I'm on IPT and TL and getting ratio on them took fucking forever. It's basically impossible to do via seeding because everything gets flooded with seeders instantly. Occasionally they have stuff I can't find elsewhere but I mostly use public ones. If I didn't have to maintain a ratio on the private ones to download I would be seeding so much more of their shit. IMO seeding time is a much better metric to use to enforce seeding than ratio.

My, admittedly limited, experience with private trackers is pretty much the only time I have seen power tripping worse than Reddit mods.

Please note that many countries don't give a fuck about private-use piracy, so in many cases you don't need a VPN.

Do you have a guide or do you mind explaining the best way to do this?

Maybe a dumb question, but have you enabled port forwarding in your torrent client and ensured that the VPN server you are connected to allows port forwarding? Proton has decent documentation on how to do this, but it's not obvious if you didnt already know you needed port forwarding.

This had me tripped up for nearly a full year after I got back into torrenting.

I've seen some people have issues with being able to punch qBittorrent through a VPN so that may be the first place to troubleshoot. Maybe Proton gatekeeps certain traffic? Other than that I can't help, sorry.

I've been seeding for over 3 years. I only have a torrent that got up to 980 of ratio, if I remember correctly

I'm not sure why people downvoted instead of educating. To answer your question: no, it isn't. It has been awhile since I've used torrents, so this may be a little out of date, but typically, within your P2P client you'll have active "seeds," including while you're downloading. Some people immediately delete files from "active" after their download is complete. It is generally considered proper etiquette to leave the torrent active (at least) until it you have uploaded approximately 2x what you have downloaded. This helps keep torrents active and relatively quick, while not placing the bulk of the bandwidth burden on a few seeders.

You've had a good answer by letstakealook, but just to expand on one point, you need to leave your torrent application (qbittorrent or whatever) running in the background for an extended period. If you close the app and don't load it again after you've got the download then you're not seeding - seeding means to share it to others after you've finished downloading

Really appreciate the response, thank you. I do actually have those 3 albums (bought the CDs), I'm more chasing the rarer stuff. But that link will get added and seeded now

You can seed without port forwarding, it just means the other side needs to have it.

Just keep your torrent client running and people will connect

You don't absolutely need port forwarding to seed. As long as the other side has a port open you'll be able to upload to them.

To keep things simple, they must be left in the same location as wherever the download client puts them, and the client stays open. I use an organiser and very useful tool called Radarr, it monitors your downloads and it lets you hardlink the video files once they've completed, which both allows the download client to keep seeding, and the media server you may use to keep using it.

A hardlink involves some intimate knowledge of how storage works, it can be done manually but the best option is to let a program handle it for you. Note: To hardlink, the download location and media library location must be on the same storage device, and the Sonarr user must have write access to the downloaded file. For me, group write access didn't help. This way it will not duplicate storage.

Generally, some areas and Internet Service Providers might crack down on torrenting of any sort, so using a VPN is a smart way to not get your IP noticed. My area's authority and ISP don't care, so I'm not too sure.

Just after you downloaded it. Keep the program open so you are seeing automatically.. Meaning others can download the content from your computer. Assuming you correctly configured your firewall/router to open up the right ports.