Announcing Alpha II
Today, I am announcing starbeam.one’s Alpha II. This is the second released alpha for our emerging platform and has a focus on our markets and quality. This particular alpha has been quite some time in the making, taking over four months since our Alpha I announcement.
One-Year Anniversary
One year ago today, after spending over two years in development solitude and surviving a pandemic, I announced the Alpha Preview to much fan fare and overwhelming market acclaim.
Just kidding. No one really said any thing and it seemed like they wanted me to go away. 😅
Then, to immediately add insult to injury, I started having many challenges and difficulties learning cloud infrastruture and getting all the pieces to work together in unison after the announcement. It was quite a challenging time and I persisted through all of it, determined to make this work one way or another.
And so here we are. One year later and we have some market traction, and have passed our first 1,000 Flares ($1,000) of sales volume (more on this below).
Everything we have done thus far has been bootstrapped and 100% organic, growing exclusively from word-of-mouth and personal network referrals. It has been incredibly challenging as one might imagine, but very much worth it. I feel the community we have is a special one, full of high-quality, understanding, and compassionate members. In fact, this is so much so that I am actually hesitant to spend any budget on adverstising, for fear of the element it may bring. 🤔👀
Let’s Explore Some Statzâ„¢
Statzâ„¢ is our technical term for statistics. Most of our activity and effort has been on Discord and Twitter to date. Facebook has not had a lot of traction, neither has Instagram or LinkedIn. It has been a challenge to get traction anywhere without any ad spend. Nonethless, we have found some way of doing so on Twitter/Discord.
Here is where we stand currently with all our our social networking:
Discord: 73 Members
Twitter: 243 Followers
Facebook: 39 Followers
Instagram: 10 Followers
LinkedIn: 34 Followers
And our own network here on starbeam.one (via our dashboard):
User Accounts: 114
Artists: 39
Collectors: 57
Sales: 1,970
Sales Volume: 1,104.91 Flares ($1,104.91)
What’s New?
OK, with that out of the way, what is the primary theme of Alpha II? Well, it’s our markets. We now have three distinctive primary markets along with our general resale markets.
Here are our primary markets for Alpha II:
(1 Flare = $1USD always)
Standard Market
Content: AI/Computer-generated
Focus: Basic image
Covers/Backgrounds allowed: No
Price point: 1-Flare ($1)
Minimum Price: .5 Flare
Maximum Price: 2 Flares
Maximum File Size: 25MB
Featured Market
Content: AI/Computer-generated
Focus: Products (Images / Videos / Books)
Covers/Backgrounds allowed: Yes
Price point: 5 Flares
Minimum Price: 2 Flares
Maximum Price: 25 Flares
Maximum File Size: 50MB
Traditonal Market
Content: Human hand-made, NOT AI/Computer-generated
Focus: Products (Images / Videos / Books / Text Files / Illustrated Text)
Covers/Backgrounds allowed: Yes (may be AI-generated)
Price point: 10 Flares
Minimum Price: 5 Flares
Maximum Price: 100 Flares
Maximum File Size: 50MB
Additionally, we have a lot of improvements around our site experience, namely our new product grid and the ability to quickly page through our catalog on our welcome page and in our markets. These are demonstrated in our latest standup below.
Finally, we have increased the deposit limits to 100 Flares ($100) and our withdrawal limits to $25. Withdrawals continue to be limited once per 24 hours and a minimum of $10.
What’s Next?
Going forward, I am going to make a concentrated effort to release alphas every two months (🤞), culminating in our first beta on August 1st, 2023. The beta should have us “feature complete” and working on quality toward our first RTM which should be a few months after this. I am going to wait until we get closer to Beta I to figure out when this might be.
Alpha III: April 4th, 2023
Alpha IV: June 6th, 2023
Beta I: August 1st, 2023
Stand-up & Shine (& Shill)
That is it for this announcement. For more detail and demonstration of our website, please see our latest Stand-up & Shine (& Shill) which was released yesterday:
Thank You
A quick thank you to everyone out there making starbeam.one a success, contributing with feedback, purchases, and more. Most of my time has been spent on Discord and Twitter, and I would love to see you there too if you wish to drop a note and/or provide feedback. Until next time, stay safe and stay bright out there. ✌✨🚀