Ads?

[MisterAcoustic]

Hi All,

This site costs about $150 per year to run. This will be my third year paying the hosting bill.

With my son headed off to college, I need to tighten up the budget. It would be nice to break even on the site - I don't need more than that.

Here are some possibilities:

) Ask for donations.
) Run Ads.
) Give up hosting the site for the time being.

I think that asking for donations is both embarrassing and more trouble than it's worth. I didn't even mention a subscription model - I think that would give the majority of folks quite a chuckle on their last visit.

I'd like to keep things running, even though we still haven't seen a level of growth or participation that could be considered encouraging.

So, right now, unless better ideas come up, I'm leaning toward implementing ads on the site, to see if that produces anything. I don't like this idea, but it's the best one I have at the moment.

Comments and discussion are welcome. Let me know what you think.

Stan

[Mooselake]

If ads'll do it then go ahead. I use an ad blocker but I'll turn it off for this site to make my miniscule contribution. I really hate autostart videos, content covering popups (thinking of you, android mobile sites), intrusive ads in general but I don't think you'd go for those anyway. If the follow you everywhere ads will bring in some extra bucks, well it's worth it. Other than being a bit creepy they really do reflect my interests, if not budget, on a regular basis. Although the time they though I needed an ambulance chaser and bail bondsman were way off base. Really, honest, I'm not posting from the lockup...

Kirk

[Mooselake]

Good luck on that college student, now he can leave phone home for money.  My long graduated (well, there's the now PhD student) girls still call and ask for mom, they already know that Dad will bring up the degrees we've already paid for  

[MisterAcoustic]

Hi Mooselake,

Well, at this point, I don't think ads are going to do a thing for me. We just don't get enough traffic to make a difference at this time.

With that off the table, and the fact that my current hosting provider has blown its second chance to be reliable, the remaining option is to cut costs.

I am looking into options to cut costs down into an entirely irrelevant range - I have some experts I can consult at work on the strategy, but it seems likely changes will happen sooner rather than later.

I'd like to keep a very high level of performance, but beggars can't be choosers, so some compromises may be made.

We'll see how it all turns out.

So far, number one son understands that the piggy bank has taken some damage, so he's going easy on the wallet. We'll see how long that lasts .

Stan