The plan - Please read

I've been saying I have a plan for the site's solvency for a while now and I think it's time for me to start thinking about it.

Right now I pay to host this site, it's not something I mind at all. Web development is a hobby and business I deeply enjoy. Before I continue I have to say that this site is not in any immediate danger. The following is an idea to enable the site to be ad-free for everyone and is not a "save A2K". I am perfectly capable at the moment of paying teh costs of the site.

But whether or not I want to pay for the costs is one thing, whether I can is another.

Right now I can. And have no problem doing so. But the site depends on my economic situation and that is something I consider far too fragile. If I were to lose my job I'd be unable to pay for the hosting and would not ahve time to execute a plan to keep the server paid for.

When I started the site the costs were about $8 a month, it was nothing and I paid a year upfront.

The site grew and before my year was up I had to move to a dedicated host (this means a server that's dedicated exclusively to me, so that I do not ahve to deal with a couple hundred other sites on the same box).

Dedicated servers run from $100 a month to a few thousand a month. So it was a big step up from what I was paying.

That's why I started to monetize the site. I affiliated with hundreds of sites and added banner ads.

Soon that server was not powerful enough and this last weekend we moved to a more powerful one.

The affiliations only pay per lead or sale. Thus far out of a few hundred affiliates only one (Amazon) ever drew a sale. This rate could have been improved but I'm not interested in more instrusive advertising.

Popups are another option, the banner ad market is horrible. A new site like this gets only a few centes per 1000 ads displayed. Popups would amke much more but I hate popups.

Rich media ads are now the rage, this means flash ads much larger than banners. Some are called skyscrapers (these are the tall ones that go down the side of a page).

While I might use them on some other projects and areas of this site I do not think large ads are good for the forums, where the level of activity is frenetic. Forums use huge amounts of system resources and bandwith but are not idea advertising mediums. Most advertisers reject any and all forum advertising.

So I do not want to use skyscraper ads and other large ads. Pageload time is something I hope to improve right now, not degrade.

So far all the ad revenue, all the Amazon revenue and all the Ad-Free subscription revenue has not totaled a month's worth of hosting fees.

Like I said, this is not a problem right now, besides my rent this is my next most important bill. But I do want this site to stand on its own legs and survive events that can happen in my life.

The current cost for hosting this site is between $150-250 a month (every now and then it gets real expensive, during this month it will be over 300). It varies depending on bandwidth usage and support needed and other variables (e.g. I paid for two servers this month so that there would be less downtime in teh site move). When the server has serious problems I have to pay an on-site (the server is in San Antonio) tech to help.

Amazon and banners have been negligible but the 4 or 5 members who contribute 4 dollars monthly (they pay 4.50 but paypal takes a cut) are the largest contributers to the site's financial independence.

I could eventually make the site supported through ads but many do not like ads.

Hats and other such merchandise have not helped. This far with out hats experiment we have only covered the cost of the hats. I've looked into other mechandising options and think that they will not be able to support the site.

I've planned to open premium services for a while. Services in mind were email addresses (with 100MB of space etc), hosting (I will consider hosting some sites as long as they do not harm A2K's functionality) private forums (for now the existing ones are free and this is not going to be made avalable for a while), photo album hosting, blogs and galleries
(like this), etc..

Right now the minimum cost of the site is $150 a month. I thought that this could be covered without banners on the forums and without becoming a paid site (if I can no longer offer a free service to those who do not want to pay I'll simply stop, I do not want a fee-based obligation).

Recently with the trouble the ads have been causing (they are slowing down the site because my ad serving technology used a database) I had an idea.

If, through the various methods outlined above, premium services can cover the base cost of hosting I will forego the banners on the forums entirely.

This means the forums (the part of the site in the /forums/ directory and below) will not have any ads. Some otehr projects might have ads but over 90% of the traffic is in the forums directory. Most here don't pay attention to the rest of the site.

I am currently in transition. I am redesigning the look of the site, and my ad agency is implementing a new system.

I'd like to know if the membership is interested in the plan.

Who would be interested in a subscription service that keeps the site self supporting and ad free?

If the subscriptions reach $150 a month (the current base price) I can safely stop worrying about developing the ad revenue and can then remove the ads from the forum.

So, if anyone here is interested in the plan please say so. I need to crunch the numbers. Please say what you would be willing to contribute (amounts less than $5 can help).

If there is interest I will elaborate more on the services I can offer in return (that would be the email, hosting, galleries, custom titles etc).

I may be optimistic but I think getting to $150 a month would be easy. Small payments can help add up.

As the site's costs grow I would make the members aware of this.

My goal is to have a stable site that can withstand economic hardship on my part and in general. I can do it two ways, with the members or on my own (through ads etc).

I don't mind either way but decided to see what everyone thinks.