Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2419

Can Kuro5hin do it?

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There are generally two kinds of people who debate the economics of the Internet. There are the guys who just visit websites and think that making big money on the Internet is easy and then there are the people who actually run websites who know that just paying for bandwidth is a daunting task.

The popular media site, kuro5hin.org is trying something new to generate revenue. They've done the shirts and ads and subscriptions, their new attempt to generate the needed revenue to pay the bills is a fund raising drive. An overt "Help support our site by donating money."

They hope to raise $70,000 in the fund drive to pay the site's upkeep during the coming year. Can they do it? What are your thoughts on this?

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Seems like they have a low userbase or content not worth investing in to have to now ask for donations or maybe a bad business model?? And from what I saw they are now going nonprofit? But they have to raise 35 thousand to pay Rusty? maybe rusty ought to work for free or at least less money?? Personally I'd be very careful as to where and what my $$ is being used for

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2419

Even non-profit companies pay employees. Someone has to write the code, develop the database, and manage thousands of icky things.

I wouldn't be willing to do it for $35k I know that and he lives in San Francisco.

I think

's problem is that they don't have a very strong mechanism to coerce people to pay. That is they can't really punish people for not paying by hiding features because users wouldn't really know what they're missing and may not even care.

But they face the same problem every site is. Gamespot has a few really good mechanisms in place. One is that video reviews of games is something people can understand and some people want. And the only way to see them are by subscribing. Same thing for archived reviews and older screenshots. People know what they're missing. I'm not sure how

can apply a similar model, particularly with their demographic.

But they've already raised $35,000 this week. A pretty impressive figure.

Their operating expenses are about half of what WinCustomize has but they don't have our bandwidth costs.

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Ummm. How does one work for free and survive? It takes a lot of personal sacrifices and dedication to do what you love for a living as opposed to doing the typical 9-5 corporate cog. 35K is not alot of money especially if you are self employed. Though I don't know his situation or where he lives, or issues regarding non-profit businesses) consider the personal financial responsibilities:

1. paying fed income tax
2. paying state income tax
3. paying FICA (social security) twice: 7% as the employee and 7% as the employer.
4. property tax
5. healthcare
6. mortgage
7. car payments
8. car insurance
9. retirement (401k, IRA, KIA...)
10. food and clothing

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Ah, I didn't read Brad's post. 35K in San Francisco is chump change

It has the highest cost of living in the country.

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As far as I'm concerned, the idea of supporting a web site financially goes beyond just the content. I support Stardock/Wincustomize for the web content but also for the applications, support and development. If Wincustomize and Stardock where only a showcase for skins, I doubt very much I'd support it with cash. Although it might be a Utopian view, I still remember the net of around 1994 or so, and I believe things could end up again as they were then. If Wincustomize disappeared, or Yahoo's portal, or any number of sites I hit frequently, I have every confidence that we'd still be able to get the content. Now, we might have to bookmark 100 sites again to get it all, but where there is good content, there are geeks, and there is a spirit of community. Themes, skins, artwork, news, etc might not be on one pretty site, but it would still be out there for those who want it enough to look for it. So, as far as paying purely for website content, I'd never do it.

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Chris has a wonderful point, I work for one of the top Insurance Company's in america and the price of healthcare is not cheap. Especially in that area. Full price is bad enough but if he has a standalone policy through our company (Aetna) or most of the others, if it has good coverage, your looking at about $400 a month. If you're paying out of pocket for healthcare expenses, it gets even worse. In the SFO area, it's extremely expensive....I know that 35k is nothing in San Francisco. I make slightly more here in San Antonio, TX and it's called Upper Middle Class in my city. My house here runs approx $95,000....In the SFO Bay Area it would be about $375,000 to $400,000....Living is not easy, especially there. I certainly would not accept $35k in SFO. Try about $50k to $65k....

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Healthcare is the real finacial killer. I'm looking to have to pay my own coverage since I'm currently self employed. Sad to say, $400 looks good to me since I'm currently about to pay over $500 per month unless I find an alternative.

As for SFO, I contracted there for over 6 months (they flew me in and out. did wonders for my ff miles

) Many of the developers I worked with that lived there had to live way, out from the city just to be able to afford reasonable housing. The descriptions of their daily commutes sounded like Homer's Odyssey.

A close friend got tired of the B2B world and decided to jump to another tech market. There was an attractive position in SF but he couldn't figure away to swing it financially simply because of the absurd cost of living. And the money was signifcantly more than 35K.

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Saw it the other day. From what I've read it's not so much supporting the upkeep of the site, but more so supporting the upkeep of the owner. Kuro5hin is his fulltime activity, he does not have a job.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2419

How does Kuro5hin pays its day to day bills like bandwidth?

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They don't. Voxel (or whatever it is called) hosts them for free (well, a permanent add).

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Quote:

"

is not like most media companies. We have been fortunate to find willing providers of hosting and bandwidth (first Intes, then VHosting, now the incomparably cool Voxel). In case any of you are unaware, Voxel provides us the fat pipes and lots of hardware that it takes to actually serve all these pages, in exchange for the promotional link at the top right corner of the page. If not for them, we wouldn't have made it even this far. But thanks to good planning and my bartering skills, we can wipe that major expense of the balance sheet."

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