Hows does Boards.ie make money?

McBauer

Just wondering how Boards.ie (and sites like it) make money? Is it solely from the ads on the website? And if so would these generate a significant income?

Bigcheeze

Ads and using their large userbase to launch spin off sites like adverts.ie.

The large userbase to target stuff at (deals etc) is what makes it valuable.

There are paid accounts as well.

the mods are volunteers so apart from IT it doesn't require a lot of people to run it.

Shzm

And the talk to forums I believe.

Mimikyu

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The Apprentice

I would have to agree and dissagree with some of the comments above..


My belief is that boards.ie is 100% profitable meaning it makes gold coins year after year, trust me - it aint run at a loss..
I do know that there are significant revenues from advertising on this forum with the Pageviews/Unique users it has

The "NORMAL" business model of a forum is indeed Adsense or Affliate (Sky,donedeal etc) banners and Unique Advertising outside of the norm. The more profitable is Advertising and because boards.ie is such a national brand you could be asking four or five figures for a Advertising banner..

Make no mistake boards.ie is run by a dedicated team of which some are paid, but the majority like other forums are unpaid. Some forums do give perks i cant really suggest a comment on this forum but i do know it has full time staff

This site is in the region of six figures a year, so its pretty significant. The advertising costs for a banner has Lots of variables to give a suggestion on, such as bounce rate, Unique Users, Demographic - Age .. all that jazz will decipher how much someone can ask for 1000 or 10,000 pageviews or click throughs.. As stated four of five figures perhaps on a monthly basis..

I dissagree on running the server costs, i can as anyone get a pretty significant server in Germany for (Dedi) for something of this nature and adsense alone would service this cost yearly comparitive to the income it generates. It states its been and is hosted in ireland but Black knight will tell you different about how you can be fooled into thinking this. I wouldnt be surprised if they have a contract with Black knight as the owners of this site have other significant interests online .. so deals can be made (i would)


The large userbase is true as an upsell, but i read this week on the forum that the daily deals side of the site has been been shut down and staff have been redistributed amongst other online ventures.

Mimikyu

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mneylon

The Apprentice wrote: »

I dissagree on running the server costs, i can as anyone get a pretty significant server in Germany for (Dedi) for something of this nature and adsense alone would service this cost yearly comparitive to the income it generates. It states its been and is hosted in ireland but Black knight will tell you different about how you can be fooled into thinking this. I wouldnt be surprised if they have a contract with Black knight as the owners of this site have other significant interests online .. so deals can be made (i would)

I'm not sure what you're trying to say about our relationship with boards.ie, but we don't host the site and have never hosted it.

Mimikyu

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The Apprentice

The Apprentice wrote: »

I wouldnt be surprised if they have a contract with Black knight as the owners of this site have other significant interests online

They are irish company, you are irish host .. thats what i was saying in between the lines.

riveratom

The Apprentice wrote: »

They are irish company, you are irish host .. thats what i was saying in between the lines.

Em...you only need to scroll a few inches to the bottom of the page to see they are hosted by Digiweb....

The Apprentice

or i could have wasted 6 seconds of my life doing a whois lol.. meh

This is turning into an argument about a "relationship" that clearly doesnt exist. My point was on the emphasis of server running costs and revenue nothing more.
No intention of anything other than that guys..


And for the record i dont know the ins and outs only surmising, but to clarify it certainly run at a loss but still can be profitable. Upgrades, staff costs all that must be taken into account.

Graham

The Apprentice wrote: »

My belief is that boards.ie is 100% profitable meaning it makes gold coins year after year, trust me - it aint run at a loss..

The Apprentice wrote: »

but to clarify it certainly run at a loss but still can be profitable. Upgrades, staff costs all that must be taken into account.

Thanks for clearing that up

The Apprentice

Well ok to give you an example


Operating costs -50,000
Staff -50,000
Revenue +155,000

Meaning + 55,000 In year 1



Operating costs -50,000
Staff -150,000
Revenue +180,000

Meaning Deficit - 30,000 In year 2


Operating costs -50,000
Staff -150,000
Revenue 280,000

Meaning Deficit + 80,000 In year 3


So with basic numbers you may not have tripled the staff, but you may have paid off a debenture, you may have paid off a mortgage that year on an existing premises which over the coming years add signicially to the Revenue Pile.. Short term pain for long term gain
OR Paid off an existing loan for starting up the business decreasing cost of capitol for future company investments --
OR you could have diversified your business model going after different markets instead of having all their eggs in one "Irish" basket.. Boards.ie went to england and china didnt it ?? Well that cost money and although it was unsucessfull it needed revenue

Theres plenty of scope for other work, im not sure if boards.ie is a seperate or existing entity in this company
http://www.distilledmedia.ie/


Hope that clarifies it a bit better ..

Graham

The only thing that clarifies is that you are bad at basic maths.

Spouting vague elements of cash-flow/balance sheets/P & L neither answers the OPs question or clarifies your own later posts.

Are you testing out article spinner again, this time to rewrite your posts?

The Apprentice

Ya i didnt even go into Waac to see is it profitable either.. its a forum and im in bed on my laptop so get over it !

Its no longer called a balance sheet btw, its called a statement of financial postion

And its not vague, its a Laymans explanation clearly of which you didnt get and apologies grahem on my typos i clearly couldnt be arsed trying to help your passive agressive self so ive decided to leave them

Duggys Housemate

The Apprentice wrote: »

Ya i didnt even go into Waac to see is it profitable either.. its a forum and im in bed on my laptop so get over it !

Its no longer called a balance sheet btw, its called a statement of financial postion

And its not vague, its a Laymans explanation clearly of which you didnt get and apologies grahem on my typos i clearly couldnt be arsed trying to help your passive agressive self so ive decided to leave them

The place is either profitable or it isn't. We have your surmising about who hosts them (totally incorrect) and guesses at temporary expenses - all plucked from your arse - vs the founder saying it ran at a loss last year. I'll go with that.

RATM

I'm scratching my head as to how forums like Boards and other news websites are going to make money now or the future.

I (and a lot of people I know) use Firefox and the app Adblocker. I see no ads whatsoever when using this site or others. I am not sure how many people are using Adblocker but my guess is that it people will always choose no ads over having ads so if they are aware of the app then they'll be quite likely to download it.

It also makes me wonder about websites and their advertising rate cards. Like when they say they have 50,000 unique visitors a month they are able to back that claim up with programs like Google Analytics to prove their claim. But what if half of those 50,000 unique visitors have Adblocker installed and never see the banner ads that the purchaser of advertising has paid for ? The price paid for the banners was arrived at due to the claim of 50,000 unique views of the ad. But the reality might be very different.

As I said before I am unsure of how popular Adblocker is except to say that the majority of my friends use it. If it gets more and more popular then sites like Boards have a problem as their ad revenue could dry up. At some stage they may have to look at a subscription model to sustain the business.

Personally I wouldn't be adverse to the idea of paying €10 or €15 a year to use Boards as I find it a great resource that is uniquely relevant to Ireland / matters of Irish interest. But I think I would be in a minority on that one. It is a real Tragedy of the Commons situation and programs like Adblocker complicate it considerably.

Duggys Housemate

RATM wrote: »

I'm scratching my head as to how forums like Boards and other news websites are going to make money now or the future.

I (and a lot of people I know) use Firefox and the app Adblocker. I see no ads whatsoever when using this site or others. I am not sure how many people are using Adblocker but my guess is that it people will always choose no ads over having ads so if they are aware of the app then they'll be quite likely to download it.

It also makes me wonder about websites and their advertising rate cards. Like when they say they have 50,000 unique visitors a month they are able to back that claim up with programs like Google Analytics to prove their claim. But what if half of those 50,000 unique visitors have Adblocker installed and never see the banner ads that the purchaser of advertising has paid for ? The price paid for the banners was arrived at due to the claim of 50,000 unique views of the ad. But the reality might be very different.

As I said before I am unsure of how popular Adblocker is except to say that the majority of my friends use it. If it gets more and more popular then sites like Boards have a problem as their ad revenue could dry up. At some stage they may have to look at a subscription model to sustain the business.

Personally I wouldn't be adverse to the idea of paying €10 or €15 a year to use Boards as I find it a great resource that is uniquely relevant to Ireland / matters of Irish interest. But I think I would be in a minority on that one. It is a real Tragedy of the Commons situation and programs like Adblocker complicate it considerably.

You are suffering from selection bias. Most of your friends are probably geeks.

There is a subscription model already, since you are taking money by ad blocking, that seems like it might be for you.

riveratom

RATM wrote: »

I'm scratching my head as to how forums like Boards and other news websites are going to make money now or the future.

I (and a lot of people I know) use Firefox and the app Adblocker. I see no ads whatsoever when using this site or others. I am not sure how many people are using Adblocker but my guess is that it people will always choose no ads over having ads so if they are aware of the app then they'll be quite likely to download it.

It also makes me wonder about websites and their advertising rate cards. Like when they say they have 50,000 unique visitors a month they are able to back that claim up with programs like Google Analytics to prove their claim. But what if half of those 50,000 unique visitors have Adblocker installed and never see the banner ads that the purchaser of advertising has paid for ? The price paid for the banners was arrived at due to the claim of 50,000 unique views of the ad. But the reality might be very different.

As I said before I am unsure of how popular Adblocker is except to say that the majority of my friends use it. If it gets more and more popular then sites like Boards have a problem as their ad revenue could dry up. At some stage they may have to look at a subscription model to sustain the business.

Personally I wouldn't be adverse to the idea of paying €10 or €15 a year to use Boards as I find it a great resource that is uniquely relevant to Ireland / matters of Irish interest. But I think I would be in a minority on that one. It is a real Tragedy of the Commons situation and programs like Adblocker complicate it considerably.

It's based on ad impressions not site visits.

TouchingVirus

OSI wrote: »

This post just highlights that you have absolutely no clue what it takes to run a site like boards. None. Not even close.

I'm just going to leave this here, something posted on the no-longer-hosted Boards.ie blog by the previous developers Conor & Ross on work they did back in May 2010.

This site isn't some one-instance/shared hosting solution

mooonpie

RATM wrote: »

I (and a lot of people I know) use Firefox and the app Adblocker. I see no ads whatsoever when using this site or others. I am not sure how many people are using Adblocker but my guess is that it people will always choose no ads over having ads so if they are aware of the app then they'll be quite likely to download it.

Just to point out I, for one, use Chrome and have Adblock Plus installed, but actually have it turned off for boards - as do others according to the "Re-introduction of Banner Ads" thread in Feedback.

I've no doubt there are plenty of people using adblock or similar plug ins, but for me as long as the ads don't start blaring sound or taking up crazy amounts of screen space (which I don't feel they do on boards - but what's acceptable to some people is unacceptable to others) I'm happy enough to ignore them and go about my business.

RATM wrote: »

Personally I wouldn't be adverse to the idea of paying €10 or €15 a year to use Boards as I find it a great resource that is uniquely relevant to Ireland / matters of Irish interest. But I think I would be in a minority on that one. It is a real Tragedy of the Commons situation and programs like Adblocker complicate it considerably.

There is the option of subscribing for €5 a month, and I believe most long term subscribers (long term as opposed to those that pay for 1 month in order to change their name) do so for the same reason you'd be willing to pay €10/€15 a year.

The question is, back in 2006 would you have paid that money? boards don't want to turn away any new members and that is what a paywall would do. The idea of boards gear - t-shirts, etc has been raised as an incentive for people to subscribe but then it becomes a case of balancing extras/perks against the cost of same.

Then again some people are willing to pay the €5 a month for the current perks - what's acceptable to some isn't acceptable to others.

The Apprentice

OSI wrote: »

This post just highlights that you have absolutely no clue what it takes to run a site like boards. None. Not even close.

Yes your right. I should change my profession asap.

Yes i also remember that post from 2010 .. but 18 rackservers with 15 gigaput throughputs is all well and good but you heard it hear first folks boards is closing according to Duggys housemate.

It aint profitable so im wondering when the bill for these 18 gigaput servers isnt paid will the doors close ?? Tick tock



fml im actually sorry i even posted on this

RATM

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

You are suffering from selection bias. Most of your friends are probably geeks.

There is a subscription model already, since you are taking money by ad blocking, that seems like it might be for you.

Yeah for sure I know there is a selection bias, I am much more likely to use the apps my friends do. A small minority of friends are geeks who then told the rest of us about Adblocker and we then go on to tell others who tell others and so on- its easy to see how it spreads. Installing Adblocker is free and only takes 30 seconds so if people are aware of it then it seems to me that it is a no-brainer.

I'm aware that by subscribing to Boards will remove the ads but when I checked a few years back the cost was €50. As I said I might be willing to pay €10 a year but I'm not willing to pay €50. But even if I do pay €10 a year to have no ads it still doesn't solve my ad problem on all the other sites I use, hence why Adblocker is such a handy tool. I realise here that I am what is called a free-loader but the current model doesn't suit me so I'll operate outside of it until one that does suit me comes along.

At the end of the day Boards has over 400,000 registered users with probably another few hundred thousand lurkers who never post and don't register. If they could find a way of charging even €5 a year then they could generate revenue of €2m a year, a pretty substantial sum. Maybe they're making more than that from ads, I'm not sure. But one thing we can be sure of is that Adblocker and similar programs are growing in popularity and once people install them and see the benefits of ad free browsing and a de-cluttered screen then it is highly unlikely that they'll be un-installing the app anytime soon.

The Apprentice

Aye... ze germans know **** all about building ****..

the paddies know it all .. well just a few i might surmise

rubberdiddies

if the usage of Adblocker does become widespread, then it will kill off many many sites that are currently free to use.

it's an anti-internet app imo

galwayjohn89

rubberdiddies wrote: »

if the usage of Adblocker does become widespread, then it will kill off many many sites that are currently free to use.

it's an anti-internet app imo

I'm sort of on the fence about ad-block all though it's the first thing I install when I get a new device. Ads have become far too intrusive in my opinion. I run a few sites that currently have no ads, if I was to add ads they would be small ones and I would ban any animated gifs.

Noel Kinsella

Bigcheeze wrote: »

Ads and using their large userbase to launch spin off sites like adverts.ie.

The large userbase to target stuff at (deals etc) is what makes it valuable.

There are paid accounts as well.

the mods are volunteers so apart from IT it doesn't require a lot of people to run it.

Yes and the "paid" accounts seem to have much more "pull" with the Mods too

irish bloke

Noel Kinsella wrote: »

Yes and the "paid" accounts have much more "pull" with the Mods too

Care to elaborate????

jmcc

The Apprentice wrote: »

I dissagree on running the server costs, i can as anyone get a pretty significant server in Germany for (Dedi) for something of this nature

That is a bit of a WTF? comment. I don't know what kind of site(s) you run but large database backed sites generally require more than one server. The size of the databases is also important and a database with a few hundred gigabytes of data has its own kinds of problems that the operators of small sites with tiny databases (<100MB) never encounter. Add a few thousand simultaneous users and things get more complicated.

Regards...jmcc

Noel Kinsella

irish bloke wrote: »

Care to elaborate????

I retract that opinion 100% a very unprofessional moderator got me thinking that due to his/her behaviour and I said it "seems" like "donors" get special treatment

AltAccount

The Apprentice wrote: »

the paddies know it all .. well just a few i might surmise

There's only the one know-it-all that I can see!