NXT was a premined scam. We have managed to turn this image around to "One of the most exciting developements in crypto".

We got a ton of projects upcoming and we've basically only got started.
Look at Ethereum, just look at the amount of marketing they have done and how they are repeaing attention for it. Without having really proved anything they got A LOT of people interested.

There is really no reason for the funds to just sit there and do nothing. Let's actually spend them on making the community bigger and NXT more known to everyone.

I'm voicing my opinion here and agreeing that marketing seems to be undervalued and those involved perhaps under-appreciated.

My out of pocket expenses for a fast secure server for NXT($149 USD / month) and paid advertising and hours away from billable work is costing me too much. Honestly, I may need to pull back from my efforts if something doesn't change. I have given you a very developed and active Facebook page and Twitter account which I believe have very positively helped spread the word about NXT to the community outside of these forums. In fact, I have stats to prove that. I have given you original art. And I hope I've contributed positively to the marketing conversations. I haven't taken very much time to wander around asking for NXT donations or spouting what I do, but the few times I have there has been almost no response. The NXT that has been contributed to my efforts would have to reach a very high price to cover my costs. I had hoped to double my purchased NXT through my marketing efforts and at times wonder if I should have just bought more instead of investing out of pocket in these expenses. But I'm an idealist and a believer in the cause. If I abandon my marketing efforts, I won't do it bitterlyI'll do it when I can't justify the expense.

Qbtc is rreferring to the www.nxtcrypto.org site. She should not have to pay the fefees out of pocket. Come on people. Same for joefox on wiki and btc24 on forums and intel for info/download.

Marketing fund.