So that works out to about $1800 a year, or 150 a month to keep the site running... That's actually a pretty big chunk of change.
How many active users do we have? and I wonder what percentage of those would actually be willing to pay like 10 dollars a year? Probably less than 15%.
What was the cost for premium membership when that existed? and how many people opted in for that?
Sorry for all the questions. I just "feel" like there's got to be a way to make this site self sustaining that doesn't rely on google advertising. I know from work experience, though, that what I feel and what reality is don't always line up. Still doesn't hurt for me to take a look at it, and run some numbers.
I have 4 forums, and I don't want to have 4 different chat forum software on them, therefore if I'm going to run Vbulletin on one, I'm going to run it on all 4.
Vbulletin plus mobile (which is BS) is $369 for a license, so there's $1480.
As for hosting, before I changed hosts, BG was on a dedicated server, because when BG was younger, servers were less powerful, and it required a full server to handle the load, this was about $105 per month. Even today some hosts will not put BG on a cheap hosting plan. Part of this is because of the size of all attachments, the other half is the database, it uses a lot of resources. When i changed hosts, I dropped to a virtually private server, which is about $45 a month.
As for sustaining, the site earns a bit more than it costs to host. Am I getting rich, hell no, I make enough to pay for everything and buy lunch once or twice a month, that's about it. Kurt can back that up.
could always take a page out of radbmx's book and have to buy an annual membership to post for sale and wanted adds and maybe a private locked sort of category where you can post anything aslong as you have paid a bit like bmx-forum.com have/had befor that turned to shit, like almost every other decent bmx related forum has.
maybe a monthly/bi-monthly raffle £5 a ticket to win some part or frame from some company or some shit?
failing that could always find a way to create a spam bit and spam every other forum with this ones web address and perhaps get some new members and a bit of life/income into this place?
No, I have always said BG will be free. You want to see people leave, that's a great way to do it.
We tried a premium membership, it didn't do well at all.
We tried raffles, it was a joke.
It's good to see you are still around... I thought you handed over the site to Kurt @ BMX Union a while back though?
He handles some of the ads, and has a greater say in the day to day operations.
It's apparent Sheep doesn't really give a damn about this forum anymore and is just doing whatever he can to make the most money from it while he can before everyone get's so fed up with the bogus rules and unanswered suggestions that they jump ship, like 3/4 of the members did when he switched to the Simple Machines engine.
Yes, I totally make a fortune off this place...
3/4ths of the members didn't jump ship at the time, I purged a ton of spam members.
As for the rest, if they leave at the first change, they were just looking for a reason to leave and weren't going to be here much longer regardless.
Any time you change something on a forum a ton of users bitch and moan and a few leave, a whole bunch say they will but don't or find their way back. I could change the background to black and 20 people would shout they were leaving because of it. If I offered to go back to Vbulletin, exactly as it was before, a quarter would cheer, another quarter would scream saying don't mess with it, the other half would just shrug. Even sites that HAVE to update because things are outdated (as BG was), users will complain. Some despise change, no matter how beneficial it is. Was all of the change for the better, maybe not on your end, but from mine... Absolutely.
We have far less spam, I mean truckloads less. I don't have to deal with Vbulletin's fees or service, I have cheaper hosting, and in many ways, this software is actually better. Don't get me wrong, I liked Vbulletin, I still think it;s one of the best chat forum software you can get, it's very fast and low resource. It's also lagging behind on features since they sold, and their price more than doubled since I started using it.
Topic: Sheepdog still out there (Read 60144 times)
