Because it stopped being satisfying to continue writing for LowEndBox. It’s that simple.
I write for many brands across different markets. That said, LowEndBox resulted in slightly less than 20% of my income and contributed to about 80% of my stress.
The site is a bit… toxic.
It was getting to the point where some of the stuff posted on there made me genuinely uncomfortable.
For example, an actual threat directed towards me:
In his mind, this is warranted because I replied to a comment of his calling me a kid and telling me to STFU with “You have herpes on your lip” in regards to this picture:
He has since changed his profile picture 3 times, now to an AI-generated profile picture:
That’s a bit much for me.
Then I have weirdos creating alts (after being banned multiple times) being racists, homophobes, and transphobes in broad daylight, and it’s being condoned by people smart enough to know better (plus more), and it’s just like… nah.
I don’t want this. I don’t want to support this.
That Doesn’t Mean I Have Beef With Biloh or Raindog308
I don’t have beef with Jon Biloh or Raindog308 lol. I have a lot of respect for both of them.
Jon is a successful entrepreneur with a multi-million dollar exit, and Raindog308 is a brilliant writer when he’s trying (he even wrote a book about Chess, fun fact).
I just really wasn’t interested in continuing to contribute to the LowEndUniverse. Me quitting was solely about freeing up creative bandwidth.
The fact is:
Traffic Was Way Up
I wrote 4 out of 10 of the most successful LowEndBox articles in the span of a few months when LowEndBox is older than a decade.
Namely:
- They Laughed at Me When I Said I Wanted to Start My Own Host, but When I Started to Build My Own Data Center…
- Kiwi Farms, the Infamous Alt-Right Hate Forum, Might Be off the Clearnet for Good
- Man Found Guilty of Child Porn, Because He Ran a Tor Exit Node (The Story of William Weber)
- Plex Blocks Hetzner in Move Against Piracy
The Hetzner article was even mentioned by LinusTechTips (at 30:30).
The line where you see “SERP features” is when I started writing for LowEndBox for an all-time SEO graph. That SERP feature is when Google puts the Cociu, Calin, and Florin article on Discover (sharing it for us).
To show you the “competition” (keep in mind this isn’t 100% accurate, LowEndBox actually gets more traffic than this):
It’s pretty easy to see my influence there.
Outside of influencing internet culture with various articles, such as the Kiwi Farms series, I also covered an industry-changing event from the start:
When they deadpooled, everyone acted surprised like I didn’t already tell you it was coming:
And then it created an unprecedented feeding frenzy of hosting providers rushing to join to post offers:
Need I go on? I think I shall…
I Was Making Thousands for LowEndProviders, for Free
I gave a lot of exposure to several different hosting providers:
- MXroute
This was one of my first articles:
Jarland, the founder of MXroute, later tried to cancel me.
- Crunchbits
I essentially broke Crunchbits into the LowEndUniverse with this one.
Eric, the founder of Crunchbits, later tried to cancel me.
- iHostArt, Hazi.ro
Honestly, I’m just putting both Calin and Florin together.
But I definitely broke them into the LowEndUniverse:
- FiberState
FiberState always showed love, so I don’t mean this as an insult, but I definitely broke them into the LowEndUniverse too:
- 1GServers
Very nice people and showed lots of love.
- Advin Servers
Literally sold out his new location.
- GreenCloud
- Host Hatch
- Hivelocity
- ReliableSite
And beyond. None of these individuals paid me a dollar, it was just out of love. Some of these individuals later complained about spending $100 per 6 months in advertising their business.
Continuing on:
None of This Was Accidental
It was by design. To me, from the start, my goal was always to generate traffic for LowEndBox, and as a result, that would benefit LowEndTalk and the hosting providers on both platforms. I did that well.
Partially this was only possible because of the creative freedom Jon allowed. He didn’t tell me what to write or what not to write, at all.
And in return, he received a lot of really good and entirely unique content that created a lot of attention and contributed to a lot of discussion.
The funniest part about my haters is they couldn’t even attack the content, they just had to attack my character, and they would be like, “Yeah, Sir Foxy, man, shame your such a dickhead furry (Sir Foxy was a randomly generated name btw) with painted nails… because your content is good.”
Anyway, the point here is: that me and Jon don’t have a bad relationship. Me and Raindog308 don’t have a bad relationship.
Even after publicly posting “fuck it, I quit” Jon reached out and communicated with me that the door was still open, which just goes to show you the character of Jon.
Unfortunately for you, if you were expecting it; I’m not going to be airing out anyone’s dirty laundry.
Now for the number one question:
Am I Ever Coming Back?
I dunno. Probably not, but maybe.
As I said earlier, LowEndBox / LowEndTalk started draining me of my creativity, so, as someone who relies on creativity for a living, I decided it was time to quit. Especially when the income isn’t justifying the added stress in comparison to the other things I have going on.
It’s a possibility, but that’s for me and Jon to negotiate.
I will miss those Biloh Bucks…
What Will I Write Here?
Whatever the fuck I want.
I plan to continue following some storylines, like the ones on William and Path, but no guarantees outside of that.
You can expect internet lore, internet crime, self-hosting, and beyond.
Interested in hearing more from me?
Well then, join my newsletter below:
P.S. I leave you with this:
