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Monday, July 28, 2003
Beggar, Borrower, Dealer
A little more feedback on donations and site costs.
From a site that tried advertising but uses donations:
I tried popups last year: made $300 and pissed of a bunch of users. Not a good idea. We killed all ads.
Since opening the site last year, we have made roughly $1,800 in donations.
One small problem:
We are hosted on two dedicated server: $168 a month during Big Brother.
Cost of two servers per year - $1965
I'm not including the several hundred for the board software, the cost of the site itself, etc.
You don't run a reality board to make money. If you're very lucky, you break even. Then again, what better way to feed a Big Brother addiction?
From a site that uses advertising
I make a little money from my site - not much but enough to cover hosting and domain costs, with a little left over.
Hosting costs per year run from $420 to $540 depending on bandwidth useage. In a poor month I make $20 to $30 in advertising. In a great month I can make as much as $150. Over the last year I have brought in $720 - so $300 made at the most.
I only use banner ads and pop-under ads - trying to make the ads as un-intrusive as possible. Don't use pop-ups or the In-Vue that come scrolling across the screen and won't go away until you close them - they are annoying!
From a site that tried advertising but uses donations:
I tried popups last year: made $300 and pissed of a bunch of users. Not a good idea. We killed all ads.
Since opening the site last year, we have made roughly $1,800 in donations.
One small problem:
We are hosted on two dedicated server: $168 a month during Big Brother.
Cost of two servers per year - $1965
I'm not including the several hundred for the board software, the cost of the site itself, etc.
You don't run a reality board to make money. If you're very lucky, you break even. Then again, what better way to feed a Big Brother addiction?
From a site that uses advertising
I make a little money from my site - not much but enough to cover hosting and domain costs, with a little left over.
Hosting costs per year run from $420 to $540 depending on bandwidth useage. In a poor month I make $20 to $30 in advertising. In a great month I can make as much as $150. Over the last year I have brought in $720 - so $300 made at the most.
I only use banner ads and pop-under ads - trying to make the ads as un-intrusive as possible. Don't use pop-ups or the In-Vue that come scrolling across the screen and won't go away until you close them - they are annoying!
