Sadly, donations are no longer steady enough to be relied on. (It’s not fair on iMdai to keep bankrolling us!) Because of this, I have been thinking about alternative methods of providing a steady stream of income for Doki’s operations.
One such method could be to sell seedboxes. I have received some positive feedback from this idea, so I will proceed with it, and see how it goes.
For a limited time (a week or two), I will provide free seedboxes for people to try out and test. These seedboxes are on a 100Mbps connection and have unlimited monthly bandwith. If you are interested in buying a seedbox from us in the future to support us, here’s a good opportunity to test them out for free!
Eventually, I will charge something reasonable, such as $10 a month for 200 GB, for example. But I’ll think about that later.
You can use the seedbox to download/seed anything you like, anime/BakaBT or otherwise. Obviously, the only rule is no CP of any kind.
Regarding the price that I will charge in the future: despite being cheap, I know that it’s probably not the cheapest out there. You can probably find cheaper seedbox providers. However, bear in mind that it’s not my goal to provide the cheapest seedboxes possible. I want the people who support Doki to get something back in return.
There are also benefits to getting a seedbox from us (aside from helping us out)! If you want to help us seed a show, or just want a Doki show for yourself, you can request for that show to be transferred directly into your seedbox from one of the Doki servers. I may think of other perks in the future. Also, I am here to provide support, answer any questions, which probably beats support from seedbox providers from elsewhere!
For those people who have no idea how to use a seedbox, I have written a detailed tutorial which will help them.
To get a free seedbox, all you have to do is send me an email (holo@doki.co) and I will set it up for you ASAP. I only have around 12 right now, so if this gets more popular than I expect, you’ll have to wait a day or so before I can get more.
Feedback on the seedboxes are welcome!
Update: 30+ seedboxes have been given out! There’s a bit of a waiting list, but keep the requests coming!
Tuesday 23rd September 2014 
8:21 PM 
Cheers for the novel idea 🙂
Seems like a nice option…
BTW, a happy new Jewish year 😛 (despite it being tomorrow…)
September: $669 of $85
Sounds good to me O_O
Good for half a year or so. This is a long term strategy! I’m simply thinking ahead.
Most of that money was donated by 1 staff member, so it’s not fair to rely on him forever!
Donations may flow in better if you’d do timely BD releases maybe.
No offense, but the last Mikakunin release was 5 months ago and I with my apparently endless patience plan to watch it in 1080p once it’s available.
I love your work, but more transparency on that stuff would be neat.
The overflown donation progress miiight also stop people from donation more, but that might be just me.
Yeah, I realise our BD output has been slacking somewhat.
We were having donation problems before Mdai decided to send $700 into the Doki account, so that’s not an accurate indication of regular donations, lol.
Have you tried asking if the project is delayed and why it’s delayed?
Also this is a way for you to donate and get something back in return, not sure why anyone would have a problem with it.
Would you allow deluge as a client? Prefer it over ru because can use the desktop app as a thin client to the box
I think if your funds ever came down to the one month goal line, a lot of us would step up to the plate, but I can’t remember the last time that it has. It’s nice that you are sure Doki will last a long time, but we want stuff to look forward to. I think selling seedboxes is unnecessary, and takes away from time where the group could be delivering content, it doesn’t even have anything to do with anime/japan. Blubbeh makes a good point, not too long ago, I would come here nearly every day and see new stuff. Of course, I say this with all respect and we appreciate all that you guys do. Is there anything we could do as users to help speed up releases? More anime is always a good thing.
We were actually behind on donations in Feb and April, as you can see from the logs.
You’re right, releases have been a bit slow somewhat. But don’t worry, this venture doesn’t distract from anything else because I’m the only one handling it, and I don’t really have time to fansub much anymore anyway, due to my studies.
We do need to get more BDs out, a ton of stuff are delayed at multiple people, which I’m not too happy about!
Anyway, think of seedboxes as donations where you get something back in return!
On the subject of seeding, please could someone seed the 720p BD batch of Ro-Kyu-Bu? Thanks.
Make a comment in the Reseeding page!
I understand the reasons behind it all but I think a monthly cost will turn me off this site due to the only thing I download from Doki is BD releases and I only download the batches so your asking to pay a monthly fee for batches which happen very little, sure if there was a batch each month then I have no issues hell I would pay $20 a month but this does not happen and never would that is just to much to ask.
The other issue is sites like bababt and nyaa torrents will have your batches uploaded on their servers and other locations.
Well, the website and torrents will still be completely free. You’re not signing up for downloads. You can still download anything you want here. This is a completely separate service from doki fansubs. If you don’t feel that service is worth it, that is fine. You are free to not sign up for it and you can continue using the website just like you always have.
But we would be losing the seeders from the people who decide to do this, so if this does take off it could mean longer downloads, again I am not against it, its just a big step,
What? The people who do this would be seeding even faster than they could before? So if would benefit you, even if you don’t do anything?
No one is charging you a monthly cost. I think you misunderstand.
In the line with my above comment I am not against it I just feel this would of been better announced if the BD projects were flowing as much as the TV projects.
Hope it works out for you, faster downloads is one plus and having access to the files at all times is also another. With all my complains if it does take off I will end up signing up for one 🙂
I have been following you since a long time ago, but you will just loss more if you charge people. better solve it with just donation. just my thought
But…you’re not being charged to use the site. Or to download anything. You can still do all that freely. You’d paying for a completely separate service which also happens to help support the site’s costs. That’s all. Nobody is going to force you to sign up for it.
I think you missunderstood. These boxes are just an offer for people in need of a seedbox. If you don’t need it you can still decide if you just donate normally or not at all.
Holo just offers this because he wants to give you something back for the money you might want to donate. He already did stuff like this in the past when he sold *.is-my-waifu.com domains and mousemats.
You will never be forced to buy any of these offers! 🙂
Again, no one is charging you anything. You can always download anime here for free.
I think this is actually a pretty cool idea. I’ve never even heard of a seedbox before, but it’d be so very useful for me seeing as my upload rate is fucking awful. I’m lucky if I can break 1 kb/s on BakaBT for some reason, if any upload at all. While full speed for me is usually 80 kb/s.
Suffice to say, my ratio for down/up suffers greatly because of this and I’ve been relying entirely on bonus torrents on BakaBT to keep my ratio up.
I may actually be interested in this in the future.
I think it’s a great idea, for now I’m testing and it’s pretty good… and would be quite interested in this service if you offer it would help us keep the torrent alive longer.
Im already on a seedbox is there any channel where I can get early release so that i can seed more efficently ( kick start the release )?
also captcha has been removed?
@pstevo123,
> But we would be losing the seeders from the people who decide to do this
No! You would not only be gaining seeders, you would be gaining seeders who are on a fast pipe AND online 24/7. That’s what a seedbox does. (Just how hard is Google to use?)
@Holo & Doki at large,
Not sure if this is technically feasible, but . . .
How about a monthly/yearly fee to S/FTP from a ‘Doki’ seedbox?
– The ‘Doki’ seedbox could/would be huge, multi-terabyte, and contain basically all torrents Doki has done.
– People would get a unique S/FTP username/password to the seedbox with read only privileges.
– The ‘Doki’ seedbox itself could also be behind a VPN.
Benefits include:
– Near 100% of all Doki files are seeded 24/7 on a fast pipe.
– People with privacy concerns no longer need to run torrents (see all seedbox privacy benefits).
– Doki users feel good about spending money on Doki, as it’s helping the greater community.
– Payments can be anonymous.
– . . .
Personally I’d have more reason to ‘donate’ to this, even if I never used it, than purchase an individual seedbox.
As a possible future benefit, if this works, then the same principal, even the same seedbox, could be applied to the tracker you use.
Thanks for all your hard work,
Onii-chan
Reference note: You can get an 8 core (16 thread), 72GB RAM, 8 TB disk (+4TB@+35/m), 100mbit unmetered dedi box for $159.00 USD Monthly.
PS: How much space is all Doki files?
Entire Doki archives are probably almost 4TB.
However, my only concerns with this idea are the fact that I am essentially “charging” people to download Doki stuff… For a seedbox, at least you can use it for your own personal things as well.
Basically, I think you get more for your money if you buy a seedbox compared to access to Doki archives. Incidentally, if you do buy a seedbox, you can already request for Doki files to be transferred into your box, so that service kind of applies already, lol.
Hi Holo,
Didn’t mean to imply it was either/or. Both could be easily done at the same time.
And, you wouldn’t really be ‘charging’ people to download, it’s more of a convenience option combined with a ‘your purchase’ is helping the community at large by maintaining a community seedbox. There could definitely be various levels of donations or purchases. $3, 5, 10?/m donations that don’t have downloads, or $5, 10, 15?/m for FTP downloads? Either way anyone can still get the files off the normal torrents.
An additional benefit is that the purchaser no longer has to seed Doki files at home, or on their own seedbox, freeing up their home/seedbox space for other things.
Technically I can’t see that it would be that hard, but definitely do a separate post to gauge the level of interest. If you do, do it, (as long as there is an anonymous way to pay), I’m in for at least $100, lump sum, for the first year. Donation, as I don’t really want/need the private download capability, I’m more interested in everything being seeded.
Best,
Onii-chan
I currently pay 12 euros/month in a seedbox from seedhost with 550gb space. If you are able to sell something similar I would gladly move to a Doki seedbox.
I would love to know which company you went with for your seedbox? Also did you set it up yourself? Or is it a shared one that you are creating user accounts for?
OVH. I set everything up myself.
Awesome, thanks! Did you go with Apache or Nginx? Also did you do it off the knowledge that you have? Or did you follow on of the many tutorials out there, and if so would you be willing to share which one?
you know why donations is not coming anymore??
beacuse you dont finish little buster ex..
*haven’t finished it yet.
Whats CP?
“Obviously, the only rule is no CP of any kind.”
Child porn.
This Seedbox is really powerful! I cannot imagine anyone not going with this service especially if you use this for BakaBT. That being said you did mention you were thinking of charging us $10/month for this seedbox service, which I feel is pretty steep especially considering I live here in Australia (i.e. the Aussie dollar fell heavily; we lost $90 billion worth of shares in September, meaning we lost 6 months worth in one month. It’s pretty bad and the exchange rate isn’t favorable for imports).
I did some research into seedbox pricing, and 10 USD/month is quite average for a low end seedbox. There are some cheaper and some more expensive providers out there.