DevilMinder Posted February 21, 2016 Share Posted February 21, 2016 Hi All, I was getting my taxes ready when I began looking into NJDevs operating expenses. As many of you may have noticed we lost advertising support in August of last year due to Forums no longer being allowed under the new Verizon/AOL ad networks terms and conditions. AOL was the last big ad network left that we qualified for (need hundreds of thousands of views a month). The costs of running this forum and its large hosting needs still continue even if perceived traffic is down. Last year with all things said and done the expenses were just under $1,300(hosting,software,registrar). Straight PayPal donations only accounted for $70 last year. For those of you thankfully using Amazon referral links, you netted us $375 dollars. Advertising rounded out at $432 when it ended in August. Total loss for the year, $330 out of my pocket. I am asking for donations to cover the loss of our advertising income and that you religiously use the amazon referral links to provide income to the expenses. Amazon is trialing a new advertising network itself, which I am running as of last night. it unfortunately pays in the low end of the original ad payouts we had. So if you are running ad block, white list and unblock scripts for the site. Thanks! Brad "DM" Smith paypal.me/njdevs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sundstrom Posted February 21, 2016 Share Posted February 21, 2016 donated - thanks for everything Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HellOnICE Posted February 21, 2016 Share Posted February 21, 2016 You've got shekels. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DevilMinder Posted February 21, 2016 Author Share Posted February 21, 2016 Thanks for the 3 donations already! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lucifer91 Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 I never remember to use the Amazon Link. Does it work for movies and such that I rent or buy? Anyway, donated via paypal. Thanks for everything you do for the site! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derlique Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 ^same but I'm making 2 large purchases on Amazon today, so let me know if it registers. Thanks for everything, DM and other mods! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lateralous Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 Donated last night. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 Just donated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RSC Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 Donated. Not as much as I would have liked, but it's something. Thanks for everything, DM 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThreeCups Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 DM, what is the PayPal address to donate? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DevilMinder Posted February 22, 2016 Author Share Posted February 22, 2016 http://paypal.me/njdevs Thats the link, paypal changed it up a little. Thanks for all the donation so far, we are up to $300 now! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 In order to get the Amazon referral, do I have to click on the banner ad, or can I just click the "Amazon Referrals" tab? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThreeCups Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 Just sent Thanks for everything you do Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vadvlfan Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 done! thanks for everything Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DevilMinder Posted February 22, 2016 Author Share Posted February 22, 2016 In order to get the Amazon referral, do I have to click on the banner ad, or can I just click the "Amazon Referrals" tab? Have to click the tab. The ads are independent. Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devil Dan 56 Posted February 23, 2016 Share Posted February 23, 2016 Sent some dollars last night. Thanks for all the work you and everyone behind the scenes put in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NJDfan1711 Posted February 24, 2016 Share Posted February 24, 2016 I'll see what I can donate. Thanks for all of the hard work you do. How do the Amazon links work? You click on one from this site and go to Amazon and it generates money just by visiting their site, or do you have to make a purchase for it to count? Also, not looking to get into specifics or say that I don't believe you, but I am just curious why it's so high to run a site like this? I used to do web design/hosting back in the day and would just be curious to see some of the stats breakdowns in terms of traffic, bandwidth, and overall storage capacity. To lock up a domain you can literally pay 10 bucks a year for 5 or 10 years and not have to worry about it for a loooong time. At $1,300 for the year, you're looking at about $100+ per month for hosting and bandwidth, and I feel like, for a site of this magnitude (again, assuming I have a rough idea of the type of traffic and storage this site requires), you should be able to find something closer to the $25-50/mo range, effectively cutting your cost in half, or even in quarters. Just a few examples that come to mind... HostGator's highest "Business Plan" is $10/mo. GoDaddy has unlimited bandwidth AND unlimited storage (not that you'd need it, it's not like this is a site where people upload files), and is only $7.99/mo. So....yeah... the opportunity to save some money might be just a search away. Who's your current hosting provider? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DevilMinder Posted February 25, 2016 Author Share Posted February 25, 2016 We started out on one of those lower plans, and it was quite easy to cover the bills ($24 a month or so). The problem now is active users and the large database are very memory intensive and a shared plan no longer work for this site. We used to crash or slow to a crawl for any news event in the old hosting days. The hosting itself is $85 a month, the rest is the forum software (support and updates). I use namecheap for the URL its only 10 bucks a year plus the SSL cert and the privacy guard it comes out to about $20. At $390 now from paypal donations, thanks everyone! Now I don't have to worry about the hosting hitting my card for a couple of months. Just to clarify, once you click on the amazon referrals link above it will attach a NJdevs_com link while you browse and ultimately buy something during that session. Once you leave or buy nothing, we don't get anything. The referrals have netted 12 bucks this week, thanks for that! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dmann422 Posted February 25, 2016 Share Posted February 25, 2016 just sent what little i could. thanks as always for the great site DM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NJDfan1711 Posted February 25, 2016 Share Posted February 25, 2016 15 hours ago, DevilMinder said: We started out on one of those lower plans, and it was quite easy to cover the bills ($24 a month or so). The problem now is active users and the large database are very memory intensive and a shared plan no longer work for this site. We used to crash or slow to a crawl for any news event in the old hosting days. The hosting itself is $85 a month, the rest is the forum software (support and updates). I use namecheap for the URL its only 10 bucks a year plus the SSL cert and the privacy guard it comes out to about $20. At $390 now from paypal donations, thanks everyone! Now I don't have to worry about the hosting hitting my card for a couple of months. Just to clarify, once you click on the amazon referrals link above it will attach a NJdevs_com link while you browse and ultimately buy something during that session. Once you leave or buy nothing, we don't get anything. The referrals have netted 12 bucks this week, thanks for that! Gotcha, makes sense. I understand the need for being on an isolated server/environment, but have you thought about going to a virtualized platform? The computing world today is largely a shared space even in the largest of organizations and datacenters, and virtualizing has helped tremendously. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DevilMinder Posted February 25, 2016 Author Share Posted February 25, 2016 We are on a VMware virtualize server Sent from my VS986 using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DevilMinder Posted March 6, 2016 Author Share Posted March 6, 2016 Thanks to everyone who has used the amazon referral links, it added up to almost the full month of hosting by itself! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DevilMinder Posted May 14, 2016 Author Share Posted May 14, 2016 Thanks to everyone for their continued use of the amazon link! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vadvlfan Posted July 13, 2016 Share Posted July 13, 2016 On February 24, 2016 at 8:08 PM, dmann422 said: just sent what little i could. thanks as always for the great site DM Sent something as well. Loved coming here for years. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sammyk Posted July 13, 2016 Share Posted July 13, 2016 Used the link, hope it worked. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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