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Originally Posted by MD1032
I don't care what happens, just make it go away. The fact that I can't see my own post is disturbing....
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If necessary, scroll down like the many thousands of other people who viewed the site today did.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MD1032
Seriously, there's no way anyone is even going to glance at those ads for a second. There's too many of them....
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It's no coincidence that Amazon/Alexa shows that the top Head-Fi "related sites" include several of our sponsors. So some people are obviously glancing at those ads. The privacy policy of the Google AdSense program forbids me from discussing any specifics, but I will say that it has become a worthwhile source of adjunctive revenue for the site.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MD1032
....I also have a really hard time believing how much Head-Fi costs....
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Price out a cabinet and bandwidth at Level(3) lately? Sure, Head-Fi's full cabinet there isn't close to being full, but a whole cabinet was the smallest unit size available to us. And since I have work-related servers at that same facility, getting Head-Fi a cabinet there made a lot of sense to us so that we can check on Head-Fi's things when we check on our work stuff.
Also, I sign one-year commitments (and there was a recent cabinet price increase that is effective on our next 12-month term). Hardware, hosting, bandwidth, software, etc. from June 2004 to June 2005 will add up to a projected minimum of approximately $26,000.00 (I believe we may have already exceeded that), and is projected as high as $33,000.00.
Since the last major hardware upgrades, have you had reliability issues? To the best of my knowledge, since then, we haven't had one hardware-based failure, and certainly not a single bandwidth-related outage -- the only outages we've had have been
very few, and, if they weren't planned, they were almost invariably human error induced (we have had a couple of minor software glitches that resulted in temporary downtime, too, now that I think about it). Even when we got "Slashdotted," we felt it, but we stayed up. Did you know that Head-Fi is now one of the most (and possibly the most) trafficked hi-fi forum on the Web? Did you know that in the past month, Alexa has ranked Head-Fi higher than even iPodlounge? We passed Audio Asylum last year.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MD1032
....We have all of this income from these advertisers and we have all the contributors as well. I seriously doubt Jude is making payments out of his pocket anymore, so it's time to cut some of the advertisers. The google ads are the first I'd like to see go, and I'm more than willing to contribute if it means I don't have to see any more of those extremely annoying multicolored ads.
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I estimate fiscal period (June 20 2004 to June 19 2005) revenue from Sponsorships and Contributing Memberships will be in the neighborhood of $29,000.00. Do I want Head-Fi to bring in more than is spent on it? Absolutely. Why on earth would I want to plan for continued shortfalls? Is the site growing? Absolutely. Will we need new hardware sometime in the next year? Almost certainly. Did I just to commit to Level(3) for another year? Yes I did. Will we see as much Contributing Membership revenue in the following fiscal year as we did the first year it was offered? Based on the precipitous drop-off after the first big wave, probably not (by the way, for those who still haven't received your Contributing Membership Gift, don't PM me, please write me an e-mail at
givememygift@gmail.com, and please accept my apologies -- and I know you're out there, as I have more in PayPal than I'm showing I should). If you want me to try to architect the financial goal of this site as optimistic break-even, you're nuts, as you can probably figure out who's left holding the bag when surprises and shortfalls pop up. Which brings me to a couple of your suggestions:
Reduce the number of advertisers? Remove Google AdSense? Will you sign an agreement with me to cover any and all financial shortfalls from the operation of Head-Fi, including meeting the needs of its future growth? If so, let's talk.
As for the Sponsorships: We've lost very few over the last almost-four years. And, as I look at the list of them, with the exception of our two Founding Sponsors (Meier Audio and HeadRoom), I don't believe I solicited a single one of them. If a Sponsor doesn't feel it is getting good ROI from its presence as a Sponsor of Head-Fi, I wouldn't expect them to keep doing it out of the kindness of their hearts, and to the net detriment of their bottom line.
And, with that, please let me take this opportunity to once again thank Head-Fi's Sponsors for their generous support, as, frankly, there almost certainly would not be any Head-Fi without the support of the Sponsors. And thanks also the folks who became Contributing Members this fiscal year -- your support is also very instrumental in keeping Head-Fi around. And thanks to everyone who visits Head-Fi, and encourages the development of new, exciting products, and serve as the population that drives our crazy, specific not-so-little-anymore niche marketplace.