Thoughts from a Newbie

[Hashing Tortoise]

I'm quite new to cryptocurrency. Spent a couple of weeks at a really bad pool service. I'm not speaking their name, I don't know what is going on and their not speaking. I spent some time lurking around the pages of 'Prohashing'. I found you through a forum board.

The upfront information available on this website was refreshing. It's almost an overload of information, but yes I have been reading. You say it up front when other try to hide things in the small print. I like those that 'say it up front'. Should I jump in........ O.K... I'm ready to 'take the plunge!'. I put in a user ID & Password...BOOM! an error message! It's 3:00AM central time (my time zone), I might be half asleep and didn't read something right. After a couple more tries, I send an e-mail to contact@prohashing.com, I must be doing something wrong, it's the middle of the night and my brain may not be working. I'll get a response sometime tomorrow (maybe), I think.

In less than 2 hours (sometimes I'm up all night), I hear my e-mail chime. It's a response from Chris! He gives me a REAL response, an explination of what was wrong, and says I can register now! A real straight forward answer. Someone telling the truth these days seems unusual to me. A person might think this pool is run by an actual 'human being(s)' that care (and must not sleep)! Yes I said it 'ACTUAL human beings'.

I'm registered now, and my lil' turtle speed hasher is a busy happy camper. I am already seeing a few dozen blocks that my miner has solved (love that 'see the blocks' feature). I'm stumbling through all the other little goodies this site has to help me with my miner. I seem to have caught you in an upgrade, two of the bells and whistles started working since I registered. Average mining performance has me between 95 and 100. Guess I got the config right. Someone put a lot of thought into what is offered here.

I found you from a message board. With multiple inquiries, using different words, searching for a 'scrypt miner compatible pool' and a lot of other key words, I never saw your name on a search engine. You may or may not want to think on that one.

I'm a happy hasher that has already seen a change for the better since I signed up a few hours ago. If I actually get paid (unlike the last site), I could be hashing here for a very long time.

Please excuse me while I figure out all the toys (tools).

[Hashing Tortoise]

Just an update...
My little turtle generates a bit of heat. it's a time of winter here and it's cold outside. A break even in hashing is a major win for me on the electric bill. Best I can tell, my ROI may be paid for well before the spring frost. Not sure what I am going to do with the summer heat, but the electric company analysis shows I should be much more conserned with the heating instead of the cooling in summer.

[Some1notu]

You should check with your power company to see if they offer rate discounts for electric heating.....many people have gotten their miners to be considered as electric heaters

https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topi ... #msg294355

[Chris Sokolowski]

Thank you so much for the feedback! I'm glad you like the pool. We're always looking for suggestions, so if you know of any way we can improve the site, let us know. Most of the time, we don't have a feature not because it's difficult to create but because no one ever told us they wanted it.

Our biggest challenge is finding customers. I can't stress this enough - you telling me that you found us through a message board and could not find us through a web search is extremely useful information. We've been mainly advertising through cryptocurrency forums with a lower priority on using other ways of attracting customers. We haven't had great success, and I've been struggling to figure out where to find new customers. From what you said, it seems like we could attract many more customers with search engine optimization. Our focus in January is improving profitability and stability of the pool, and then in February I will start a large advertising push. Thanks to your comments, I think SEO is where I will start.

As far as the electricity cost, I guess it all depends on where you live. We bought Zeusminer Lightning X6s (20 MH/s at 500W) in mid-2014. We had them on through the winter last year, but due to difficulty increases over the past year, this winter it's actually cheaper to buy and burn natural gas than use the waste heat from the miners, even considering the revenue they generate. I still use the miners as supplemental heat though; when I need to work of my car in my garage, I turn on the old miners instead of the electric heater.

[Hashing Tortoise]

Some1notu... I will look. Any and all suggestions appreciated.

Chris.... When you look into Search Optimisation, be sure you think about the forum pages. It's my understanding that search engines love pages that change on a regular basis.

[Hashing Tortoise]

Some1notu... The power that is running my little turtle is placed behind the rather cool exhaust from this thing. I'm not sure if my electric bill is smaller than last year because of the minimal heat or I'm just paying attention. I am able to monitor,it's electrical requirements. From what the electric company is telling me, I should be more conserned with my winter heating than any other part of my bill on a yearly basis. Well it's winter.

I have done the math several times. The decrease in my winter electric bill is acually going to benefit me over the summer cooling costs. This is an indivual analisys that may not work for othets. This is before a bit of bitcoin may eventually find it's way to my bank account while reducing my overall electrtic yaerly bill. It may take a while to watch some months of my electric bill.

****The real question*****
cgminer says I'm hashing at 5.702Mh/s. My personable webpage shows 'mininng average percentage' 'accepted hashrate 4.77M' 'rejeted hashrate 0.00'
cgminer says:
started 16:30:00
gsd 0: 838Mhz 2.851M/2.851Mh/s A:3335360 R:19744
gsd 1: 838Mhz 2.851M/2.851Mh/s A:3311168 R:24752

Am I doing this right?

[Hashing Tortoise]

I may have, sort of, done something right. O.K.....I don't understand this. I did an edit on the batch file. It seems that setting a difficulty d=8192 helps quite a bit. The 'accepted hashrate' on the status page appears to be much better. Unless someone can convince me otherwise, I am leaving it there.