does boards.ie turn a profit?

stevoman

this just came to my mind and im wondering does it, or is it a completly voluntary run forum?

Sherifu

I believe in the recent radio interview on newstalk Dev said it had started to make a little money from advertising. But whether it's making a profit, i'm not sure.

stevoman

cool. i was curious to know ju when i got thinking about the amount of users that go through here everyday

RoundyMooney

It is now, but made very little for a long time.

Additionally, like so many enterprises out there, were the admins involved to take account of their time over the last ten years, with appropriate renumeration, the balance sheet would no doubt look very different.

Ruu_Old

Link to podcast. A little bit is being made but huge amount of the work is done by the mods who aren't paid a penny and do it for the cuddly, community feeling.

*dives into piles of money*

stevoman

how does the whole admin/mod system work?

RoundyMooney

Ruu, have you been dipping into the pension fund again?

RoundyMooney

Mods etc. are unpaid volunteers who do what they do to support a community that they get a lot out of in terms of use and entertainment.

Some folk watch a couple of hours of TV a day, some folk browse boards, and help out where they can.

Sully

99% of staff are unpaid. Boards need to earn money via subscriptions and banner adverts to pay for server hosting, the vBulletin software, and other development costs. So all money earned, is pretty much put straight back into Boards. Hence why it has dramatically improved recently - moved servers, so its a lot more stable and we can all access the site the majority of the time without delays

Zaph

And don't forget that we have our first paid whipping boy employee now.

DeVore

Profit is a concept that only makes sense then you consider Revenue and Costs. Our Revenue is now non-zero so we are "making money" but our costs are non-zero too as for one thing, we now have an employee. Our plan has always been to grow slowly steadily and more importantly self-sufficently.
If we put a price on all the work that is done on the site by all the people involved then we would need a decade of Revenue to pay for a month of Cost. Are we making profit? Hmmm... not sure I would use that term.
When we pay the bills and the wages there is litttle or nothing left at the moment but we have a warchest we've been saving and like all other stats about the site the income is (hopefully) heading north.

We will continue to reinvest the surpluses into the site and most likely hire another person from the community as and when we can. Needless to say the Admins, Smods and mods arent paid to take care of the community.

It DOES seem like in the last 6 months our plan of forcing corporate Ireland and the media and others to deal with us on our own terms. (Witness, no popups... we've been told I don't know how many times that we would never get advertising if we didnt do popups or interstitials etc.)
So, we are gaining mainstream traction at the moment, so its interesting to see what happens next...

DeV.

6th

DeVore wrote: »

most likely hire another person from the community as and when we can.

So what would you like me to do?

Bob the Builder

always wondered that myself, but when you think of all the costs associated with running a web server these days, it can sometimes be a little expensive to do.

as for advertising, why dont you put a little audio on the homepage so whenever someone logs on that they will hear a sound like "Subscribe! or I kill you" .... It sure as hell would scare me into handing over my mothers credit card details!

I'm surprised the Mods haven't all gone on strike now for bad working conditions, and not being paid minimum wages!

gerky

Is much of the boards income from subscriptions?
I think if you want more people to subscribe there needs to be more of an incentive and maybe stick up the subscribing info in an ad every so often.

Hagar

Do we turn over a prophet ? Yes and Yes.

gerky

Hagar wrote: »

Do we turn over a prophet ? Yes and Yes.

Boom Boom

Sparky

I get a free lifetime subscription. \o/
But boards has indirectly paid me well (yes in €€) in other fields.

whiskeyman

Don't forget all the Whiskers and catnip we have to have round for the lolcats.... they're a costly drain on us!

Shiminay

Since Asok started keeping the harem of hamsters for the wheels that power everything, it's all good.

We also make significant money when we sieze the assets of people we site ban (thanks to a handy back hander deal we've done with the Criminal Assets Bureau). The coke and hookers mod rewards don't pay for themselves ye know!