It's very hard to predict the revenue, particularly with the adsense adverts were it's based on clicks rather than impressions. I'd make a guess if I could, but it varies so much with the subject matter and audience etc, I'd probably be miles off. As was mentioned briefly by amazingtrade, it's very unlikely to come anywhere close to the total cost of running the forum - by their nature they take up a lot of bandwidth and processing power compared to the number of impressions, particularly in comparison to a static page with a few adverts sitting on it, such as those waiting for your parents to find it via a search and line someones pockets.
As I mentioned, I thought the adverts would be people's preference at first - it's entirely possible to have adverts removed for those who donate if thats what people would rather go for. The forum members are organised by a series of usergroups, be it unregistered, registered, moderators etc. It's simply a case of having a separate usergroup for donating members andapplying adverts to one usergroups pages and not another.
The hosting cost will probably be about the same, in the region of £50-60 per month. The additions of extra features such as a system gallery for each user wouldn't affect the cost on a new server as so much bandwidth would be available - a terabyte or two is pretty much standard for dedicated servers nowadays.
The trade section is available for classified adverts, though it's had very little use - primarily fairly regular forum members anyway, rather than traders coming specifically to advertise.
BlueMax's comment about having a forum section for a specific manufacturer is presumably along the same sort of lines as your thinking, many smaller companies may well benefit from having somewhere for them to run a small forum without the need for dealing with the hosting/software etc themselves, though we obviously then run the risk of seeming less impartial - an obvious benefit in it's current state, and not something we want to lose.
It'd be pretty difficult to make a profit as I touched on before, but having one or two people paying for everything isn't really ideal for any length of time either, hence looking for something where the cost can be spread out to a certain extent. As we're not out for profit, we've not got any reason to hide the finances from the members - I expect if we were having donations we'd give an indication of what things are costing and how much has been donated. Likewise we'd give an indication of how successful the adverts were if they were in use.
Once enScape is going again it'll probably be about 50/50, but at the moment ZG is using about 3/4 of the bandwidth - if enScape was active we'd not have been able to move it to the enScape server.
If we go for donations we'll look into what people do/don't want to pay - I expect people will have different ideas about how much they feel the need to contribute, so it may well be a case of as much or as little as you please, rather than asking everyone for a specific amount.
As I mentioned, I thought the adverts would be people's preference at first - it's entirely possible to have adverts removed for those who donate if thats what people would rather go for. The forum members are organised by a series of usergroups, be it unregistered, registered, moderators etc. It's simply a case of having a separate usergroup for donating members andapplying adverts to one usergroups pages and not another.
The hosting cost will probably be about the same, in the region of £50-60 per month. The additions of extra features such as a system gallery for each user wouldn't affect the cost on a new server as so much bandwidth would be available - a terabyte or two is pretty much standard for dedicated servers nowadays.
The trade section is available for classified adverts, though it's had very little use - primarily fairly regular forum members anyway, rather than traders coming specifically to advertise.
BlueMax's comment about having a forum section for a specific manufacturer is presumably along the same sort of lines as your thinking, many smaller companies may well benefit from having somewhere for them to run a small forum without the need for dealing with the hosting/software etc themselves, though we obviously then run the risk of seeming less impartial - an obvious benefit in it's current state, and not something we want to lose.
It'd be pretty difficult to make a profit as I touched on before, but having one or two people paying for everything isn't really ideal for any length of time either, hence looking for something where the cost can be spread out to a certain extent. As we're not out for profit, we've not got any reason to hide the finances from the members - I expect if we were having donations we'd give an indication of what things are costing and how much has been donated. Likewise we'd give an indication of how successful the adverts were if they were in use.
bottleneck said:
Once enScape is going again it'll probably be about 50/50, but at the moment ZG is using about 3/4 of the bandwidth - if enScape was active we'd not have been able to move it to the enScape server.
If we go for donations we'll look into what people do/don't want to pay - I expect people will have different ideas about how much they feel the need to contribute, so it may well be a case of as much or as little as you please, rather than asking everyone for a specific amount.
