So that I understand the charges, a couple scenarios:
1.) I don't need to commit 10,000 sats to try, right? Since there are fewer than 21 listings at this moment, I could post a job listing at 10,000 sats/mo and with a balance in my SN account of only 1,000 sats (an amount worth ~$0.42), my listing would appear on the front page for about three days, before the balance of my sats is drained? (With the presumption, of course, that there are not 21 listings offering more than my 10,000 sats/mo bid.)
2.) Even if the top listing bids 50,000 sats/month, and then (for simplicity) the next 20 listings are all 10,000 sats/month, I can bid 51,000 sats/month, get top position, and would only be charged at the rate of 12,000 sats/month? (because #2 spot then gets charged 11,000 sats/month, which is 1,000 sats/month above the next highest, and my #1 spot is charged 1,000 sats/month above the #2 spot)? (Again, this is under the presumption that nothing else changes. Of course, new bids can instantly cause the charges for my listing to go higher, up to the point that my 51,000 sats/month bid limit has been reached).
i think you've got it right here, this is my understanding too.
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  1. You do need to commit to 10,000 sats. It's the minimum bid - you can't pay less. Is that poorly communicated? I should make that clearer perhaps.
  2. Yes that's the intent. You only pay as much as you need to to maintain the position.
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Both posts on the job board right now appear at a rate of 10,000 sats/mo. How does Stacker News determine which post should be ranked higher in the event of a tie?
I know it's an edge case, but what if 100 job postings are all made for 10,000 sats... how will Stacker News decide which ones are visible on the front page?
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The oldest post with a bid of 10,000 sats/mo ranks highest, the second oldest ranks the second highest, and so on. Early bird gets the worm kind of deal.
It's like an eBay auction. If I come in and bid the same as the earlier bidder, the earlier bidder should get the item.
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I'm just realizing that the job board probably won't make much money with ranking structured this way though.
If job posts only have to pay 1k sats more to rank higher with a min cost of 10k sats, and you have 100 job posts, the top job will at most pay 110k sats, the next 109k, and so on ... for an avg. of 55k sats per post or 5.5m sats/mo (~$2,500/mo) in total.
If I raise the difference to 10k sats rather than 1k to rank higher, it'd be 55m sats/mo (~$25,000/mo) in the optimistic case.
Alternatively, we can make it not an auction but just rank it such that the higher payer ranks higher as I suggest here: #13237.
Basically, the auction kind of works against us - it ensures the job poster pays the least that they need to rather than the amount they're willing to pay.
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Great point.
I think setting minimum cost increases to 10k with an auction is still going to result in the same outcome, just with higher (albeit sub-optimal) earnings.
In a way, the current format of the auction process is like constantly negotiating against ourselves.
Your other post looks like the most simple option.
One other note, I think we should raise the minimum amount to 500K-1M sats/month. That's only $250-$500 for a full month of exposure to a huge pool of the smartest Bitcoiners around, and only about 1-2% of the market rate companies are willing to pay for a good hire.
Recruiting firms typically earn 20% of an employee's first year salary for a successful hire, which is a $20,000 cost for an employer to hire someone for $100K/year.
By asking employers to pay $5 for a job they already pay $20,000 for, implies that Stacker News isn't going to yield good results and probably isn't worth their time.
Imagine if someone was selling you a car for $5. You wouldn't even bother looking at it, because you'd know it was a pile of trash.
The 10k sat minimum bid is working against us in the same way the auction process is.
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I do think that's the way to go.
500k sats is like half the size of my largest lightning channel lol.
I'll rework the ranking, the minimum, and the delta before I begin selling it.
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36 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr 2 Mar 2022
True, but let's be sure not to anchor ourselves to retail Lightning Network numbers.
Businesses are our target market with the job board. Many of them have millions of dollars in VC cash on their balance sheet, and are actively trying to spend it to find good hires and grow their business.
We can offer them an excellent service, just need to price it correctly.
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Oh, I'm with you on making it expensive. We perceive expensive things as being more valuable all the way and I think what we are offering is valuable.
For 1., I currently have a balance of 10 sats. I just created a TEST ONLY job offer, with a higher bid than the prior #1 spot.
My TEST ONLY job offer is currently in #1 spot, and with 10 sats, there will be about 30 minutes before my 10 sats have been consumed by this offer.
That's what I was asking. Do I need to spend 10,000 sats, in order for my job listing to show? The answer (as currently implemented), is no. You could get a listing to show (with current bid levels) with even just 2 sats balance, until that balance is consumed (in about three to six minutes, at current bid levels).
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Ok, so I found that if I set my bid to 99 million sats/month, it will once per minute look to ensure I have enough sats balance to accommodate the maximum possible charge for that next minute (2,314.5 sats). If my SN wallet doesn't have that much, my listing will get stopped for reason NO SATS.
But if I did have 2,315 sats or more in my SN wallet, it would have passed that check, and only charged me a fraction of a sat (which is the actual amount my listing will cost -- regardless of my bid, as 1,000 above the next highest bid of 10,000 is 11,000, thus 0.25 sats per minute).
Now I better understand how it works.
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