I guess us ponying up cash to keep the board running isn’t enough.
I guess us supplying 99.9% of the boards content isn’t enough.
I guess they are telling us we are doing a piss poor job making them money.
Considering ONE section of this board is directly related to anything actually to do with Cecil Adams or the Chicago Reader, I’m guessing they can do what televisionwithoutpity.com did. Just turn us off.
Tuba Diva,
thanks for starting this thread.
I realise that you have no power, but could you refer Ed to the Pit thread about banner ads? That way he can see what the paying membership feel.
For myself, this is the only site I pay for. (I think it’s well worth it.)
However I do use some sites with screaming ads - but they are free.
I think the Reader management should choose one approach or another.
Well, 99% of the people who posted in that thread seem absolutely fucking infuriated.
Thanks for the update, Tuba.
I am trying hard to convince myself that TPTB (not you, TD) are not simply saying, “Sure, they’ll complain. They complain about everything. But they’ll get used to it. And if they don’t, who cares? It’s not like the SDMB is a major profit center anyway.”
FWIW, I think a suggested alternative is better than a mere complaint. If you think it would be helpful, I am getting the feeling that many members are willing to pay a bit extra not to see the ads. If you can come up with a plausible figure on what TPTB thought they would get for implementing this, and mention that a lot of paying members are willing to cough up another buck or two not to see the #(*&)%#*& ads, that might go down better than just
Regards,
Shodan
We sent Ed a link to the Pit thread last night. And the staff had our own . . . discussion about it.
What makes me sad is that it would be (relatively) easy for many willing, able dopers to pay for and run a decent server, with the latest version of vBulletin and a robust database, for a fraction of the money that the Reader must have made from charging $15 per member.
I’m talking free, highly skilled labor, massive bandwidth, huge storage space, backups, the lot. Dreamhost currently provides 500Gb of space and 5Tb of transfer, for $5.95 a month! A dedicated server on a rack from Dreamhost is $395 per month, which sounds a lot, except actually that’s only the cost of 320 doper subscriptions in one year. And vBulletin is chump change - about $140 per year to get a constantly upgradeable license and phone support.
The costs are relatively low, the labor would be free, and we could keep the mods we know and love.
I appreciate Jerry and Jenny’s work. And I feel for you guys, being in the position you apparently are.
Sadly, instead of something that would keep the brand loyalty, we get a technical crock o’ shit, with a holding company that’s clearly trying to turn a fast buck, or make the SDMB justify its fiscal existence, but will in the end, I suspect, kill our brand loyalty and with it the profit that must surely already be being made.
It’s pathetic.
Hear, hear. I get the feeling, with all this ruckus, that the PTB over and above the mods and admins don’t regard the SDMB as an entity that can pay its own way at the moment without the ads. To keep this place going, I wouldn’t mind paying extra (perhaps wipe out the charter member discount for one thing).
I’ll stay tuned, to see how this all goes.
Who’s ready for a whole bunch of ifs?
If out of 71,841 members, 65% were active member/charter members
That gives us roughly 46,697 member/charter members (rounded)
times $10 because some are charter some are not.
$466,970 per year
That’s a lot of ifs though. It looks like a shitload of money, to us, especially when we keep asking for features and stability and keep coming up short.
But I’m going to ask all the other media people around chime in and agree with me here: All I’ve heard over the past 6 years or so from corporate at any job I’ve held is the push to get more revenue out of the online divisions, and minimize the print versions, to the point where they want 75% of revenue coming in to be from the web.
Now, do you really think that less than half a mil before the expense of half Jerry’s paycheck/servers/bandwidth/online sales people salaries, would make the new owner of any media company happy? I’ve heard of sales people getting a 250K bonus at my last job.
500K is nothing. Even if you wanted to up the number to 600K because of ads and googles ads, it still wouldn’t be enough. We’ve gone corporate. Nobody will care what we think.
They might care when we all leave.
[QUOTE=miamouse]
Who’s ready for a whole bunch of ifs?
If out of 71,841 members, 65% were active member/charter members
That gives us roughly 46,697 member/charter members (rounded)
times $10 because some are charter some are not.
$466,970 per year
That’s a lot of ifs though. It looks like a shitload of money, to us, especially when we keep asking for features and stability and keep coming up short.
But I’m going to ask all the other media people around chime in and agree with me here: All I’ve heard over the past 6 years or so from corporate at any job I’ve held is the push to get more revenue out of the online divisions, and minimize the print versions, to the point where they want 75% of revenue coming in to be from the web.
Its more than enough to run a messageboard several times the size of this one.
2 x support techs fulltime £40K (Hey you want good ones)
Server + hosting
Thanks, Tuba. That was appreciated.
Stop right there. We have been told in the past that there are only 3000 or so active members at any given time.
Maybe so, but did anybody say to you “We want 75 percent of our revenue to come from a message board?” If that’s all the money the Reader is making from the Web, this board isn’t the problem, it’s the lack of success in getting people to pay for online content and services. The problem wouldn’t be the boards. At the price you’re talking about, I would think this board is a pretty decent deal for them.
I hate to tell you this, but I’ve tried to crunch the numbers myself and I’ve gotten shot down by a lack of information. That 71,841 is the number of members since founding, not the current number of members. That information is being kept confidential. Why? Who knows.
These are my feelings, exactly. Banner ads as a whole don’t bother me, but paying to see them does. I hope TPTB see this and the pit thread and realize how close they are to trashing the best board on the internet.
ETA to Marley23: I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I’ve got no idea why somebody doesn’t make this board independent. I doubt a significant part of the membership here gives a damn about the Chicago Reader. It’s the Dope that keeps us coming.
Here are some problems. The paying membership is somewhere in the 2000-5000 range from what I can see. A much smaller number. Sometime last year I did some serious looking into this and came up with the range. (I think it was around the time of the google ads). As half of those are Charter members, this puts the high side of the membership revenue at $57,475. I suspect it is closer to $35,000.
Jerry only appears to put a small amount of time into the board, so I think we can figure maybe 20% of his pay and benefits which at a guess for a techie might mean up to 20k but probably closer to 15K. All guesses of course.
Then you can look at server and bandwidth costs.
Additional revenue from the Google ads and the banners ads. They already existed for guests.
If you survey the user list at random taking about 200 users and ensure at least 100 are from within the last 18 months, you can probably get a good approximation of the actual number of members. You will note the huge number of guests as you try this experiment. If you choose to do so, please try an do it at off hours.
Jim
As I was trying to say before the board decided to time out on me:
Probably not, especially when the messageboard is not a core revenue stream - if you get more revenue from doing something else then it makes sense to put more money into that.
This is where I disagree. Speaking from experience its more than enough to run a messageboard several times the size of this one.
2 x support techs fulltime £60K
1 x senior Dev/Producer £40K
1 x sales person/marketer to build brand and sales channels £30K base + bonus (paid from results)
£130K staff
external moderation - variable depending on contract/volunteers.
Server/bandwidth - again variable, but jjim’s figures are a good start.
Frankly it could be run on breakeven/minor profit at that level without adverts. However that does assume that they have that many members paying - as it seems unlikely that’s where you need the extra revenue streams to make up the difference.
Thanks, Jenny. I know it must be frustrating for you as well as for us. But it’s also worth reminding us as posters that there’s nothing to be gained by shooting the messenger.
Please do let us know if an e-mail objecting would be worthwhile and, if so, who to send it to.
First of all, Tuba, I want to thank you for posting this.
Secondly, unless I misunderstand, don’t advertisements only generate money for a site based on click-through references? I can’t imagine that, with so many members upset about the ads, that they’ll end up generating much revenue anyway.
Is it just me, or have the ads now moved above the SD banner?
Has anyone thought that perhaps the banner ads are just the new management (of The Reader) testing the waters, seeing how much they can get away with?
Reminds me of the definition of taxation – getting the maximum amount of feathers from the goose with the least amount of hissing.
Not just you… looks a little bit less silly up there.
Add another thanks to the mods and admins for doing what they can to speak up for us to TPTB. Working in the corporate world, I know how frustrating it can be to be made to do something you know is stupid.