Goochenbrau Posted December 1, 2006 Report Share Posted December 1, 2006 I noticed that 977 people have visited this site today, and roughly, (1/3) of them are subscribers. Since people are discussing the costs to run the board, obviously its an issue. So, my question is, if (1/3) is not enough to cover costs, what percentage of daily views would cover the cost to run the board? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admin Posted December 1, 2006 Report Share Posted December 1, 2006 The numbers on running this site has been posted several times before and have been discussed. You can have a look at these two threads: http://www.rwg.cc/members/index.php?showtopic=10988 and then read this http://www.rwg.cc/members/index.php?showtopic=12379 If you have any more questions, feel free to contact me directly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochenbrau Posted December 1, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 1, 2006 thanks for the links. I read back through them a little more carefully. I must have missed that there is unregistered traffic here. I was just thinking that a board, where a 1/3 of its daily visitors pay a fee and costs still aren't covered, that the board is probably living beyond its means. But since I overlooked that there is unregistered users, that fraction would be much lower. As an economist, I'm really interest in efficiency, and I thought that was an interesting stat... but after closer inspection, it may not apply. I have some free time this weekend, I think I may look at the numbers a little closer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starbug Posted December 1, 2006 Report Share Posted December 1, 2006 I intended to continue contributing, but didn't see the point.. If one of the reasons this site operates is to protect us from scammers, why run the risk with the google adwords?.. Half of those sites when you click on the link are Grade1 A++ scam sites, effectively getting advertised at the top of the forum. I thought that this forum was run by contributions and / or a WIS admin? If that's the case, what's the need for the google adwords (apart from making extra $$)? I know some people will take umbrage to this post, so I would say sorry in advance, should anyone complain.. The Adwords are not serving any purpose at all as far as linking to the types of sites we get warned about here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Admin Posted December 1, 2006 Report Share Posted December 1, 2006 I intended to continue contributing, but didn't see the point.. If one of the reasons this site operates is to protect us from scammers, why run the risk with the google adwords?.. Half of those sites when you click on the link are Grade1 A++ scam sites, effectively getting advertised at the top of the forum. I thought that this forum was run by contributions and / or a WIS admin? If that's the case, what's the need for the google adwords (apart from making extra $$)? I know some people will take umbrage to this post, so I would say sorry in advance, should anyone complain.. The Adwords are not serving any purpose at all as far as linking to the types of sites we get warned about here. Like I have said before; The current number of paying members does not cover the monthly costs of the current server setup. If I was to pay the costs of the site out of my own pocket, I would close it immediately. I could never afford it. I did this without any problems when the site was hosted on $20-50 pr. month servers. I've also said this before, but a site like this, that generates over 15.000.000 hits per month, using a database intensively, and has anything from 120-200GB of traffic each month can't use a cheap shared hosting solution. The ISP would simply tell you that they can't host you and you would need to find a dedicated server with the traffic RWG has. We would simply use all the resources on the server. A little story: I first got into the replica forums 4-5 years ago. The first forum opened up 4 years ago (TRC). It was then hosted on a server I had in the US, on one of my subdomains. This went fine, until I got the first legal notice from Rolex (GAF) that I had to shut down. My ISP also gave me 48 to remove the site. That's when I first registered the TRC domain and found another server. After hosting in on cheap US shared servers (For those of you who do not know what a shared server is: it's a server that several customers share) for a long time, I got tired of getting the same legal notices every other week + the traffic was growing fast, so I looked for other solutions. Offshore servers was the way to go, but these things are expensive. A shared server was enough in the beginning, but as traffic grew, I outgrew the shared solution and had to find a dedicated offshore server. Finding a quality provider with little or no downtime wasn't easy. And it's the same in the server industry as elsewhere: quality does not come cheap. But after running replica forums for 4 years now, I have found a setup that I am comfortable with and that I feel gives both me, as the admin of these sites, and the members, the protection that is needed. The Google ads are there to cover some of the cost with the site. They don't provide much, since people seem to forget to click the ads they find interesting, but they are a part of what keeps me from paying for things out of my own pocket. When it comes to the issue of the ads displayed, I have no control of them. Google adsense displays ads based on the content of the site. But if you see an ad for any scam sites, please send me the link, and I will block them from any more displays here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KB Posted December 1, 2006 Report Share Posted December 1, 2006 We are sitting in rep heaven anyone who goes off and buy's from a scam site he/she finds in the google ads basically gets what they deserve. I'm a mod and as such you will never be able to see that I am also a supporter but I have an automatic Monthly renewal, that's 60 bucks a year! I do this because I love this place and want to see it keep going from strength to strength, others may not feel the same way but it is really a bit much when they try to justify not paying a supporter fee. Ken Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gioarmani Posted December 1, 2006 Report Share Posted December 1, 2006 Do another massive member clean-up. Delete all the lurkers & make it mandatory that everyone MUST donate at least once to be a member; much less to be able to read threads & posts. Or how about a one-time donation, in order to even be able to see the dealers section? What's the smallest donation--five measly bucks? If you can't afford that, then you have no business being here, as you shouldn't be wasting your money on anything other than bills to begin with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M5kirk Posted December 1, 2006 Report Share Posted December 1, 2006 Have to agree. It's kind of sad how many times I see that MEMBER icon and then a couple of lines below see that they have literally thousands of posts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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