Clarification on money

There seems to have been continued misunderstanding over statements I made early in the life of this site. I thought I had clarified this, but I can't find where I posted it so perhaps it was in a private e-mail. Maybe the clarification was posted on the VV.com site, and we know that site has poofed into dust.

These two postings seem to contain the crux of the misunderstanding
http://visforvoltage.org/forum-topic/announcements/12-money-grubbing-ideas
http://visforvoltage.org/forum-topic/announcements/2-test-forum-potentially-replace-v-voltage-forums

The first thing to clarify is the dollar amount of $150/month. What I was describing is the potential cost of potentially having to upgrade the server I'm renting. That cost would be proportioned out over the several sites I run (see http://davidherron.com/ for links to all of them), so the whole amount would not be applied to the VV.org site. I am currently renting a server that runs me about $70 per month, and it's this server on which VV.org is running. Therefore a portion of that cost is apportioned to VV.org.

At the time I made those postings it wasn't very clear what the potential traffic would be with VV.org. We saw that VV.com had over 2000 registered users, so if all 2000 of those people came over to VV.org .. well .. I was forseeing my server crumbling under the load.

Perhaps you can see with that how I might have been thinking I'd need to upgrade the server. And that it would add to my monthly cost by quite a bit ... note... add to. It's not that the whole cost would be apportioned to VV.org but clearly if I had to increase my cost by $70 per month (or more) because I added VV.org, then that's the cost I'd apportion to VV.org.

Clearly our experience the last two months (almost) shows that getting this site to 2000 users is going to take awhile. And for now my server is fine with the load. For now there is no need to upgrade the server.

The last thing I should discuss is that advertising on the right hand side, and advertising in general. First the advertising being run on the site as it is .. One thing is Google works to make sure that the ads they run are a useful addition. For myself I would not be running that if I didn't think it was useful. Google does a great job selecting ads that correlate with the subject of each page, and I urge you to browse the site looking carefully at the content and advertising to see for yourself. It's amusing the ads chosen for the Governance page.

But... I suspect people see that and think .. oh, he's making a mint on that. Nope. It's provided about $25 over the last month or so the ads have been there. While that's a bit more than enough to pay for the apportioned cost of my server cost, I can't control how often the ads are clicked on and in any case it's in the right ballpark. And to make it clear I'm not asking you to just click on ads. If you find it useful, then use it, and if you find it unuseful, then ignore it. The advertising is small enough it's easily ignored.

About advertising in general ...

I will admit that I believe it is very appropriate for someone to operate an online community web site as a commercial operation. And in fact that I have been studying how to do that very business operation, and that I believe that is something I want to do as a career change. Maybe. In any case you can browse the Internet and find hundreds or more sites where someone is running some kind of forum or group blogging software, running advertising on the site, and making a living from that. I think it is akin to a bar owner making a living through operating an establishment at which people meet and socialize.

As I said I've been studying how to build online communities .. and how to run one as a business. But this site is my first involvement with building a community site from scratch. So far my studies have been theory, and I do understand the theory pretty well. The last two months (almost) of working with this group has taught me a lot. For example the importance of politics and interpersonal relationships, and especially how excruciatingly difficult they are when its done over email.

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- David Herron, davidherron.com, 7gen.com, http://www.7gen.com/store
- EVT 4000, Charger bike (rebuilt), Vego 600sx (rebuilt), Electrified Electra Townie
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