The future of macosxhints.com...

Apr 08, '01 12:23:06AM

Contributed by: robg

The macosxhints.com site has taken off, far faster and bigger than I ever would have imagined. As of today, there are nearly 1,100 registered users, pulling nearly 700mb of data per day from the site. This led me to post a message late last night concerning the future direction of the site (you can read the original post in the remainder of this article). Since I have no revenue streams, the costs of maintaining this growing site were looking a bit daunting.

I asked for help and suggestions, and featured a poll offering some alternatives for the future direction of the site. I was amazed to wake up this morning to a number of emails with positive feedback and great suggestions, and over 35 responses to the poll in about five hours' of night time. Thanks to you, the macosxhints readers, I now have several good leads for new providers with substantially lower costs and unmetered bandwidth, which will alleviate my number one issue. A number of you have also donated to help cover the costs of running the site, which I greatly appreciate.

Based on all the input I've received, the future looks good for macosxhints.com. Read the rest of this article if you'd like to see what's going to happen here in the near future (summary - nothing bad!), as well as the story I posted last night.

Based on the feedback I received, here's what the future holds for macosxhints.com:

Thank you so much for the great ideas, and for helping to make this site everything that it is. Mac users are, indeed, a special group!

-rob.

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Here's the original text from yesterday:

macosxhints readers: In the back of my mind, I knew this day would come sometime. I had no idea that it would come so quickly. What follows is a detailed look at the economics of running macosxhints.com, and the implications of those economics on the future of the site.

The macosxhints.com site has taken off, far faster and bigger than I ever would have imagined. As of today, there are nearly 1,100 registered users, pulling nearly 700mb of data per day from the site. While I'm thrilled at the prospect of the site helping so many people, I'm terrified of the financial implications. At the rate April is proceeding, macosxhints will reach the monthly transfer limit by Tuesday, the 10th of the month. By month's end, the overage charges could exceed $150 for April alone. Since macosxhints.com is a hobbyist site, and has no revenue streams of any sort, I need to make a decision (fairly quickly) regarding the future of the site. As much as I'd love to fund it forever at whatever cost it reaches, that's simply not feasible.

macosxhints.com is a non-affiliated, personally maintained site that generates $0 in revenue - there are no ad banners anywhere, which is the way I like it. However, I hope you can all understand why the long-term outlook for continued growth in site traffic is something I need to address quickly. With no income, and continually increasing expenses, the financial implications are quite scary. I did not launch macosxhints with any expectations of huge revenue streams, but similary, I didn't start it to go broke, either. I established an annual estimated budget for the site, which it now appears I will exceed at the end of this month, after only six months in operation. This does not make for pleasant conversations with my wife about my hobby, and it makes thinking about future increases in costs quite unpleasant.

So I'm asking for your help in determining the future of macosxhints.com -- after all, the site is here for you, the viewers, and I feel you should have a chance to voice your opinions. There are four possible options for macosxhints as I see it:
  1. Sell the domain and content to an interested party that has the resources to support it, and back out of my role with the site entirely.

  2. Join a web-based advertising organization and place banners and tiles on the site, with the hope of generating revenue equal to or greater than expenses.

  3. Attempt to make macosxhints.com a "shareweb" site, via a voluntary contribution to help cover the expenses associated with running the site. If the site is useful to enough people, then a donation of $5 - $10 from some percentage of those readers should cover operating costs, and maybe even allow for new features to be added (a "help request" bulletin board, for example).

  4. Close the site down.
Of the four options, number three represents my personal choice. I do not want to step back from the site, as I love what I'm doing, so choice #1 isn't good. I really dislike ad banners and tiles, so choice #2 isn't good. Choice #4 isn't good because not only am I not involved, but the resource isn't available for the Mac community.

Whatever route the site takes, if it stays online, I estimate it will cost somewhere between $2,000 and $7,500 to fund for the remainder of the year. I have no idea what will happen to traffic in July when OS X ships pre-loaded on boxes, which is why there's such a wide range.

I've added two things to the site tonight to help answer this question. The first is the Amazon Honor System badge at screen left. This system puts amazon.com's payment processing power to work for small independent sites. With a couple of clicks, visitors can donate a small amount of money to help support the site. I get the donation, net of a small transaction fee that Amazon takes for processing the payment. If you believe in macosxhints, and want too see it stick around with my involvement and without banner ads, please donate a few dollars to help cover the expenses. I'm considering this a "beta test" of the 'shareweb' site concept.

The second thing I've added is a new poll, which asks for your opinion on the four options that I've listed here. I'd like to know what the collective community thinks the future direction of the site should be -- it is, after all, here for your benefit. Knowing that the economic outlook is unworkable for me at present, what course of action would you choose for the site?

The last thing I want to do is close, sell, or otherwise change macosxhints.com. However, the economic realities of running a large site with no revenue stream are now beginning to hit home, hard. I invest roughly 20-30 hours of my time on the site each week, and have no problem continuing to do that in the future (I love that part of it!). I just cannot make that investment of time, and a significantly large investment of money, and justify it to myself or my family. Call me short sighted for not thinking this through when I launched the site, but I really just wanted to get online and start collecting and publishing hints!

Thanks for reading this far, and let me know what you think -- add your thoughts to comments on the poll, as opposed to this article (which is already too long, so I've disabled them here).

rob griffiths
April 8, 2001

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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20010408002306762