SrtBrad
Michel Productions
Like you, I belong to many car sites. I also happen to work "behind the scenes" on a couple of them including handling some of the advertising, member recruitment, etc. The operational costs for this site are already met and then some. Indeed, it should already be quite profitable and more gravy is to be had.
Out of curiosity I dropped by lxforums.com (where I am also a longtime member) and there are Google, Amazon, and other ads on the front page - whether you are logged in or not. There are "sponsored links" that appear in the middle of threads - again, whether you are logged in or not. They seem to appear a little earlier in the threads when you are not logged in (guest). Like this site, you can also become a Site Supporter to help defray the costs. They offer two levels - $15 or $25, whereas this site is currently $24 (which is fine). Note that while they are wonderful ways to support the site, the additional features cost the site owner(s) nothing to provide. Additional PM's, tags, avatar sizes, and even gallery space cost ZERO to offer as long as it is within the hosting plan for the site.
The math is simple: A brand-spankin' new indefinite license of vBulletin Forum (4.0) is $195 - $175 for upgrading an existing license. lxforums.com is hosted by CrystalTech/Newtek, most likely on their small business plan which offers 2GB of disk space and 200GB of bandwidth for $8.95 a month. Lest you think in terms of your own PC and how much disk space you need, note that on lxforums.com the most Gallery space a user can have, even at the highest sponsor level, is 7.5MB. You could get a dedicated hosted server for $63 a month from GoDaddy, which gives you 240GB of space and 500GB of bandwidth. Go big and spend $270 a month for 2TB of disk space and 3,000 GB of bandwidth. Or you could buy your own server for under $500 (new) and pay for just for bandwidth.
Okay, so there are 9,182 registered users on this site. Let's say that just 5% actually visit the site every six months (460) and half of them pay the sponsor fee - 230 x $24 = $5520 a year. Let's say you have fifteen sponsoring vendors at an average of $40 per month - 15 x $40 x 12 = $7200. Google, Amazon, and other ad placements? Let's say that all three combined pop around $100 a month or $1200 a year conservatively. Grand total? $12,720 a year as is, $13,920 with more ads. Most forums enjoy "free" moderators/admins that get paid little if anything to help their fellow enthusiasts. Ditto for many designers that will often offer to help design/redesign the site for free as they are members and just want to help out.
Bottom line? It's unlikely that the hard costs for the site (non-labor) exceed $3,000 a year, but the total income is likely to exceed $10,000. There are no hard member benefits such as decals, apparel, or membership badges - all benefits are "soft" with no additional costs to the host. Depending on what the admins are paid (if anything), the dollars aren't huge but they DO add up - especially with multiple sites. For example, lxforums.com has around 70 sponsoring vendors (maybe $33,600 a year) and four times the registered users. It all adds up.
Nothing scary, as Shaggy seems pretty stand-up so far and as long as the core (registered) users don't get hit with a bunch of display ads or hypertext then all is good. And yeah, been around the block a few times...
Thank you for the detailed response. I agree with you that as a business you need to generate money. This site was not intended to be a business. This site was founded and started by truck enthusiasts for truck enthusiasts.
This community of truck enthusiasts contribute what they can to make this site so unique and different from all the other drone sites. This is the tradition that I hope the VTCOA continues with.
I guess that's where our differences lay. I think of this site as a community. I perceive your statements as business related. Either this site will change to a business orientated site or stay as a community for truck enthusiasts.
As a member of this community I have served this site to the best of my ability including hundreds of videos that promote this site. I never asked for a thing. Other members of this community have done way more than me. The members help each other out in times of need with no questions asked. This is the spirit of the VTCOA. I sincerely hopes this doesn't change.
I hope you understand my point as I can keep this going and going with point after point. I guess my question is will this site change from it's current format or not. I understood that it wouldn't.
