The Cost of Doing Business
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007Well, if you’ve visited the .net today, you’ve seen that we have Google ads up now. Why? Well, this site [and the others on this server] is expensive to operate.
I lease this server on behalf of its community of users. As time has gone by, what that costs me has gone up. In 2004, when we first started this, the server cost $225/mo., which was largely paid for by the fact that I had roommates living with me that offset the cost. Sure, I winced when I saw that go out every month—it was my largest bill after I paid the rent—but I could handle it.
Today, the serve lease runs $324/mo., and domain registration, license fees, and other expenses run that to about $4200 a year. Part of that is because the traffic to the forum has increased; part of that is because we’ve got a lot more on the server today; part of it is because we’re more popular on the Internet. And also, part of it is because the number of spammers on the Internet has increased significantly—email spam, comment spam, attempts to forum spam, server exploits, etc. Most of the cost growth, I would argue, comes in trying to handle the increased traffic across the board.
But no matter that, the cost is a lot higher. As you can see from the second link, what we take in from user fees on The Rumor Forum—the main reason we’re on a dedicated server in the first place, admittedly—and from hosting a smattering of sites on the server accounts for about $2700 a year. That still leaves me $1500 short, and unlike 2004, I have neither roommates nor a paid-for truck. So … it’s a little painful.
So I’m being up-front and honest: providing all what we provide you costs money. Please consider donating to the cause if you have not already done so; if you have, I thank you.
