You know, maybe I am just annoyed in general, but seriously you invited us all here and said this wasn't going to be a commercial venture and you said that you were able to support it regardless of its size and here we are playing the lets put ads on the site game? More than a few people have offered money, time and expertise to help with the site. Here I thought that was the meaning of a community, everyone coming together to make something work? Instead, much like a large portion of this thread, it seems like all everyone is seeing is $$$$$$$$.
I have no doubt that every provider here is ready to pitch money for ads, after all, who wouldn't want their name all over a forum. Do some psychological research, if you put flashy items on a site and promote it as "good" and the customer values the forum content, this is an automatic endorsement of said item. So, people will tend to spend their money on it because they think the ads reflect the opinions of said community. Do we get a say in which ads get posted? Unless of course this is a commercial venture and not a community? With WHT and LET now, it is common knowledge, they are there for among all other reasons, to make money, is that the goal here as well? I thought it was to provide people a free and open source of information about this industry, its providers and to help people learn?
I will restate what I said before, I do not believe this site is actually costing you that much money to sustain, and before you proceed to put ads on it, I would like an explanation of what those costs are that you are unable to afford? I have a sneaking suspicion with a few reasonable contributors you could pay for the whole thing without need of ads. Please, prove me wrong.
Cheers!
Your concerns are valid and I feel are shared among many here. You're likely not alone in thinking this and I'm glad you mentioned it.
Basically, I'm a situation where I need to re-evaluate things. I didn't expect the site to grow this fast.
The cost of hosting right now is low, very low. There is no denying it. BuyVM is great, but geographically speaking, Las Vegas is not a good location for the visitor base here. People complain too often of poor performance, poor loading speeds, etc. But I stay here because of the affordable DDoS protection, which is something very much needed.
I'd
like to move elsewhere, closer to the visitors. Or at the very least, be able to afford a better setup to have content closer to those accessing it. That I can not do out of pocket.
Many have offered donations and services, but then what happens? I've had more offers for free stuff than I can count, and while I am grateful, I am hesitant. I don't want to deal with explaining to XYZ host why I took the plan from ZYX host instead of theirs. I dont want the community to think I'm in bed with ZYX host because they're hosting us for free (and honestly, half the offers for free hosting are in locations not that ideal for the site). Donations I was open to, but what happens on the months when there are none? Assuming, for example, the site is hosted elsewhere and we were using $200/mo DDoS protection from Cloudflare, where does that money come from?
I'm not wanting to make a living off this, but I'd like to be able to afford a better setup to serve content to the visitors better.
Keep in mind when I started this forum I was working at URPad, and people didn't want to come here because of that thinking it was going to be to promote that. I made good money there, but left after the company sold and wanted me to relocate to Houston, TX. The 30th of May was my last day there, and I have been living off of savings since then. On a personal note, my savings wasn't that big. My lease is almost up and I will be moving out of this house into a cheaper apartment downtown. I just started a part time temporary job yesterday working for another company and that will be a 4-6 week job. What is left over at the end of the month after upgrading things it will be split between myself and Don. Martin says he doesn't want any, but I was going to split the leftovers with those who keep this place running. (Unlike LET/WHT).
I'm trying to keep things honest and trying to keep things good. I can accept free stuff and deal with speculation and the possibility that the site may be up/down due to moving around often if donations are insufficient month to month or I can sell ad-space, do so honestly, get a much better setup so this place can remain stable, fast, and grow and get compensated very poorly with what is left over for the amount of time and effort I put into here dealing with stuff.
not sure why you want to reinvent the wheel sort to speak just to save a few bucks.. I would go with BSA and the exposure you get from being listed on their site alone will probably compensate the 25% that they charge for commission..That and the fact that you would not need to worry about setting up your own software for ADs and they take care of billings for you seems worth it IMO.
