[The Monkey]

So, are there any cool things in store for the site with the proceeds from the HF-1 sales?

 

[Kirosia]

My assumption is that he's using the money to help keep this place afloat. Head-fi is quite the $$$$ eater.

 

[EricP]

250 phones X $25 per phone = $6250!

That is a lot of monthly bandwidth bills paid.

 

[Kirosia]

Quote:

Originally Posted by EricP 250 phones X $25 per phone = $6250! That is a lot of monthly bandwidth bills paid.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jude As I've stated before, Head-Fi is not a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. For obvious tax reasons (it has lost money in every fiscal year of its operation, except last year, when I believe a final audit will show a slight move into black for that period), it is now entirely owned by one of the companies I own (it has been for at least a couple of years now), and I have assessed it as its own cost/profit center. NOTE: The company that Head-Fi is under has a calendar financial year, but, in terms of budgeting Head-Fi-specific expenses and revenue, I assess it on a June 20 to June 19 basis. Head-Fi has its own cabinet at Level(3) in Southfield, Michigan. If anyone here in the trade wants to comment about the costs associated with hosting at a top-tier provider, feel free. Though we rent a full cabinet, we do not fill the entire cabinet, but it is paid for via a yearly contract that obligates Head-Fi to pay approximately $10,000.00 for the cabinet alone (no bandwidth or hardware included), and none of that unused cabinet space has been sub-leased yet. I projected Head-Fi's budget for the last fiscal year to be approximately $26,000.00. I think it will end up coming in at $30,400.00, and I estimate total Head-Fi revenue was $32,300.00 (it would have been $721.00 more, had we not been stiffed by one of the former sponsors). So, yes, for the first time ever, Head-Fi brought in more money than was spent on it. It is my goal for this to be consistently the case, year after year. Why? It can't run, without someone else (namely me) subsidizing it, if it runs short. I was actually concerned, around the middle of that fiscal period, that we were going to fall far short at fiscal period's end. Several things helped a great deal in the second half. Sponsor Rates were increased for the first time in a couple of years, beginning in the May 2005 billing month. Additionally, Jan Meier's Head-Fi support auctions were immensely important, the last one being the RKV MkII auction (and there are still a few more Meier Audio amps to auction off, a pair of Siltech Paris interconnects sent by Head-Fi Member Yikes of Siltech, and two portable CMOY amps by Eyevancsu Amplifiers). Now, why am I concerned about the coming year? First, because we will almost certainly need a hardware upgrade sometime in the coming months. The site doesn't seem to be as snappy as it was when we first did the hardware upgrade a year ago, and it's not surprising given the growth since then. Why? Posting activity is up approximately 21% since last year this same time. Registered Member activity (number of registered members visiting per day) is up 56% since last year this same time (the number of non-registered visitors actually increased more than that). Based on Alexa's current metrics, Head-Fi's Alexa ranking has gone from approximately 35,000 to around 10,000 now. Alexa estimates average page views per visitor has gone from approximately 7.0 to 19.3. Alexa estimates average reach has nearly tripled. In light of all this, here is a key concern for me. * Contributing Memberships netted approximately $13,039.00 last year on $16,984.00 gross. I expect this net number is actually slightly overstated, as I'm finding out at least once per week that there are still people to whom I owe Contributing Membership knick-knacks who never received them. * $6,128.00 of that gross came in July 2004 alone (the first month of Contributing Memberships). * $11,098.00 of that gross came in the first three months (July 13, 2004 to September 13, 2004). * In July 2005 so far (we are nearly half way through it), gross Contributing Membership revenue is $554.00. NOTE: Minutes ago, I received a PayPal from the Boston/New England Head-Fi contingent, apparently collected at their last Meet, for $177.00. Thanks to everyone who was a part of that. * In June 2005 (last month), gross Contributing Membership revenue was $901.00. (This does not include the $566.00 sent by the NY Head-Fi contingent, raised at their last Meet, and which I haven't yet thanked them all for--sorry, New York guys and gals, I will post a much-owed "thank you.") In short, though the generosity of every individual who has become a Contributing Member is definitely appreciated, total Contributing Membership revenue has dropped considerably, relative to the first months it became available. It is starting to trend up the last few months, but, the initial push (the first three months after July 13, 2004) was much larger than I expect we'll likely see again in the foreseeable future. In every year prior to the June 20 '04 to June 19 '05 fiscal year (since June 20, 2001), I have had to fill in the gap between expenses and revenue to the tune of many thousands of dollars. To help make up for a projected gap, based on current trends, yes, I feel I have to find ways to generate more revenue. Again, I have raised Sponsor Rates and that will help considerably, but not enough in and of itself. So, yes, I will test other means of generating revenue. No, I can't stop people from leaving as a result of my doing so, any more than I could stop people leaving when we instituted the no-swearing rule (and we did lose members because of that, too).

This place be mad expensive!

 

[The Monkey]

wow, very interesting. I really had no idea it was that expensive. That's too bad. Perhaps the silver lining is that one headphone manufacturer can be persuaded to produce a special Head-Fi run each year.

 

[kurisu]

In the real world, the site simply doesn't need to be that expensive. I've discussed this with jude via private messages, but unfortunately my advice has still not been taken. There is little to nil software optimizations done on this server to save bandwidth and also increase preformance. Head-Fi could substantially reduce the costs here by employing gzip (in this case, would cut most bandwidth to about 1/10th its current size) and a PHP accelerator. The longer jude waits on this, the bigger the bills get. I'm not saying this to insinuate that this place is not being run properly, or start a flame war -- this is the honest truth.

Perhaps the contributing members can collaborate and voice their concerns as to why these aforementioned components are not introduced to the site. No other forum of this size (or substancially larger) is run in such a manner.

 

[braillediver]

The impact on the site is it will continue to run.

We all owe Jude a heartfelt Thank You for his continued support of this site.

I noticed he didn’t mention the value of his time, which he continues to give freely. He’s a new Father and time like that is invaluable and irreplaceable.


Thanks You Jude and Thank You Moderators.

Mitch


Hey look another one for my ignore list. 2 posts and both slagging on Head-Fi?

 

[kurisu]

You're completely misunderstanding my intent here. I've spoken to jude via PM and he was very respectful of my opinion. Again, I'm not "slagging", but giving very specific recommendations that would benefit the site. How is that detrimental? I value and respect jude's time and everyone else who contributes here; Head-Fi is a very important Audio resource on the Internet and needs to be run at it's best capacity without becoming a financial obligation that makes things counterproductive.

 

[Jahn]

you know kurisu, a little donation goes a long way too, sometimes even further than well-intentioned advice *hint hint*

 

[kurisu]

If my advice was taken it would save the site thousands of dollars; I couldn't possibly contribute any more than that.

 

[Jahn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kurisu If my advice was taken it would save the site thousands of dollars; I couldn't possibly contribute any more than that.

Well you are entitled to your opinion and the use of your own funds of course, hehe, no one takes offense at that. In the same turn, don't take offense if Jude doesn't follow that opinion for the time being and continues to use funds the way he has - after all it's not his main business and he probably doesn't even have 2 seconds to get into optimization and if he does have 2 seconds, something else might be taking priority to do behind the scenes other than optimization, one never knows.

 

[Kirosia]

I dunno what's really going, but I think the J man likes to do things his way, unless he has no choice. IIRC, he was originally against asking members for money and large sponsorships. But he wants what's best for the community also, and that has priority. You gotta respect a guy who goes against himself for the better of the people.

That said, I have no real opinion with the argument at hand. I don't know much about business or computers etc. I do encourage those of you with spare green to contribute though. I haven't yet (I'm a hypocrite damnit), but once I'm hired for that oh-so prestigious walmart drone position, I'll try to put some cash head-fi's way.

 

[jude]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kurisu In the real world, the site simply doesn't need to be that expensive. I've discussed this with jude via private messages, but unfortunately my advice has still not been taken. There is little to nil software optimizations done on this server to save bandwidth and also increase preformance. Head-Fi could substantially reduce the costs here by employing gzip (in this case, would cut most bandwidth to about 1/10th its current size) and a PHP accelerator. The longer jude waits on this, the bigger the bills get. I'm not saying this to insinuate that this place is not being run properly, or start a flame war -- this is the honest truth. Perhaps the contributing members can collaborate and voice their concerns as to why these aforementioned components are not introduced to the site. No other forum of this size (or substancially larger) is run in such a manner.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kurisu You're completely misunderstanding my intent here. I've spoken to jude via PM and he was very respectful of my opinion. Again, I'm not "slagging", but giving very specific recommendations that would benefit the site. How is that detrimental? I value and respect jude's time and everyone else who contributes here; Head-Fi is a very important Audio resource on the Internet and needs to be run at it's best capacity without becoming a financial obligation that makes things counterproductive.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kurisu If my advice was taken it would save the site thousands of dollars; I couldn't possibly contribute any more than that.

kurisu, I had forwarded your PM messages to Neil when you sent them to me, and he told me we were already using gzip. He also posted today here.

I know you run a forum, too, kurisu, but the metrics of minidisc.org (and Audio-T board, which I believe you're also involved with) are very different than Head-Fi's. Head-Fi is big and growing. Yesterday, 2179 posts were made. And, as many in our large body of regulars knows from personal experience, there's just something about the people and the community here that makes us generate more page views per user per unit time than just about any website I've ever seen. We're robust enough to have had virtually uninterrupted service over the last four years, and especially during the last year (the only outages being man-made). We're robust enough to survive being SlashDotted.

As for the question about what to do with the HF-1 funds: The first check for $1700+ arrived on Monday (the revenue checks from the headphone sales are coming as they're sold), with obviously more checks coming over time from the sales of the HF-1. It's hard for me to say exactly what will be done with the HF-1 funds, as they're really a part of Head-Fi's overall revenue picture, just like Contributing Memberships, Sponsor revenue, etc. Contributing Membership revenue is way off compared to last year this same time, so the HF-1 revenue will be nice to have to help offset that, and it's why I'm doing what I can to find as much revenue independent of Contributing Memberships as possible.

As for specific projects: one of the things we're working on now is improving search performance, which we'd done last year, but not nearly enough (relative to what I'd like to see). Right now searches generally take between 15 seconds and 50 seconds to complete, which I find unacceptable. Additionally, searches are currently only available to registered Members. My goal is to see searches brought down to sub-5-second times, and for it to be available to guests (unregistered readers), too. After we've done this, we'll evaluate other needs relative to the state of the site's additional needs, and the projected revenue and expenses at that time.

 

[kurisu]

Thank you for your words -- I was not looking to compare "metrics" but I suppose it is interesting nonetheless. I can see some of my inital assumptions were in error, so thank you Neil for the clarification and your time (Neil + Jude).

Quote:

Originally Posted by jude (and Audio-T board, which I believe you're also involved with)

I have nothing to do with that site whatsoever.

 

[Jahn]

BTW this is off topic, but i like the idea of contributing membership having to be renewable. That way every year interested head-fiers can re-up for bold blue usernames, photo and PM storage space, and the like, and you can go back and tap that well annually - i don't think too many of us would mind that, Jude!