Need some input about advertising......

That's actually kind of hard to pin down accurately.

I am currently paying $220 a month for the server I lease. I started the lease back on around February 1, 2002. I am now in the process of leasing another server that should be cheaper.

I want to have the server hosts do nightly backups, which will cost and additonal $100 per month. Right now, we are all just living on borrowed time.

I have paid $165 (or something like that) for the the banner rotation software. And (sheepishly admitting) I still have to pay the folks at vBulletin the $180 for this message board software.

I am paying $60 per month for cable modem service. It just is not feasible to be able to maintain a server and do server administration tasks adequately with a dial-up modem

That's direct costs that I can think off right off of my head. That does not delve into the expenses I have incurred over the 2+ years I have had this site running (starting with FaunaClassifieds.com), nor the time I spend on it on a daily basis. It also does not cover upgrade that will certainly be needed at one time or another.

But at least it gives you a rough idea of what I am looking at.

I expect there are going to be lean times and fat times for advertisers as market fluctuations take place. I am planning on keeping this isolated as much as possible from my other income/expenses as a separate entity. At one time, not too long ago, I thought I was going to have to pull the plug on the whole thing when I had several advertisers drop out all at the same time. This will likely happen again from time to time, so I hope to build up a reserve to cover those lean times when they happen.

Why, bubafat, are you interested in helping out with the expenses?

you mean you can host a site as big as this on a calbe modem?
wow...that is cool
I did not know that.
I figured I could host a little rinky dink site like mine.
I did not know cable was fast enough for a site this size

Ritchie - no. My server is in a genuine computer location in a rack. The old one is in Florida somewhere, and the new one will be up in Pennsylvania. What I meant by needing the cable modem is when I am transferring files to and from my local system to the server. Plus anytime I do maintenance, some things just take forever over a dialup.

Sorry if I confused you there.

aha !!!!
now I understand.

thanks

I'll help out the minute I'm not $80,000 in debt! Thats what college will do to you.

wow and I thought I was bad with my 30 - 35 k

anyway..any updates on your plans rich?

Still waiting on the server to get finished. I thought it would be done today. I'm going to be out of town all day Sunday. I would like to see what the domain setup process is like on that box, though. Some of them are kind of the equivalent of the old days when you turned on your computer and got "C:>" displayed on the screen, if you know what I mean.

So far I have only been contacted by one person about domain hosting, so I don't expect it's any rush to anyone. I'm going to try to keep the plain vanilla hosting price at $10 per month until I figure out I wildly underpriced myself.

Everything else will be optional. But like I said, I don't know what I'm getting in the software setup and until I do, I can't do a whole lot working up accurate prices. But my intent is to make it as cheap as I can while still helping to pay the bills around here.

BTW, if you don't know what FTP means, much less how to do it, the plain vanilla option might not be best for you............

If you ever wondering what your hostings costs are really for....

10% is for the equipment and technology.

90% is for all customer service emails and phone calls explaining things like FTP

BTW, if you don't know what FTP means, much less how to do it, the plain vanilla option might not be best for you............