Financing Growing Websites? 174
William asks: "I'm currently writing PHP and MySQL code that runs a website that is receiving a modest amount of hits per day. Currently we are able to reasonably pay the montly costs of running this website without a problem, but we are growing larger every month and I could imagine that in the not so far future we will need to start finding ways to finance the cost of running the site. One thing that conserns me is that more and more websites that are being run by average people are on thier way to being down now because they can not afford to pay for the amount of resources being pushed through every month. Up until now banner ads have help displace the cost of running a site, but from what I've been seeing, that is no longer true.
I remeber when Slashdot was just Chips&Dips, and figure this would be the place to go when asking how to scale up a website in an affordable manner."
Re:Religion sells? Grow up. (Score:1)
>to churches actually goes, even if it renders
>your clichéd comment irrelevant?
>Feeding the poor. Healing the sick. Housing the
>homeless.
>
>lot more of his or her income to charitable
>causes than your average Slashdot reader
So much wishful thinking, so little time. Where is the money going?
To support church bureaucracy.
To the legal defence of thousands of church-employed pedophiles.
Don't believe it?
Some examples:
"In the Roman Catholic Church there are over 800 priests that have been removed from ministry as a result of allegations against them. We also know of 1,400 insurance claims on the books and that the Church has paid out over $1 billion in liability with an estimated $500 million pending. One noted expert claims that there are over 5,000 priests with some type of allegation against them. If this is true, then there are at least 1,000,000 direct victims of clergy sexual abuse and between 4-6 million indirect victims in the U.S."
--- http://www.thelinkup.com/stats.html
Browsing the rest of the statistics detailed should be a sobering experience for you.
"The Anglican Church administered 26 "Indian residential schools" between 1820 and 1969. It, along with the Catholic and United Churches, is now involved in numerous lawsuits arising from alleged physical, sexual and "cultural" abuse during the operation of those schools. 6,200 people have already sued. The figure could reach 10,000 if the courts accept seven class-action suits now pending. The potential liability is estimated at $(C)1 billion."
--- http://www.thelinkup.com/canada2.html
Why not spend an hour reading through a handful of the crimes of abuse your church donations are going to defend against. There are hundreds of reports, detailing thousands upon thousands of victims, here:
http://www.thelinkup.com/crimindex.html
Given what qualifies "religious donations", and how the money is really spent, you'll understand why I am less than impressed with studies that report religious vs. non-religious donation patterns.
> Who do you think started "The Red Cross"
> and "Doctors Without Borders"?
In both cases, not any religious organization.
Were you guessing?
From the Encyclopaedia Britannica:
"The Red Cross arose out of the work of Henri Dunant, a Swiss humanitarian, who, at the Battle of Solferino, in June 1859, organized emergency aid services for Austrian and French wounded. In his book Un Souvenir de Solferino (1862; A Memory of Solferino) he proposed the formation in all countries of voluntary relief societies, and in 1863 the International Committee for the Relief of the Wounded was created. This organization in turn spawned national Red Cross societies."
Red Cross and Red Crescent
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=64537&toc
"Doctors Without Borders was founded in 1971 by 10 French physicians who were dissatisfied with the neutrality of the Red Cross."
Doctors Without Borders
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=368593&to
If I were you I would pack that Christian smugness up somewhere where it wont embarass you again for a long long time.
Re:almost another question (Score:1)
Crap. I'm planning to do exactly that with a Slashcode-based site I'm developing. I thought I was the first one to think of it. :-) (Well, maybe I am ... I thought of it a few months ago, just haven't gone live yet.)
Chips and Dips (Score:1)
almost another question (Score:1)
For example, if our Beloved Zesty CmdrTaco were open to the idea, I'm sure there are people who would pay to be a required slashbox, just for the hits. It's almost like a banner ad, but it could be considered valuable info.
The slashbox perhaps isn't a good example, because that genre is all about user preferences, but what if CNN were to start selling you space to put 5 headlines per day in? You maintain the data via whatever means you like. The data gets pulled from your site and links to your site, giving you tons of hits and links back to your site.
But we're talking about MAKING money to pay for current resources. Well, if you're concerned about paying for more bandwidth and more server power etc, sell some space on your page. You sell it the same way you would sell a banner ad, you get this much space, and it'll be up for this much time. if you sell it right, you'll get someone who buys the spot right under your menu for a year.
Except it's NOT a banner ad, it's a list of news headlines, or a list of recently added resources, or whatever. Something that gives THEM hits, and gives YOU money AND added content.
Why would anyone pay you for this? Well, you're looking for financing because you're presumably getting good traffic. People will pay to have their content in front of eyeballs. And if you get the right people to pay, it could significantly add to the value of your site, makeing MORE traffic, make MORE people want to pay you MORE money.
I love my job.
Don't improve. (Score:1)
What this dose is make the site running costs into known quantities. A T3 or a P4 costs $x and will only get cheaper. Your labor costs will not increse but your add revenue might.
Another side benifit of this is that it slows the rate at which new visitors are added.
Re:I'm in the same position. (Score:1)
Re:I'm in the same position. (Score:1)
However, I'm not sure you will be able to do it in the bounds that you have set for yourself. I realise that you want to 'give something back' to the community, and you do, but if you're doing it at an exteme loss, it's not worth it.
Saddly, I think you need to go a *bit* more commercial, and my idea for that is a 'pay-for-bandwidth' scheme. Take for example the Distro releases we've had these last few weeks -- Every site was (and probably still is) completely satturated... and if you can connect to a site, you'll only be able to get 3-4 kb a second. Now, in such a case, I would gladly pay you 5 bucks if you could give me a high-speed connection at times like those...
You could have the free stuff there, still, but you could also offer the option of users being able to download over a faster, members only connection for a small fee. Most people would jsut sign up for one month at a time or so, but still..
I'm assuming that your co-loc fees are a few hundred a month.. chances are, you would normally only make 20-30 bucks a month, but when A major distro revision is released, you could easily get a few hundred, which would offset the losses incurred in the other months.
Just a thought
.
Re:Host some other sites (Score:1)
The easy of being a sysadmin in a case like this varies inversely with the kind of people you're going to sublet your service to -- if they're techincal people who can handle things on they own, okay, but if they're newbies who just want to sell Furbies on-line, watch out.
.
Re:Get bought! (Score:1)
That would be a fine assertion if savvy business people were the only people to spend money on an established venture. The dot-com boom taught us otherwise, I thought...
Tim
:s/curtails/curtains/ (Score:1)
Accept money from your users (Score:1)
I was in a situation where I had a small clan of geeks on one of my NetBSD machines where I worked. I started hosting some small sites for friends, and all was cool.
When I decided to leave, I realised that I couldn't (and didn't want to) just dump everyone, so I decided to colocate. At first, I was paying the bill out of pocket, but I asked users for donations, and they were more than happy to give.
As time has gone on, I have added paying customers and now have more than 50 domains and about 100 users. The people more than pay for the colocation, and the additional money has gone to several server upgrades and additions.
Now sixgirls.org, running NetBSD on an Amiga, is actually pulling a profit and is growing nicely. People like the server because it is a community, not an impersonal ISP. People prefer to develop there because they can talk with me directly and have things they need added and updated easily.
It hasn't always been easy, but taking that first step to ask for a few dollars from those who benefit the most is the best thing to do. In my case, they were more than happy to give it.
Good luck!
Re:I'm in the same position. - used to do othis (Score:1)
Get an ISP gig (Score:1)
Why not mirror? (Score:1)
T-Shirts (Re:Cost Prohibition/Charity Route) (Score:1)
Of course, CafePress has to keep their costs down so they only offer a limited selection of items and styles (I'd kill for black or blue shirts instead of white) and the base price for most items is a little too high. That notwithstanding, it's still a good idea that eliminates the risk of printing your own shirts and the hassle of running a Web shopping cart. Definitely a way to increase revenue for your site.
PNG (Score:1)
Re:Well, you WOULD know (Score:1)
Re:I'm in the same position. (Score:1)
Re:I'm in the same position. (Score:1)
Comprendo
Re:I'm in the same position. (Score:1)
Rick
Re:I'm in the same position. (Score:1)
I'm an apache admin and developer for a living, but unfortunatly have too little time for my own site.
I'm in the same position. (Score:1)
I have been funding my website out of my pocket, but due to growth this is going to be impossible soon. Plus, I want very much to keep the site in the good standing with all of the users, most of witch are open source advocates like myself. Colocating is pretty expensive and prices don't seem to be coming down. I would love to make the site self sufficient without the need for annoying ads or blatent commercialism. Any Ideas?
Rick
distribut-it (Score:1)
Re:I'm in the same position. (Score:1)
Your site provides a neat service, what would be REALLY great is if everyone who donates get's 'special access' or something > RH7.1 is available for 'gold members', anonymous users must wait three days
Come Out Even (Score:1)
Re:Uh? (Score:1)
Re:TV analogies (PBS) (Score:1)
Ever called your cable operator and asked them why you have to pay for religious channel 94, which broadcasts some Brazilian guy with Portugese accent sermonizine in Spanish? "Because we have to" is the answer you'll get. Same goes for local access channels... they bring in 0.00 revenue for your cable operator, but the government tell them they gotta have provide it.
Re:Lighten up on graphics (and other suggestions) (Score:1)
possible caveat (Score:1)
On the other hand, I believe that you should invest a fair amount of time and effort into streamlining your site as much as possible. Not only will it cut down on your costs and server load, you can tell your visitors you did it for their own benefit, so they can have a faster, more navigable site. Great PR stuff.
-------------------------------------------
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.
Getting Free Resources (Score:1)
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Re:Getting Free Resources (Score:1)
Only problem is, you need to kill somebody once in while.
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group effort (Score:1)
Re:It's very difficult (Score:1)
If you're talking about needing a few hundred dollars a month in income to pay for the cost of operating the site and you have a good amount of traffic, it might be a good option.
Re:Pr0n does pretty good (Score:1)
"Bob, what's that on your screen. Are you reading a technical website again? Damn it, I'm paying you to watch this porn site. Now get back to work!"
Solution (Score:1)
1) Sell your website to a large corporation.
2) Buy a few hot cars to impress the chix with.
3) Sit back and let the site run itself.
It's a scam, I know, but it's been done before and should probably work again.
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Re:I'm in the same position. (Score:1)
cut the graphics and the flash! (Score:1)
if this [clanbob.net] (www.clanbob.net) is your website (as picked from the email adr.), then the only thing you need to do is cut the freaking Flash!!! And all those graphics!
that would *really* cut down your bandwidth. That is all well of course, if there is anything left afterwards...
cheers,
Roland
Re:I'm in the same position. (Score:1)
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Re:use mod_gzip (Score:1)
Any idea if that functionality will eventually be rolled into the Apache source?
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Project to Fix This (Score:1)
--
OliverWillis.Com [oliverwillis.com]
Re:Well, you WOULD know (Score:1)
I think you can send tips [squarefree.com] using any credit card or debit card (at least through PayDirect), but to recieve a tip you need a US-based credit card or debit card. I'm not sure what US-based means, but I think it's possible to get a US-based credit card in Europe. If you happen to know please tell me
Re:Speakeasy (Score:1)
But I feel its my duty to inform you that speakeasy, rock solid as it is, has included in most if not all DSL packages, redundant 24/7 nation wide 56K dialup support, in the off chance that you really really needed to email your boss or whatever and felt speakeasy was letting you down in this crucial 7 minute period of downness. Any account with a shell account can certainly dialup, the others I'm not so sure about.
-Daniel
Reduce Dynamicness so Caching helps you! (Score:1)
Host some other sites (Score:1)
Now for something completely different (Score:2)
My situation..and gzip (Score:2)
Also, as a side note, you can dramatically decrease bandwidth for pages with lots of HTML (like half-empty's front page) and only some small (cachable) sparse images via GZip compression. In the past when I've mentioned this to webmasters they're usually pretty surprised, never hearing of it before. Netscape 4, IE5, and Mozilla all support client side page decompression via GZip, and all it takes is an Apache plugin (or for servlets, I had to write it myself) to send the right headers along with the compressed data. It won't break on older browsers, it's just sends the uncompressed pages. A 35k front page (something I was feeling REALLY guilty about) now serves up at around 6k, and everyone breathes a lot easier.
Find a sponsor (Score:2)
You don't need to actually be bought or display ad banners to make this work. Simply find a company profiting off a similar theme as your site that won't actually conflict with what you offer and ask them to sponsor you and offer to put 'Sponsored by
If you can't find a sponsor consider making one for yourself. For instance I am a web developer so to help sponsor my non-commercial sites I have links from those sites to my business homepage. Some of these sites were created just for that purpose.
Get a friendly/supportive ISP (Score:2)
Other than that, as someone else said here, cut down the amount of graphics you are using, that will really help on bandwidth consumption. One thing that I tried on the pictures section of my site [claws-and-paws.com] was to not have any thumbnails on the pages, but instead fo use Javascript popup windows for the pictures. This has two benefits:
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Well.. that's easy. (Score:2)
'We do something for people for free, and it's really popular.. gee.. how can we keep it going now that we can't afford to do this free thing for everyone out of our pockets anymore?'
Charge the users. Don't think they'll pay? Get sponsors. Don't think they're interested? Then perhaps there is no reason to keep it going.
I have (Score:2)
The great thing about PayPal for donations is that I don't have to worry about sending my CC number to some strange site, and since it's a donation I don't have to worry about receiving something in return. For those kind of one-way small transactions, you can't beat PayPal.
Venture Capitalists!! (Score:2)
Are you kidding? These days it's easy to get money! Venture capitalists are just throwing money after people who have even a vague business plan!
First you need to get a flashy management team, create a company with a name ending in .com, and mention Linux, P2P or B2B if possible. I'd say something like "linuxp2pweb.com", then just go out there with a big money bag and start taking VC money. It's a no-lose situation. Nobody expects web companies to make money yet anyhow. If that many people are visiting your site then it must be a good thing, and will eventually make money somehow, right?
Of course, with all that money you'll need to advertise to bring in even more people to your site. Note: it doesn't matter if each visitor costs you money, because the secret is you'll make it all back in volume. The best way to get people to notice you is to create a flashy ad and air it during the superbowl. Sure it's expensive, but you have to spend money to make money, right? The best ads are the ones targeted to gen-x-ers. Make sure to avoid mentioning anything about your site other than your domain name -- anything else is sure to be ignored by the viewers.
Meanwhile you need to hire more people to proactively grow the mindshare of your site while leveraging your fundamental skillset. Ideally everyone you hire should be under 23. Any older than that and they'll bring along too much baggage and obsess about "standards", "security" and "planning".
Anyhow, good luck (like you'll need it). You couldn't be entering this business at a better time!
Re:Amazon's Micropayment SCAM... (Score:2)
Amazon charges a 15% fee to give YOUR MONEY to a site you want to support financially. So while passing the plate around to the Internet community, they are taking 15% of your offerings as a fee. In the spirit of, uh, supporting independent content sites? Sorry, that is much too high a fee to be anything but a scam.
And you know this because you run a similar site where you charge 5% and are in the black? Perhaps you've done complicated revenue and cost estimates that you just forgot to share with us? Or maybe god just revealed Amazon's accounting statements to you?
I'm stunned at the number of people on the Internet who appear to believe that hardware, bandwidth, staff, and capital are delivered by pixies in the middle of the night. At 15% I'd bet they are currently losing money, and won't break even until they are doing a fair bit more volume. For all the contribute-via-Amazon sites I've looked at, none of them has collected as much as a couple thousand bucks, and most are a lot less.
Re:Lighten up on graphics (and other suggestions) (Score:2)
Re:Lighten up on graphics (and other suggestions) (Score:2)
http://www.mnot.net/ for good tips.
Also, you can use gzip compression on both static and dynamic pages to save bandwith, with basically no cost for static pages (only compressed once) and little for dynamic pages. Computing power is cheaper then bandwith at this point.
http://www.linux.ie/articles/tutorials/mod_gzip
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/apache/gzip/get
http://thingy.kcilink.com/modperlguide/modules/
or just search for mod_gzip or the like under google.
Cahing, caching, caching... (Score:2)
All you need to do is make sure URLs are unique and totally define what's in the page, set up a good caching policy for all your site and watch your bandwidth costs go doooooown.
Amazon's Micropayment SCAM... (Score:2)
Why is it a scam, why are they crooked for doing so?
Amazon charges a 15% fee to give YOUR MONEY to a site you want to support financially. So while passing the plate around to the Internet community, they are taking 15% of your offerings as a fee. In the spirit of, uh, supporting independent content sites? Sorry, that is much too high a fee to be anything but a scam.
If you want to support these sites, like Andrew Sullivan or Modern Humorist, do yourself a favor and mail them a check or money order. Don't enrich Amazon and some credit card companies in the process of supporting content you enjoy, it just ain't right.
Amazon.com- The Relentless Pursuit of a Business Model.
Religion sells? Grow up. (Score:2)
You want to know where most of the money given to churches actually goes, even if it renders your clichéd comment irrelevant?
Feeding the poor. Healing the sick. Housing the homeless. Yeah, I know it sucks to have someone distort the picture with facts, but such is life. The money raised by churches isn't going to put another layer of gold-paint on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, nimrod. Who do you think started "The Red Cross" and "Doctors Without Borders"? Linux Torvalds?
Here is a statement I'd like to see you contest. You're average devout Christian is giving a lot more of his or her income to charitable causes than your average Slashdot reader (no, buying clothing from ThinkGeek doesn't count as a charitable contribution, nerds). Hmmm. They must be doing it because their pastors tell them if they don't, they'll go to Hell, right?
Re:Amazon's Micropayment SCAM... (Score:2)
It is called a merchant account. [webdevelopersjournal.com]
These individuals could get their own merchant accounts from a PROVIDER [http] and use open-source ecommerce software to automatically receive and process their own credit card payments. Paying only standard card commission fees. What if they don't own their own hardware, bandwidth, staff and capital pixies?If they didn't have their own server, they could use someone virtual server outfit with merchant services support built in, there are hundreds out there, including one from Yahoo Store [yahoo.com].
My criticism isn't of the struggling content provider. I recognize their plights. You can bet that what Amazon current charges 15% for, someone else is going to offer for a lot less, and steal away whatever business Amazon does have by telling the various content players that they will process online donations for a fraction of the 15% that Amazon charges. Leaving Amazon yet again to search for a model that makes actual fiscal sense, before they run out of money.
My own business ran credit cards inhouse on a $900 PC running IC Verify [yahoo.com] with a dialup account ($19.95/a month). It could be run on a $400 PC today.
Amazon has made enough in commissions on Andrew Sullivan [andrewsullivan.com] alone to pay for that PC and software and the dialup account. for a year. So the rest is gravy.
Those atheists make it hard on themselves... (Score:2)
It really sucks when the nature of your online business enterprise is to run in direct opposition to Divine Favour.
The religious sites at least have the additional avenue of prayer to explore when the money starts running tight.
Re:almost another question (Score:2)
If you want to know if it works, as the guys over at newsmax.com [newsmax.com]. It looks like they're selling headline space. (See the headlines that start with "Adv:" and are usually about hair loss treatment.)
Re:Well, you WOULD know (Score:2)
It's not surprising that they didn't publish that article. It sounds very similar to one that they published [slashdot.org] over two months earlier.
Re:I'm in the same position. (Score:2)
I mean, if it's costing you money, I don't think you should feel bad about asking those who are benefitting to share the costs.
I have so much trouble finding reliable mirror sites anymore that I would happily pay a buck or two for a solid, fast mirror.
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Use Freenet (Score:2)
As wise Yogurt once said... (Score:2)
Seriously though, you either have to get on to subscription based services, donations or merchandising (or any combination of the three) to make money right now as a little guy
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Welcome to America (Score:2)
Once again, welcome to the team!
Or use mod_gzip? (Score:2)
http://www.remotecommunications.com/apache/mod_
Re:Get bought! (Score:2)
Not necessarily. If someone buys your site, then obviously they already have some ideas on how to grow revenue with it. After all, no savvy business person would spend money on an established venture without first doing an audit of the books, the business model, etc. Selling the site could be a way to grow the brand by putting it in more capable marketing hands.
Re:TV analogies (PBS) (Score:2)
-DVK
I read it everyday... (Score:2)
I know mine [blacknova.net] don't... but i thought that was 'cause I had a few hundred users seeing thousands of pages per month each... you must have thousands seeing one or two a day...
Re:the kids are allright (Score:2)
Re:Well, you WOULD know (Score:2)
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Wishful Thinking... (Score:2)
Having said that, I still wish you the best of luck in your efforts.
Re:Banner ads (Score:2)
Yes, well, obviously enough I disagree with Jakob Nielsen. In a word where people put advertisements in airline dinners, ATM screens and, horrifically enough, other advertisements*, I hardly think Internet advertising is going to have zero value.
I'd be surprised if mass-market Web ads ever get back up to the $40-50 CPM wishful thinking of 1998, but I don't see any reason that they couldn't level out at about $2 CPM. I'm told that that's about the price range of a billboard ad, and that's about how much impact your average banner ad has.
*I'm referring to my current pet peeve, the little "preview" scanner for the video games at Wal-Mart. In essence, you're asking Wal-Mart to show you an ad for the video game, but first they have to show you a different ad for toothpaste or something. At this rate we're going to reach the point where they won't give you your change unless you sit still and listen to them yammer on about their specials for a couple minutes.
Re:As wise Yogurt once said... (Score:2)
Re:Lighten up on graphics (and other suggestions) (Score:2)
I'd like to see browser tech that helps out, as well. I like a page with some pretty pictures (such as Slashdot's title, and the topic pics). Since I visit SlashDot everyday, I wish my browser would hold onto the images, so I wouldn't have to download them again, while flushing the ads that I download one times and look at zero times.
Microsoft was never one to cut down on bloat, however, so I doubt MSIE will get any smarter in the future. Is there any standards work out there to deal with this kind of problem?
Re:Religion sells? Grow up. (Score:2)
There are real Christians still left, but they are becoming fewer and fewer. Havn't you ever watched the many "Christian" cable networks? They are more like 24 hour infomercials selling prayers and blessings. Religion is in a sad state overall.
The argument is irrelevant, however. We were talking about using these religious tactics to make ourselves rich, in our own lines of work, which is something I would like very much to do.
I am an ordained reverend, after all. :)
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Re:Amazon's Micropayment SCAM... (Score:2)
I agree with you, it can be done cheaper, but I also think your logic is flawed.
I bet you don't hire consultants to write web pages for you either. Not everyone is a geek like us. To many, it would cost a lot more to hire someone to set up the whole thing. The bottom line is that if the people that use Amazon donations were technically savvy enough to do all this themselves, then they would. They are willingly paying the 15% so they don't have to pay someone to set up all this for them.
Also, if you think you can undercut Amazon so much, then do it and get rich! The fees from the merchant account provider on a $1 credit card payment are a high percentage, I bet Amazon is barely breaking even on payments smaller than $5.
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Re:Well, you WOULD know (Score:2)
You, the web site owner sign up for it, then you provide a link on your page through which people can send you micropayments.
Don't know if this link really works, Amazon has one messed up system, I can't tell which links are real and which ones are dynamically generated for my personal account, which it somehow associated with me even through a re-install. There is more than just cookies at work there, scary. Link [amazon.com]
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Re:Banner ads (Score:2)
Hey, instead of leaving this cyber-darwinism to natural selection, why don't we open up a "Stupid web site hunting season?" :)
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Re:TV analogies (Score:2)
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Re:Well, you WOULD know (Score:2)
Good point. My post was not meant to complain so much as to offer it in answer to the question, however.
I was under the impression that this Amazon system was much newer than that. I guess I shouldn't believe the marketspeak when they call it a "new feature". :)
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Well, you WOULD know (Score:2)
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NASCAR style sponsorship (Score:2)
hosting (Score:2)
Re:Pr0n does pretty good (Score:2)
Re:Pr0n does pretty good (Score:2)
Re:Religion sells? Grow up. (Score:2)
So what actually does pay for those gold-encrusted towers? Okay...maybe not gold encrusted, but at least in my neck of the woods, most of the churches are the biggest, newest, and nicest buildings around. Something has to pay for them....
No, they're doing it because it makes them feel good. And it's easier than volunteering at the local soup kitchen, or treating a homeless guy to a good meal and hot shower. As with most religious exercises, it's a way for them to absolve themselves of the sin that they have just becasue they're human....
Re:Lighten up on graphics (and other suggestions) (Score:2)
As for banner ads, most sites actually just reference the banner ad images via URL, as the ad images themselves are stored on the advertising company's own webservers, like ads.doubleclick.net for Doubleclick-based ads. Thus, banner ads do not usually contribute to the bandwidth utilization of the site that displays them. Granted,
Re:Run it like Yahoo (Score:2)
Lets reduce cost: optimize your graphics. Currently your second loading page (which I think is your true home page) is somewhere in the 128k - 200k range, that is way too much.
Next let's see what's you can do.
Do you have a subscriber list that you CAN send e-mail to. If so those names are worth about
4.00 to 5.50 per 1000 mailings.
if you have demographic data city, state, zip on those names
add 2.00 per 1000 names or
if you have age
add
if you have gender
add
if you have Income
add
if you have Creed or religion
add
if you have any likes or dislikes data
add
IF your list has an 90%+ average of women
add to the bottom 15% premium.
it seems that the women list are very valuable
I don?t know of anybody that?s getting over 25.00 per cpm on their mailing list.. I know a few people that are getting 9?s and 10?s.
That now covers income from mailings.
Banner advertising:
Work with someone that will sell you advertising. You give up 25% - 75% of your revenue, but your get income.
Check your web logs, can you correlate your page loadings, with geographic info and web site patrons likes and dislikes.
This is the rate I?ve been offered.
3.00 per cpm is easy to find. And could work as a first / second page loading
5.00 per cpm takes some work should be in the more targeted parts of the site
Over 10.00 per cpm, I?ve seen the contracts for this I have to give up 40% of my earnings to advertising broker for these rates.
You have to make sure you get about 5000 page loads per day. A page load says the entire page is downloaded, that?s what advertisers want.
spambait e-mail
my web site artistcorner.tv hip-hop news
please help me make it better
What others are doing (Score:2)
Those are about all the non-corporate websites or non-corporate-sponsored websites I visit.
Maybe you should visit these and other sites and just ask... "Hey... how do you afford all this?" Never hurts to ask.
Ryan T. Sammartino
No payments till spring!!! (Score:2)
we will need to start finding ways to finance the cost of running the site
Well, judging by the lifespan of some dotcoms lately, I'd say 90 days same-as-cash ought to do it.
the kids are allright (Score:2)
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In my best "Speak & Spell" voice- WRONG!... (Score:3)
"Co-branding a la Plastic?"..."WRONG! TRY AGAIN!"
"VC funding?"..."THAT IS INCORRECT! THE CORRECT SPELLING OF 'PROFITABILITY' IS..."
Methinks you've been overmoderated. BigTime! Don't tell Yahoo that Banner Ads are the way to go. They're still attempting to find an alternative business model that isn't so completely, utterly, dangerously cyclical and may actually lose money for the first time in several years.
Co-Branding isn't going to work, either. The collective powers of several money-losing BANNER AD driven websites don't amount to much, if anything. Have you visited Plastic [plastic.com] lately? No. And neither has anyone else. It has at least two very dire problems.
VC Funding - yeah, that used to be considered a business model, until somebody realized that, well, it just doesn't make sense to loan money to businesses with holes in every pocket of their proverbial pants, at least not if you want to get any money BACK.
VCs got stupid for a while, and wrote some big ass checks to dumb ass people. But those days are over, mate. And if you really want to make a VC pissed, I recommend you approach one and say, "I'd like to borrow $10,000,000. I have an idea for a business. It will make money combining ad banner revenue with co-branding, a la Plastic". You'll be lucky if you escape with your life.
"Okay Mr. Smartypants Smirkleton, then what DOES make money on the net?" Well, I'll tell you one thing. I'm very surprised to see no mention of ThinkGeek [thinkgeek.com] in this discourse. I've heard those guys move a boatload of products, a ton, and I'd believe it. What model is that, then? Well, it is specialty retail, targeting the various geek needs of the same community that Slashdot serves to inform (well). (A community that is extremely specialized, hence the obscure subjects considered newsworthy to the readership and authors.)
Yes, I know ThinkGeek is actually owned by VA Linux. But it seems to remain an independent business unit, from outward appearances. I suspect ThinkGeek's financials are one of the few bright spots in the VA Linux annual report. Sadly, they probably aren't broken out from other revenue streams for the public to see, because then we'd know how much more money VA Linux was losing on their core product lines.
Read this recent BusinessWeek story on MiniDots. You'll see that SPECIALIZATION is where it is at. [businessweek.com]
And no, after all that, I'm not going to also correct your sig file. You'll just have to do that for yourself.
compress them pages! (Score:3)
i've been using it for awhile now and the saved bandwidth in incredible.
note: i have no ties to this product whatsoever, it's just a kick-ass module.
Banner ads (Score:3)
I think we're seeing a banner ad backlash, both financially and rhetorically. Not only are they selling for less, but the voices calling them a sure-fire path to online riches are being replaced by voices declaring them dead and a horrible idea to begin with.
Personally, I think typical ad banner prices will probably even out to about the cost of hosting. This is based on one part basic economics and nine parts bald speculation.
My thought here is there are plenty of people who are willing to put up comic strips, video game reviews, and pages examining the minutiae of Christina Ricci's career as long as they don't have to actively shell out big bucks to do so. When income drops (as it has recently) many of these people will shut down their sites. This reduces the pool of available ad spaces, and makes ad space more valuable, driving prices up.
When ad income goes up beyond hosting costs, then more people are encouraged to put up their own sites, and the pool of ad spaces increases, driving prices down. So you see.
Obviously, there are exceptions to this, such as sites that are funded by companies with deep pockets, and sites that have operating expenses well beyond hosting (you can't run site about travel experiences unless you or your writers can afford to travel), but I think for your typical pro-am started-as-a-hobby site, this will hold true.
Re:It's very difficult (Score:3)
Now, that is kindof a harsh statement, don't you think? ;)
Re:Well, you WOULD know (Score:4)
My guess it that they figured they would have an advantage in the donation market because of their brand recognition and because of their "one-click" patent. When I made a compared [squarefree.com] various donation services last month, one of the things I noticed was that Amazon was the only one that used persistent login cookies (ie, didn't require the user to enter his/her password on each visit). Several other sites (PayPal and PayDirect) used persistent username cookies but session-only login cookies. I'd be interested to know if some of those other services had full login cookies before Amazon entered the financial market, or if they've always used username-only cookies (for security reasons).
Get bought! (Score:4)
I belive Slashdot solved this problem by being bought. :)
--TyLighten up on graphics (and other suggestions) (Score:5)
Another related trick which I use is to put the graphics which are necessary for my site in the web space that came with with Earthlink account. I figure I'm paying $20 a month for nothing right now (Earthlink is my backup account in case my DSL goes down, but my Speakeasy DSL has been absolutely rock solid so far) so I don't feel very guilty about offloading my traffic to Earthlink. If you have an ISP account that includes web space, consider putting your graphics there. This could save you considerable bandwidth.
Along those same lines, try to split up high traffic pages with a lot of content into multiple pages.
All of these changes also have the nice side effect of making your site easier to read and navigate. Not only is your site more accessible to the vision impared and users of text browsers like Lynx, but things tend to be more concise and consistent when you aren't focusing on form over function.
What I would recommend is using a web log analyzer such as Wusage or Analog to determine what pages draw the most bandwidth and focus all your energy on the top pages. As with software profiling where most resources are generally used by a very small portion of the code, you will probably find that a very small portion of your content is contributing to the majority of your bandwidth usage. On my site, it was a single page contributing to over half of my bandwidth usage and optimizing that page solved my bandwidth problems.
It's very difficult (Score:5)
One of the things that the recent dot-com bust has shown is the difficulty of making money off of a website, especially in the so-called B2C arena. Generally speaking, those sites have done the best that offer tangible goods, such as eBay and Amazon. /. does fine by providing information only via it's banner ads, but /. is an exception because of the huge amount of traffic it receives.
To answer your question, you have few options:
Banner ads
Co-branding a la Plastic [plastic.com]
VC funding
Goodwill of others
Subscriptions
None of these are ideal, and none (with the exception of VB funding) will bring huge amounts of cash to your bank account. If you are simply seeking to recoup costs, you will probably want to go the banner ad/goodwill route. If you're trying to make a profit, however, you'll need a business plan on some solid relationships.
Good luck.
- Rev.