Posted by As you’ve probably noticed, this site has been hit pretty hard with traffic last and this week – more than it’s ever been. Since the new year started, the numbers have been rising steadily, and this Thursday alone got about 24,000 visits, 145,000 page loads, and 2.4 million hits. The main problems right now are resource/CPU usage and maximum connections per period of time – the latter is the reason the site is giving all those “Service Temporarily Unavailable” messages. I, along with our friendly network administrator Maestro, have been considering moving us to a dedicated solution, but this would cost a lot more per month than either of us can afford.
The two obvious ways to generate the money needed to keep this site running are ads and donations. If we were to run ads, most likely you’d find them on the sidebar and maybe right above the comments box. If we were to ask for donations, it would have to be a monthly thing. I’m not quite sure yet what the target would be, but a safe estimate would be about $150 per month. Running ads might be the most surefire way of getting to that amount, but I hate to do it because it goes against everything I stand for – you may have noticed that there have never been any ads on this site for the year and a half that it’s been up. That being said, I’m also uncomfortable running a monthly donation drive because it would mean that you the readers would have to pay out of your own pockets, and I’m afraid we might not always get that amount.
Neither solution is particularly to my liking, but this site cannot stay as it currently is, so we’ll have to do something. All in all, I’m incredibly frustrated right now because I really don’t want to have to deal with any of this – I just want to blog.
Comments/Suggestions/Solutions are always welcome, especially if you voted “Other” in the poll.
I’d be happy to donate. I’d hate to see ads on this site too, and I’m sure many people would. Besides, we are ultimately the source of this crisis, so I think it makes sense that we give you the help you deserve.
I love this site too much. 🙂
no ads please, ill be happy to donate and i dont like ads, and im quite sure alot of people agree with me 😛
hey, are you guys going to follow the new season of the naruto since the fillers are ending soon, and naruto anime finally goes back to follow the manga?
I don’t mind ads at all. I just want to read the blogs. You’re obviously the most dedicated blogger I’ve seen and well, ads are the best bet in a constant flow of money to keep the site running. If it’s for a good cause there shouldn’t be a problem.
ill be happy to donate tooo………..no ads
“If” you go the ad route, check out an outfit called Federated Media. I’ve heard that they’re one of the better outfits. I’m not affiliated with them in any way, just parroting what I’ve heard.
if you ask for $1 donations, and 150 people do it, it should not be too bad.
It’s like a online subscription to a magazine, I’m okay with that =)
i hate adds too. burt in the end humas are too selfish and reckless(of course im also human). so you dont count pepople to donate. i dont want to say it but int he end ads its best solution. or you may be you will make this: light ads(something adsense or like that) and donate. i think this is good idea.
please forgive my rudeness.
Just do ads, people, go get firefox and block those ads…
with so many people visitng the site, there’s gotta be at least a couple that would be willing to donate. it’s a little risky still, but i think it’d be better than ads.
I have to say ads are probably the best route to take. People can be really inconsistent with donations. If you put too much faith in that and you came up short for money it could be a problem. I don’t like ads like many, but to keep the site working it might be for the best. Though if you can find enough people that can put the money consistently then donations are fine.
i’d agree with ads…they might be annoying, but that’s a good way to get the money you need. donations might not always come through…if there’s this many people coming in, some of them are bound to check the ads.
i could definitely put up with a few ads if it means this site can continue running
as long as theyre age appropriate XD
but i cant donate cus im in high school and i dun have my own money…
I’d probably be fine with either.
Ads are a much more reliable source of income, but ads sometimes can generate much more money when the donations are high, which means you can save them up for a future time when the monthly donations aren’t enough to cover.
I suggest that you run donations for the beginning few months, and see how it goes. If the donations start dying off, then switch to ads. People can’t really be complaining about ads when they’re all not donating themselves. It would be like a slap in their own face if they do so.
I find TTT´s idea just perfect, it is difficult to say how many people will/can donate. But you can give a try at donations and later on change to ads if donations does not work.
I’m tempted to make this my first “web magazine” subscription as I’ve found I’ve diversified my anime taste a lot since coming across this site. What you’ve “blogged” about in the past year has made this site the go to site as far as anime goes. I don’t mind either method as long as you keep writing as I find your insights into some shows very informative and keeps the anime I watch from being just another mindless show…
I agree with TTT. Try donations 1st. If it doesn’t work, switch to ads. Good Luck!
I would do a combination of both. Put like banner ads (no pop-ups!) on the page and also do some donations. If ads work out well you might not even need many donations.
I am willing to help donate, but I can’t donate every month since I try to donate to other sites too. As people said earlier.. It is much more reliable to have ads.
I say do a combination of both too, since donations are not a constant source of income.
Yea, combination of ads and dons is good. Let those who want to donate donate and control the number of ads on how the donations sum up. There’s also the possibility you can get even better server doing that. Who knows?
I’m fine with ads as long as there’s no popups. Donations are too inconsistent and troublesome.
What about having other people who own sites on separate servers who enjoy your content run mirrors of your site, and then having your pages direct to a random(1) mirror upon connecting if the there is significant(2) load? I don’t know if it would work that well or if anyone would volunteer the bandwidth and space, not to mention that it would require a good deal of coding and set up, and things like the poll couldn’t be distributed (the load of the poll would still all be placed on one server).
(1) Not necessarily truly random — for example, higher-capacity servers would take more users, so you could direct more users there, and if it was possible to check bandwidth usage on the fly without killing the “main” server, avoid redirecting users to servers that are near some soft-coded bandwidth limit…
(2) Optional — you could always redirect, if necessary.
Another option is to ask if some nice person would be willing to set up a vhost for you and then to use round-robin DNS, if that could somehow work… (Maybe something like the way http://www.kernel.org does things… or something. I don’t know.)
Just speculating some ideas…
While personally I wouldn’t like to see ads on the site, I must admit that I do not have the capability to donate (because in my country I’m too young to get a credit card… not to mention I don’t have a job yet) so I can’t really say it would be better to ask for donations instead.
IMO it’s really not ethical to you or the ad companies for anyone to say “put ads” and then use an ad-blocker — AFAIK these company pay per image DOWNLOADED (pay-per-impression or something) or per CLICK (pay-per-click) — meaning use of an ad-blocker would not help you in any way, shape, or form. If you do put ads, I pray you find some relevant and well-paying ads (text ones, maybe?) — I have no objection to your placement suggestion (just no pop-ups, please!).
What takes up the most bandwidth, the text, or the screenshots? If the latter, what about reducing the ones linked directly to maybe 1/4th what they are now or somehow otherwise cut out some images, and then put a “full” archive of screenshots on a DDL service (i.e. like the way you deal with OP/ED videos) and/or make them available by Bittorrent? I don’t know if that would defeat the purpose of your site, but I think for sure that it would be better to do something like that than disappear entirely.
For the time being, maybe it might help to … “stretch” current CPU cycles by taking advantage of CoralCDN (http://www.coralcdn.org/). While it wouldn’t make sense as a long-term solution (IMO), users who can access websites running on port 8080 (most people who are not behind certain corporate firewalls) can probably access a somewhat cached copy of the website from https://randomc.net.nyud.net:8080/ and then use the site “proper” when posting comments and voting on polls — but I don’t know how frequently CoralCDN “updates” (if at all) and I don’t know either whether it would really drop server load or not.
Oh, and three more things:
A) Did you ever find out whether disabling polls lowered server load?
B) Would using a squid proxy interface or something reduce loads?
C) Is there a way of making the pages static and then have them, for example, update hourly (for stats/comments — make sure you warn users to avoid double-posts) and only when you make a post (for everything else)? I imagine you aren’t a programmer, so obviously trying to code something like this is probably not realistic, but… *shrugs* Maybe idea B) is a way of implementing this…
Oh, and sorry to all for the long post. ^^” I don’t have my own blog, or I’d have posted something there instead. 🙂
I imagine you’d have already tried these, but… I wouldn’t know.
Adds is basic ^^ so GO do it (if it means to help this blog running like crazy ^^) this is one of the best blog out there and we dont want it to waste and die just like that^^ ill try to donate from time to time ^^
How about a combination of donations and ads? As incentive for people to donate more & more often, you could offer to host a banner, button or link to their site (as long as it’s somewhat related of course). Another way would be some sort of voluntary subscriptions, perhaps also with some incentive attached (like a free blog on the same server perhaps). Anyway, I like your site the way it is, so I’d prefer a donation based funding scheme over a advertised based one.
A) Did you ever find out whether disabling polls lowered server load?
B) Would using a squid proxy interface or something reduce loads?
C) Is there a way of making the pages static and then have them, for example, update hourly (for stats/comments — make sure you warn users to avoid double-posts) and only when you make a post (for everything else)? I imagine you aren’t a programmer, so obviously trying to code something like this is probably not realistic, but… *shrugs* Maybe idea B) is a way of implementing this…
A) It didn’t affect it much.
B) I have no idea
C) There’s actually a fairly simple hack to do this with wp-cache, but it takes away from the community of this site. Whether they’ll admit it or not, users like instant gratification and being able to see their comments posted right away. I read up on this last week and decided against it for that very reason. I believe it also doesn’t address the maximum number of connections per period of time issue.
If you’re really against ads don’t get them unless you absolutely need to. I think donations would work as long as you didn’t force people to donate as people tend to get angry when you require them to do something rather than ask for it.
I’m sorry to hear about your current on going problems. This site has been a great anime resource to watch for me every season. Getting those not available messages has been very annoying to me. I guess all those anime friends referals to visit this page was not in your best interest. GRiN!
quantbits, as good at your idea is i dont want to find my self paying for this. Mind you i like this blog myself, hell its the only blog i go to becuase it always is updated and has all the greatest shows but im just one of those losers that doesnt have a penny to thier name. personally ads arenot that bad if they go to a good cause and for a kick ass blog like this i really dont want to loose it because i have to pay.
Screenshots take up way more bandwidth and such like than text ever can or ever will. I think lowering the number of screenshots per blog entry would be just fine to help reduce things and help the server load a bit; I wouldn’t mind. As I depend more on your text than the picture log, as I just go and watch the raws and read your blog for reference to what is going on until the sub comes along
As for donations vs. ads… Well, I can’t say I can donate right now, but ads are a surefire way to get things done, and I really don’t mind them when it comes down to it, as long as they make no noise or are popups. As people have said, you could do a combination, but do as you see fit.
Prefer donations can contribute 1$US a month,but you could always try donations first for a month,if that doesn’t work out just go with ad’s then.
Well, i think running donations are going to be very inconstant. But then if you can handle inconsistency, it may be the way to go.
On the other hand adds, really annoying at times. Thought its probably a more reliable source of money. You could look for sponsorship from a Anime agency, as it ties in with the blog…like a US company (ADD etc)and monetary problems would be solved…
Anyway, i reckon the high spikes in visits is probably due to one of the Thursdays megahits. Pointing finger namely at Code Geass.
maybe you can run an ad at the bottom of the page… That way it’s out of the way and you can still make money.
Just use ads. If you get at least 2.4 million hits then companies will make money and can justify advertising here. If you want to have control over the ads, you could do what Bob and George (http://www.bobandgeorge.com/) and set a price and who you want to advertise (like Anime companies, or copanies that sell anime stuff). Or just go Google ads….
Whatever floats your boat.
get a job and then you’ll have the money to pay for the site.
get a job and then you’ll have the money to pay for the site.
I have a job. And I go to school full time. And I work on this site for free. My job pays for school and living expenses – I have virtually nothing to spare. Perhaps you’d like to suggest something a bit more helpful than that?
There is nothing wrong with the idea of having ads and getting revenue, or even profit. You deserve that money for the effort that you have put on the site. If you really thought that it wasn’t morally justified, maybe you can reveal the ad-revenue figures to us if that clears your conscience and to reiterate to people that this blog does not exist primarily for money. Just think of it like a flexible part-time job you really like.
I don’t mind ads as long as their are not intrusive (pop-ups and float-overs). In addition, if they are relevant ads to anime related goods, people may actually be legitimately interested. It is like you endorsing the authors by encouraging people to buy this stuff.
As for donations, it doesn’t hurt to have it, but don’t count on it.
I think your popularity and your style of journalism can be a good business opportunity. There is an existing community who will support you. This site could be a lot more than a simple anime-blog.
Omni, what exactly is that for a server for 150$ a month??
I’ve passed this problem to my friend who works as server administrator for Xerox and has an exellent knowledge there.
I guess you mean with 150$ a VPS @ Dreamhost?? For that price you get a root server here in Germany, which offers damn speed.
Ah, sorry for the double post, but with the donation thing:
I know many anime download sites who have a statistic: You pay xxx$ a month or the site will be down. That’s nothing solid of course, but if there are really so many people visiting your site you’ll get the money for sure, especialy when the people know that otherwise it’ll be down.
150$ a month is far too much for a hobby. I myself pay 20€ a month for our server, and that’s already not less for me, especialy as student.
Another thing I’ll do tomorrow: I call my Hoster, tell him your statistics and ask him which type of server they would recommend. Together with the opinion of my friend that should give you a good idea. Hope it’ll help you..
@random random: Nice comment, I guess you’ve never really worked and have no idea what that is..
In addition to ads vs donations, there is also the route of “pay some money and get no ads approach”. I know the Weather Underground has done that for a while ($5/yr of no ads) and Slashdot has a micropayment of X dollars gets you Y pageviews without ads (+ some other features like quicker access to the newest topic). Similarly for TotalFark.com (the pay-to-view big brother of Fark.com) where $5/month gets you access to all the submissions and a better ability to comment.
Frankly Omni, given the quality of your reviews, you ought to think about charging some money for some form of extra benefit. Pay to get no ads is the best benefit, but there are many others that other sites use all the time. There are lots of ways to come up with the money. Now that you have the eyeballs, it’s just a matter of turning that into enough money to get better servers.
Who knows? Perhaps you will turn this into a small business! Seriously, you have excellent quality and are consistent in reviewing the anime you watch. Additionally, you also comment on things like the animation quality, musical scores, voice actors, anime companies, and background information (like Wikipedia entries) that really add to the quality of the reviews. I know I’ve bought quite a lot of things (the Blood+ album being the most recent – excellent, btw) based upon your reviews. While I can’t see a million dollar business doing this, I would not be surprised at all that you could make a living doing it. And you can do it without blocking people from seeing content. Both the Weblogs, Inc empire (like engadget.com), the Weather Underground, and Slashdot have successfully made that transition. Something to think about….
use text ad links
http://www.text-link-ads.com/
all this is, is text ads! so it wont mess up your site
very useful i think and the advertisers pay you monthly, not pay per clicks like google.
just a suggestion
I’d just like to say Omni that you probably should do both donations and ads just to cover your bases. As donations won’t always be there for you.
That said, if you put up a paypal/donation thing, I would willingly donate $5-10 a month to continue to be able to keep coming to this site.
Nothing shameful about donations, Omni.
i say leave out the ads. they’re rather disturbing at times and it’s hard to look at anything w/o something (probably like a pop-up or some flashing moving ad) blocking or annoying you as you’re trying to digest something.
if there’s anything i can do, i’d probably try my best to donate some cash to you but as i can’t, i’d suggest getting your own server. i know a friend in sweden who pays USD 200 a year (???) just to have his own server and websites hosted up. i hope you’d consider this suggestion though.
Omni: Thanks for responding to my questions. I really do hope we can get this resolved.
My understanding is that the pages are dynamically generated, using CPU to ensure the polls and comments are live. Correct? Now, think about this: the only time a page changes is in one of three circumstances:
A) When you make or change a post.
B) When someone posts a comment.
C) When someone votes in a poll. (1)
Now, compare that with the number of times visitors visit your pages. (You had the stats yourself. Compare those to the number of comments, votes, and posts.) The text of a particular page (i.e. the post-processed HTML code that a user gets) does not change with each user that visits.(2) Unless something very strange is going on, not every user who views a page posts a comment or votes, and you don’t post for every user, either. Not to mention people sometimes refresh pages or visit them again later from the same machine. This means that if the server can save a copy of the page, then the server doesn’t need to repeat this CPU work later — it only needs to do “heavy” work when the page changes again.
The proxy I refer to is available here: http://www.squid-cache.org/
And the mode I refer to is this: http://wiki.squid-cache.org/SquidFaq/ReverseProxy (also known as “httpd-acceleration”).
Now, I have not personally configured this myself, but the idea is that requests go through the proxy, and then directly to your server. If the page hasn’t changed, or some other parameter is met, then the proxy returns a “cached” page — almost just like serving an unmodified image file. Then bandwidth becomes your sole main concern. It should be possible to maintain a pretty danged decent level of “interactivity” (maybe numbering in seconds or minutes… — maybe it’s even “instant” — I’m not sure) without killing the server.
The downside is this: it’s not possible to configure the program by uploading something to FTP and running a script or by changing a setting. The server administrator actually needs to install the program, configure the ports on the proxy and the web-server, and tweak it. I don’t know if animeblogger.net and/or your admin-person has those capabilities, nor do I know whether it would affect other users although I doubt it would be a bad thing for them if it did…) or what implications installing it has (disk and memory come to mind, unfortunately).
Of course, it’s also an added level of complexity if something goes wrong. But it shouldn’t cost anything other than the time to set it up, unless you can’t ask the person who owns the server to install it because it’s a shared hosting account or something…
(1) I’m not sure how you did the poll, but I’m not even 100% sure it actually changes the page per se– I would guess that a poll vote changes a different poll-specific “page” which appears to be referenced by AJAX. But that’s irrelevant, anyways — if it doesn’t change the page, then it just means the changes are even less frequent than I thought.
(2) At least, I don’t think it does. A page like CNN, or Yahoo!, on the other hand, customizes some pages per-user. However, I believe they still do use squid-type proxies or server accelerators because users still tend to refresh “identical” pages to check things. I know some sites use Squid because when something goes wrong, the error message reports Squid. But it doesn’t break all that often, apparently…
Whatever you do, the decision is yours. You can follow my suggestion, or not, based on whether you can handle its complexity. Omni, if you have further questions about this idea, feel free to e-mail me, and I’ll see what I can find out, although being a high-school student I don’t know how much I’ll be able to answer for you that you couldn’t find yourself. (As a side note, I’ll mention I voted “ads” in the poll, because this idea is a major server change. Ads is “just” a policy change.)
Good luck, and long live Random Curiousity!
Based on my own experiences running a site that had to deal with a great deal of traffic, I would recommend looking into an alternative to ads or donations, which is Amazon.com associate (and maybe other anime affiliates like RightStuf or HLJ).
I built a store using Amazon’s tools, and put up all merchandise of interest to the viewers of my page. In addition, I also put up a generic Amazon.com link, that anyone could use to have part of their purchase go the site. Everybody wins. You get a cut of the sales, while the users get a chance to help the site by using your link to buy items.
It can easily pay for hosting, and with Amazon now paying monthly instead of quarterly, it gives you a faster turnaround. Plus, my site only had a small number of Amazon items to offer for sale, you have a huge selection of anime and other merchandise. The use of the generic link helps too, I think I sold about 100 copies of Harry Potter through my site when the movie first came out, and it wasn’t related at all to my site, but had the same fan-base.
I know that animeblogger.net uses the same methods, but I would surprised if you weren’t the major destination to the portal. Maybe you can work out an agreement to help both your site and animeblogger at the same time. But a few Amazon.com ads and Shop amazon links do not have to be obtrusive, especially if you tag them with a “Support the Site” line.
Hope this idea is of some use.. and thanks for the terrific site.
if you do ads, make them google ads at least, so they don’t wreck the site
whatever your decision, we’re with you
keep this blog’s the most important thing now
I just tried to vote and ended up getting a “Service Temporarily Unavailable” message squeezed in the poll box, so I can really see what you mean by these traffic issues…
I think ads would be the best way to go. It might go against what you stand for, but at least no one would have to pay for the costs directly. I’m sure that everyone would understand and wouldn’t mind if there were ads on this site if it meant you could keep blogging and we could keep reading your blogs.
On a different note, congratulations on having your site become so popular! And as always, thank you for always trying to do your best in keeping your readers happy. ^^
I tried to vote but it gives me a Service Temporarily Unavailable after I click “Vote!”!!
I’d pick donate though
Too much advices won’t work out. Just think about your priority, money or liking?? of course there are other things to consider as well BUT just don’t complicate things up and you might find your answer…
Donations if it holds…
Ads is its a worse case scenario…
I don’t mind ads at all. I would prefer ads to donating because you can always ignore them and it doesn’t cost anything to anyone. Besides, there’s ads everywhere else (google,yahoo,etc,etc) so it doesn’t really make taht much of a difference.
I can’t donate. I don’t have money yet. I’ll have to wait another 5 years to be 18 and have own money.
A few small topical ads would be fine. Also have you considered providing a link to amazons or a couple of the other online stores that give a certain percentage of a sale (up to 8.5% for amazon) back to a site that referred the order. Link to the first
A mix of topical ads, donations and money from referrals via an online amazon or other online stores would probably provide enough to keep the site running fine!
Amazons Associates program
http://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join
Launched in 1996, Associates is Amazon.com’s affiliate marketing program. By linking to Amazon products and services you can add compelling content for your site visitors enjoyment and receive up to 8.5% in referral fees for doing so.
I say you should do ads AND accept donations. Donations aren’t consistant or reliable enough.
Pardon my ignorance, but out of curiosity, is there any way to run ads on certain days as opposed to every day? For instance, could you switch on the ads for days when you get a lot of hits (say Thursday) and then switch them off for the rest of the week? In any case, I think a discreet donation link would be a good idea for those readers who have the means to help out your site (e.g. credit card, funds, paypal, etc.). Your blog’s fantastic, and I read it even though I’ve completely stopped watching anime. I’ve been a lurker for over a year, soaking up your screenshots and detailed summaries so even though I can’t guarantee monthly contributions from now until you retire your blog, I’d like an opportunity to help now.
Although I don’t come here often, I would donate. I can cut down a couple of trips to Starbucks. (n_n)
I think if we each find something that we can give up on – whether it’s a cup of coffee or a stint at the arcade, we can help support something that we use and has value to us!
I run two websites that are rather underused. Please let me know if you are in need of space/bandwidth in the meantime. (^.^)
Just one thing to mention about ads: Most people use popup blockers and extensions to block adds. Like me using adblock plus for firefox i.e. which blocks ALL. Means, if you use ads which just give money by using them many people won’t see them (unless the deactivate their extensions for this site).
Just an idea, how bout you have two sites (1 blog – since its free and this main site)
Then you can move all the archived episode synopsis over?
I’m not sure if this helps but maybe it’ll ease the strain on the main server?
I’m kinda bad at this kind of server stuff. =P
Well, donations are fine but not very reliable.
The idea of the ads in the sidebar (thus not too annoying) should be fine and earn you what’s necessary to upkeep the site and even some extras (afterall, you’re doing all this for free).
Pls don’t stop blogging Omni. Your site is simply great. The reviews are short and precise. (with an awesome display of screenshots. 🙂 )
I wouldn’t mind donating a couple bucks if it means that this site will stay alive. Ads might actually be a better solution in the long run if it ain’t too distracting. I guess most readers wouldn’t mind that.
I think ads are a good solution, I will support ads because I can’t donate through the internet yet.
Donations aren’t reliable and having to beg every month or see a count down/days left every month is annoying/unappealing.
Here’s a question about donations: what’s the transaction fees going to look like for PayPal? Asking $1/month donation should net at least 150 people. How much more for the fees? Put that information out there to encourage folks to pay more less frequently.
Do a donation drive and collect three to six months operations expenses before proceeding. If you get six months to a year worth of donations, stop collecting for a while.
If the non-popup type of advertising helps, I personally wouldn’t be opposed to it (I wouldn’t click on such ads and having activity on this site tracked like that has pluses and minuses). But, surely there’s enough peeps out there willing to support your site with donations.
Ugly thing: double check your income tax liability.
Other notion: reduce the image sizes/frequencies. Sux, but, if you can continue blogging without worrying about financing it…
Colocation doesn’t have to be that expensive. The better hosting companies no longer charge you per unit rackspace, but instead set a maximum power usage and bandwidth. This can be a fixed rate, say 10mbit. Or it can be an amount like 400GB/month and then 150Watt for the server. This is very convenient because you don’t have to invest in an expensive 1u/2u server, but instead you can simply place a 4u server with not too expensive hardware.
You can get a decent hosting package like that for around 65 Euros a month over here in the Netherlands. If you take taxes out of the equation, then you can replace Euros for dollars since people in the US pay less taxes.
This means you could start up a ‘pay for our new server fund’ to raise funding for hardware, and then leave the donation button to come up with the $3,- a day. This should be easy enough for a site which has a userbase like this one.
The positive side to all of this is that most sites would love to have your problems, Omni! A dedicated user base and tons of page views is pretty damn awesome!
BTW, I’d donate too. I did to the AnimeBlogger.net site a while back when it was having some financial problems.
I’d also like the second the creation of an Amazon or Yahoo store which Tensai suggested. It’s another way to keep the site going without much disruption.
Best of luck! You’re hard work has put you into an enviable dilemma. Keep up the great work!
If you use ads try stuff like magizines and shopping bargains ads.If you ask me ads are better then donations.Stock markets are a good idea to but can backfire.I hope you can find some way to find cash soon.
Ads, problem with donations is that there’s a minority that will donate. Sure, there may be people willing to donate, and they may donate at the start. But as time passes, they’ll donate less, new people won’t donate, and you’ll end up back at square one. I’ve seen several sites attempt to rely on donations, and it all starts off well, but usually after 6 to 12 months the donations dry up, and the webmaster relies on a few hardcore supporters who end up donating more and more to cover the costs. That may keep the site up, but it’s not really fair on those people donating all the time, even if they ARE gullible enough to do it.
It’s your site, and apologies for being blunt, but it should be your responsibility to run it, not the goodwill of others. Either charge people subscriptions to view, then everyone is in the same boat, or use ads. That’s my opinion anyway.
Adds may be bothersome but if they are necessary to keep the site up I don’t see why not putting them. (Unless it is a gigantic banner on the middle of the page or something)
Is it possible to limit the number of connections at any one time?
Omni, you seem to have a quite large fan population. One thing you could do that I think hasn’t been suggested is to start selling stuff like Random Curiosity t-shirts. You could use part of the revenue to pay for the site. Of course this would mean tons of extra work. I also really think you have a business opportunity with this blog but I guess then again it would be different from just a blog. But you stated you stand against having ads/donations so I guess it’s not a choice for you. Whatever the solution is, it seems that Random Curiosity isn’t just some random curiosity any more…
Koremadewa hontouni gokurousamadesu. RC wa mainichi yondemasu. Blog wo zettai yamenaide genki tappuride gambattekudasai!
The more focused your blog, the more focused your ads. The more focused your ads, the less obtrusive they become.
Despite the title “Random Curiosity”, this is an intensely focused blog. Your ads should end up the same way.
Ok Omni, listen: I’ve asked to friends: One works as server admin in Frabkfurt/Main and the other as mentioned for Xerox. Both told me you definetely need a root server, with so many hits you need a minimum of 1GB, better 2GB system memory in the server and, most important, a powerful CPU, best dual core. RAID1 for the HDDs is a must have, but it is also important to make external backups, so your hoster should do that definetely once a week and it’s always good to do one by yourself as well.
The costs for such a server here in Germany is around 100€ with 3TB traffic.
That’s just to give you an idea of what you need, hope it’ll help you in some way.
Ah, another thing: Always look on how the site’s running. Especialy such frequent sites like yours often change their server every year, depending on how much speed they need.
In the end you can find the best solution for the best price.
Ah, and better pay more than less. Our site had a Hoster named 1BLU (never use them!) cheap, unlimited traffic and.. the site was down a few hours every day. The last shite..
So be careful there!