what to do when you can no longer support your website?

nahdoic

hey everyone. I don't know how many of you know, but I run www.statcounter.com , it's getting 500,000 hits a day - 10,000 page impressions a day. Hugely popular. Over 5,000 pages linking to it according to google and over 8,000 members. It's running on a dedicated freeBSD server at the moment, costing $250 a month, the site as the moment is bringing in $100 a month from advertising. I set up the site to learn web programming, I've done that. Don't have the time or the money to turn it around into a profit now.

I've done a survey asking about a pay service. 25% of members were interested in the services which could be offered in a pay service - but I don't want to accept money for year long contracts as I would have a legal obligation to see it through then. But the potential is there to turn it into some real profits. I wish I had a cash daddy to inject a few thousand into it - then I could go and re-develop it. But being a college student at the moment I need to concentrate my efforts on my projects which will realise cash in the next month or two.

I don't want to see it go, but I have to be practical.

So I am asking you. What do you think I should do with it?

[nostalgia]I remember 2 years ago - having 40 members in StatCounter and maybe getting a member every 2 or 3 days - and being all excited about what country they where from ... the good ol' days.[/nostalgia]

Terminator

I know where you're coming from. I was in a similar situation myself a couple of months ago. I was struggling to pay for my classifieds site and decided to start charging for premium adverts.

COMPLETE DISASTER

I ended up paying rediculous sums to the bank just so I could charge 1 or 2 people who actually bothered to go for the premium adverts.

Needless to say I cancelled the merchant account and I'm back to paying just €80 a month for the Hosting / SQL Server (www.webworld.ie). I've had some enquiries about banner ads so I guess its only a matter of time before somebody buys some space.

My advice to you would be to hang in there but also to try and find a cheaper hosting solution - $250 sounds very steep to me

although maybe the service you offer is particularly server intensive???

damnyanks

You could try selling your sites to other companys in the same market as you.

mneylon

1. Shop around for a cheaper host. If you can cut your overheads by 50% it would ease the strain

2. Try and get into a partnership with another company.. . shop around... post an ad on a few sites

3. Pray!

Although your costs may seem high they are quite low when compared to those incurred by larger companies. Online advertising at the moment is not doing very well, so you might have to battle it out a bit.

DJB

Here is some info from a link popularity checker program I have for the links to statcounter.com:

AllTheWeb: 76,795 links
AltaVista: 7,741 links
Google: 2,750 links
HotBot: 6,600 links
MSN Search: 6,750 links

And here are the links:

AllTheWeb: http://www.alltheweb.com/search?cat=web&lang=any&query=link.all%3Awww.statcounter.com

AltaVista: http://www.altavista.com/sites/search/web?q=link%3Awww.statcounter.com+-url%3Awww.statcounter.com

Google: http://www.google.com/search?as_lq=www.statcounter.com

HotBot: http://hotbot.lycos.com/?query=linkdomain%3Awww.statcounter.com+-domain%3Awww.statcounter.com

MSN Search: http://search.msn.com/results.asp?q=linkdomain%3Awww.statcounter.com+-domain%3Awww.statcounter.com

Maybe you should look at moving the site elsewhere... I know it is a lot of hassle but it is better than saying goodbye to it. Get your costs down and try and link your site up with another site. A synergy is always a good idea. Especially in business... combine the resources of two companies and together the costs will be lower and profits higher. In theory that is but you have to put that into practice.

2 + 2 = 5

Regards,


Dave

steve-hosting36

Some suggestions?

Find a hosting partner to co-brand the offering.

Buy a server and colocate it locally for less money.

Partner with a development/search engine/marketing firm.

In no particular order - btw terminator - what are you paying 80 euro a month for??

Steve

Terminator

€20 hosting, roughly €60 for sql server. I've had cheaper hosting in the past with miserable results. I'm happy enough with the current cost ratio considering the site is pretty heavily used.

tmcd

Laugh you may at this suggestion, But its worked for me over the last year and a half.
http://www.worldschoolphotographs.com at one stage for me was getting 25,000 unique viewers a day. When I started it I didn't think it would do what it did. Thats why when I started it I used namezero for the free domain and pointed all traffic to my free webspace at indigo.ie. Have to say no problems so far. I'm also in a similar situation as yourself. Got the traffic, but no fe*cin money. Probably have to talk to them about your own cgi-bin, not sure if it comes standard.
Might not be what you want but atleast it's another avenue to explore

mneylon

Originally posted by steve-hosting36
Some suggestions?

Find a hosting partner to co-brand the offering.
Steve

That would probably be the best solution for him

halfab

hey everyone. I don't know how many of you know, but I run www.statcounter.com , it's getting 500,000 hits a day - 10,000 page impressions a day. Hugely popular.

What sort of bandwidth are you looking at ?

nahdoic

Cheers to everyone who replied. Especially adam's private pm too.

I had convinced myself to do what damnyanks was suggesting and sell out. So I just thought I'd post my woes on boards.ie before I did anything harsh. And I'm glad I did. You've all convinced me to stick it out - going to do what you all suggested and get a cheaper host in order to at least break even each month.

I ended up paying rediculous sums to the bank just so I could charge 1 or 2 people who actually bothered to go for the premium adverts. - Terminator

I was looking around at this for a while, www.ibill.com look to be the best for sites like ours. No set up fees, no monthly charges, they install software on your server and they just charge about 10% commission on your transactions. (it's in US dollars though)

Maybe you should look at moving the site elsewhere... I know it is a lot of hassle but it is better than saying goodbye to it - Dave

Actually it's really no hassle at all. I've already transferred host 2 times - with almost no loss of service to the members. The move would take about 2 - 5 hours for the servers involved but it will only take about 30 mins of my time altogether. You gotta luv unix systems with their nohup, nice and gzip commands - and their ability to telnet from one unix server to another. I wouldn't fancy having to download the 80 meg database over my 56k, then try and upload it again without the members noticing

Find a hosting partner to co-brand the offering. - Steve

Was that an offer Steve blacknight is right that it would be the best solution if I could find an interested host.

tmcd - unfortunately a free indigo.ie just wouldn't cut it. I need at least 200 megs of hd space, mySQL database, php and perl, telnet access and to be able to run cron jobs.

What sort of bandwidth are you looking at ? - halfab

Bandwidth isn't that much at all, you're talking about just 8 gigs a month - it's far more CPU and hard disk intensive (and I'm stuck with an IDE drive, scsi are too damn expensive)

Jun 25, 2002
432,458 hits
367,672,429 bytes transferred

Total for June.
8,875,664 hits
7,824,457,157 bytes transferred

Average a day for June.
355,026 hits
312,978,286 bytes transferred

At the moment my plan is to transfer it to rackshack.net so I can get a dedicated server for $99 a month and the site will be breaking even each month. Then after I make enough money this summer to get me through next year in college I'll re-develop it fully.

Cheers everyone for helping - any more suggestions or better plans I'd still love to hear them.

mneylon

Originally posted by nahdoic

I ended up paying rediculous sums to the bank just so I could charge 1 or 2 people who actually bothered to go for the premium adverts. - Terminator

I was looking around at this for a while, www.ibill.com look to be the best for sites like ours. No set up fees, no monthly charges, they install software on your server and they just charge about 10% commission on your transactions. (it's in US dollars though)

You might want to look at hostcharge . They allow you to bill in pretty much any currency and will send you cheques or transfers in Euros. If you email asher@hostcharge.com and say that I sent you. They are very helpful.

steve-hosting36

Check your pm

nahdoic

www.hostcharge.com is fantastic! They give you a far better deal and more flexibility than ibill.com - And is suited perfectly towards a site like mine. Cheers for that blacknight. I will definitely be signing up with them towards the end of the summer.

And cheers to Steve for his pm too.

You've gotta love this webmaster board. Convinced me do a complete 180 - from completely giving up on my site, to getting it hosted for a cheaper price in order to break even and finding out about a great service to easily and cost-effectively charge members for a pay service.

Thank you ALL!

mneylon

You're welcome. Please mention me when you 'speak' to Asher... He's very good, but it helps if he knows where you came from.

nahdoic

Just a little update to say thanks to everyone. StatCounter has been completely transferred from its awfully expensive $249 a month dedicated server, to a beast of a server from Hosting365.

After some initial teething problems (as there always are), it's running faster and better than an ever before. Thx everyone, for all your help. I will now be able to keep StatCounter running and eventually get the time to put together a pay service it in the future.

Boards.ie and its members are the best!