Maybe there should be some kind of awareness campaign so that everyone knows what kinds of expenses are connected with hosting a website. I have no idea myself. Now I'm curious about FindingBrokeback. Guess I had better ask some questions there, too.
Is this posted anywhere else on the Forum?
1) I have offered to donate hosting services to the FindingBrokeback site (we are on a Linux-based server probably similar to the Yahoo! server they are on now) with only 30% of our disk space utilized, so we could easily accomodate their entire site and call it a public service (or returning the favor for the indispensible guide that it is), as long as they continue to administer it themselves. It's something we can discuss down the road if they ever want to dispense with the Yahoo! hosting they apparently are using now.
2) Our costs usually consist of our hosting account, which is around $50 a month, our copyright royalty arrangement which licenses music for Radio 1/2/Premium which is now about $70 a month including the Live365 account, the chat room system which I think is around $25 a month, plus ancillary hosting for our backup site/status page + overflow storage space which runs $10 a month, plus registration fees for SMF as a "charter member" and various software programs which have amounted thus far to under $250 total. When the site began, our costs were around $15 a month, but we were asked to depart from our old host because we were on a server shared with dozens of their other clients, and our community completely overwhelmed their machine! Very small websites can be run for next to nothing, but when something catches on, as we have, you have to move into professional web hosting contracts and dedicated machines, and that's what we've been doing.
The ads defray some of those expenses, but not very much anymore. I may shake things up and move those around some. The overwhelming majority of costs are paid with the generous contributions of residents and out of pocket. I anticipate with our ongoing growth, we will probably need to step up the hosting account (not so much for disk space but to accomodate the impact of the number of users online) by the end of the year, which will put us in the $75-120 a month range. I think the other shoe has yet to drop with copyright royalty rate increases which are still being worked out. I think we'll definitely see some increased costs there as well, but I think it's well worth paying them so we are 100% legal and we have the ability to build multimedia into our community. I have also kicked in around $50 to experiment with purchasing ads to promote our site on Google and MSN search engines, but haven't been doing much of that lately because it has gotten a bit unwieldly to keep track of that. I will use some of the free ad coupons I've gotten to promote BBM Radio in the near future in hopes of attracting people back here using another angle.
Part of the issue here is that I am loathe to run endless "pledge drives" and do begathons because they are unseemly to me, so people usually forget to contribute unless prompted, and I usually won't do the prompting unless things get a bit out of hand. I do believe we should have the flexibility to keep the community growing and to open up new services and features, and we look for the most cost-effective way to do those things. We can be amazingly frugal. I am confident that with the help of our residents (and even SMALL amounts can make a big difference - even a few dollars), we'll do fine.
And as I think I've mentioned before, I am not comfortable handling big dollar projects that involve thousands and thousands of dollars of people's money. If we ever tackled something big like DC did with their book, I'd want us to have a professional accountant handling things. I am more comfortable keeping us away from large projects that involve raising a ton of money just because I don't want to be in charge of it.
One thing that is important is that anyone making a contribution should see their name in green here. Not only do you deserve the recognition (and the fact so many residents believe in our community that they help partner with us to keep it going is actually a good way to encourage others to toss some change our way -- whether it's 50 cents or $50.00, both are equally welcomed), but there are added features for contributors that you gain access to. So if I have somehow missed anyone, please PM me right away and let me know.
