Financing Zerogain

An Avatar charge is a fair thing. I do agree with Joel here (first I know ) however adverts @ ZG not really, thats one of the reasons its so popular.
Its not that sort of site. Neturality has always been its bag.
I personally feel keeping that way would be benefical. Wm
How much is the site to run with the increased Bandwidth then? say 200 users @£5 is £1k that should mopre than do the job?

 

Must say I'd like to see ZG kept advert free - well worth a fiver or whatever. Discrete donations preferably.

 

Why not see how much moolah is generated from voluntary donations before considering advertising? Google Ads are unobtrusive and because they are "random" don't compromise the neutrality of the forum either but I tend to agree with Ian and Joel about ads on the forum (don't like the idea).

As Joel said though, it's no longer my forum so my opinion should only count as much as anyone elses

Michael.

 

Michael,

Do you miss being the administrator, ever?

Cheers,

Jon

 

I am not sure this forum is big enough to have a subsribtion, I am a subsriber on an other forum, but that has 30,000 members, even then there are only 100 subsribers so I don't think enough people will subsribe to make it worth while.

Google adsense is good, but I don't think it will cover the cost of hosting to be honest.

There is also another problem for Future Publishing and Haymarket, these new features will probably kill Hifi Choice and What HIFI dead

It is an issue though, and the more bandwidth you need the much more expensive it gets, my site only costs me £15 a year to host for example.

Edit also the problem with google adds is you get annoying ones like

"HIFI Turntable with AM/FM radio just £49.99 + P&P"

 

fair enough points AT but lets look at the demographics of this site for a bit. There appears to be a hardcore group of people who enjoy using this forum and who have spent a largish chunk of their income on HiFi, suggesting to them (and anybody else, (lets not built a clique here)) that for a small cost the ZG community can remain independent of ads and retain its origins might well be appealing to them. Or it might not, but are ads gonna generate enough cash? And can someone please tell me what these costs might be?

 

Thanks for the input so far.... It would really help if everyone would vote the way they feel because several people who've posted their view have not reflected this in the poll.

I certainly value the opinions of those who've been around this forum longer (and its predecessor, certainly before I came to this forum). If you feel that not having adverts is a USP of Zerogain and something that is part of the nature of the forum that should be preserved then I'm conscious of not spoiling that.

The thing that makes this forum is the people, obviously. That's the very reason that I've posted this thread rather than just going ahead with adverts.

I don't know what the exact cost is at the moment. It's much higher than a typical hosting package because it is a dedicated server and we're pushing higher bandwidths. However, we're currently investigating a move of hosts because the market has improved significantly since the enscape server was originally set up.

If there's enough people prepared to make donations then I'm happy to go that route. It's probably best to set up a target number for donations to reach. I'll discuss things with the rest of the admin and see where we want to go.

I will just re-iterate the point that any advertising on this forum would not be for profit nor would it indicate any affiliation to the advertisers.

 

I am not sure how much bandwidth we are talking about but it wouldn't surprise me if its quite a bit more than £100 per month, which may not sound like much but thats £1200 a year, thats an awful lot of money.

Good point about the demographics, the site I was talking about is a student site where people don't have much money, most the subsribers are working now anyway.

There would have to be at least 20 subsribers to make the subsription areas active though, otherwise it would be a total waste of money.

I think its clear that adverts won't pay for the server they never do. Forums as a single entity are never profitiable, the student forum I am a member is is actually used as advertising station the owners business. It would be a bit like Sony sponsering this forum but that would spell the end for Zerogain as it would no longer impartial.

 

Adverts and donations for me, although the name and shame idea I don't like as I prefer anonimity. How about having bank account details on the site for transfers as paypal take a large percentage (20-30% from memory)

Subscribed sites die IME, not being able to advertise unless subscribed sounded a good idea but looking back I came here originally to place an ad (which I wouldn't have done if I had to subscribe) but found I prefer it here than endless toy out the pram style arguments about cable differencies that are over 50 pages long on the forum I used at the time.

Might be an idea to give people an idea of how much is a good amount to give and post reminder as funds are needed? I think most on here will be happy to support the site as it gives much back IMO.

 

Frankly I think the only practical solution is advertising or totally cutting back on the features. I am unconvinced that any of the other suggestions would generate the necessary income and may also have a more adverse effect on the forum than a few discrete ads at the top. Anyways, Ads aren't necessarily a bad thing if they are for stuff you might actually want and are relevant to the forum.

 

Do the extra costs per month for the additional features outweigh the cost of implementation? should ZG remain "as is"?

 

Nope.

...but thanks for asking

Michael.

 

If 'as is' is a tenable situation then I'd say leave it. Not broken = don't fix.

If 'as is' is no longer tenable then my vote goes for non-instrusive, no strings attached advertising.

 

I have to agree with the if it aint broke bit. Do we need a gallery? There is one on the car forum I frequent and TBH I don't see the point, people host their own images and paste the links here works ok although size should be the issue i have a 1600x1024 monitor and still have to scroll to look at some stuff.

ROBS HAIR BRAINES SCHEME
There is quite a business comunity here and an online network could be created where a business could be offered and a % (10%) of profit goes to ZG. Could be a win win win (vendor/buyer/forum) situation?

 

must admit, if 'scaling back' zerogain meant no need for funds, then I think that would be my favorite option.

Is the size of the database part of the problem? - how about deleting all photographs that are over say 6 months old? (keeping old message text is important I think, but not the photos)

Just another thought.

It would be good I think to get an idea of costs for different options... you know like...

1) scaled down zerogain without X or Y costs ....
2) full monty zerogain packed with features costs...
3) zerogain like it is now costs...

If we could get 50 people to pay just £1 per month on a DD then you've got £560 p/a

 

My pleasure.

I may you ask you again from time to time... :duck:

Jon

 

Hi,

Knowing SFA about running a forum or web service, I'd assume a significant proportion of the cost base will be driven by bandwidth, with a large factor being images. Would cutting back on the size of images hosted here result in a worthwhile cost reduction? As has been noted by others earlier in the thread, most people are able to host images on other servers/dedicated 'photo sites etc. so restricting this facility on ZG to preserve bandwidth could be a good thing. In saying this, I'm assuming that images linked to a post but hosted on other servers does not adversly impact ZG.

Wonder what the impact of serving up all those avatars has on bandwidth?

Given my ignorance of this web stuff, it would be good to see a simple breakdown of fixed and variable costs and their drivers. This would allow us to better understand the impacts of either decreasing or increasing forum functionality and therefore what sort of funding and funding model would be appropriate and acceptable.

Well enough of the waffle. As much as I don't like the idea of advertising here, I'd accept it if were as unobtrusive as possible and meant the forum remained viable. But lets go into this eyes open fully understanding the cost/feature options.

Regards,

Stuart.

 

I'm with Joel on this one. Don't install high-bitrate but low-information-value features, keep it simple and clean. People come here for discussion. Install a donation system.

One other idea: the JBL forum had a raffle and raised a substantial amount of money by selling tickets to a nice speaker. If one of the more affluent members were to donate something, the proceeds from a raffle should pay the hosting costs for the next ten years or so.

Btw, why don't you give us the plain numbers - what are the costs of the board, how much would the Google adverts bring etc.? We could then better judge if donations would be sufficient to cover the costs.

 

My vote would be to avoid changing the forum if that results in the need for more money.

With free image hosting like this with clickable thumbnails:
www.imageshack.us


There is no need to pay for the bandwidth photos take up.

How is pfm funded? Worth a comparison?

Please tell us the numbers, right now we haven't got a clue what order of magnitude we are talking about.

Cheers

Jason

 

wife,kid, house to support , so don't ask me

what about taking a small % of the sale of kit through the second hand section, might be difficult to police but most people are honest