I'm not at home right now, so I'll just reply quickly the last post from paxx.

-- quote --
If a web site doesn't have the revenues to stay afloat, close it down, as it has always happened, since the last 6 years.
----

Well, here's the problem, can you think of a way for sites to make money other then a revenue model? Exactly, that's the problem; no one has been able to come up with something that actually works besides memberships and merchandise. After looking at some numbers I've come to the conclusion that merchandise, as cool as it is, simply won't pay the bills from month to month. You seem to not exactly be in favor of a subscription service; however, at the same time you think if a site can't stay afloat (i.e. running off of its revenues), it should be shut down. You also go on to say how become of the whole .com shakeout has basically ruined the ad market; so if you aren't willing to pay for websites, and they have no other way to make money, then do you propose that every websites on the Internet gets shut down? I don't see the logic here. Anyhow, I'm not trying to argue; I'm just looking ahead, so to speak. As always, very good comments & a very interesting thread.

-gorman

T-shirts and other products are definitely good sources of revenue. However, there are a few problems. 1) Chances are your profit margin per shirt isn't all that high, maybe 4 or 5 dollars per shirt. 2) There are only so many people who will buy a shirt. So if you figure you can sell 500 shirts and make 5 dollars a shirt, that is 2500 dollars. For most medium sites that will pay for bandwidth for about 3 or 4 months. That's not bad, but what about when those 4 months are up? On a site like wincustomize, it wouldn't even pay the bills for one month. Tangible goods are definitely a good way to make money; however, it is more of a supplement then a true revenue model.

To sum up everything I've said: websites have to start making money, or they will fail to exist. How a site goes about doing that has yet to be defined. I see the membership idea being the largest in the months and years to come, and products and other services playing a secondary role. That's just my take on things.

-gorman

The WindowBlinds.net libraries get a million page views per month -- a massive number and ad revenues only bring in a few hundred dollars.

So if you know of an ad place that is paying out enough to pay for a site of any size, please let us know.

Heh, haven't read much lately (couldn't get in...), and skipped some comments - but something personal anyhow, about the parasite thing by Mr. Tandis...

I was and will continue to express a feel for, and promotion of some "free spirit", indeed. I don't understand why that's parasitic.

Personally, a couple of people and me do run a little website I try to put in some community-thing. You know, like promote other sites I feel are doing the same and all, help people and feel good about that...

So, what's wrong with concluding that will always be that sideline, small, but alive ?

It's also NOT saying the major approach is wrong or something. Subscription models, membership fees, whatever, you major webmasters do whatever you like, you've got every right to, and I won't judge that, I just leave, cause it's not my cup of tea anymore - evolution.

Once again, east is east, west is west. As long as I feel involved in this skinning thing, where those directions aren't fully set/divided yet, I sometimes feel the need to express what's east, or west - merely expressing my hopes, not my demands.

This is a great discussion. You rarely see such good conversation on such a hot topic such as this.

Anyway, as Paxx correctly points out, WinCustomize will never go away because it's in Stardock's best interests for it not to go away. So Stardock provides the site with a gauranteed monthly grant.

The problem for this particular site is that it now vastly exceeds that grant and has only a limited time to find ways to make up the difference.

There are all sorts of different solutions specific to this site -- decrease bandwidth useage by removing high bandwidth sections (like wallpapers). Distributed bandwidth -- this is already implemented here -- we can direct a file to a particular location, it doesn't have to be on our server.

Speaking more generally, I tend to agree with Gorman but understand Emily's perspective that people are not used to paying. Sites will have to give something special back to users.

Example:
We are going to create a "Super Skin Browser" program this Fall that will let users directly apply skins from this site onto the given program and be GUI based rather than web based so it'll be much faster. A bit similar to the skinz.org one but with far mroe features. We could sell such a program for $15 to $20 to users as a way to help pay for the site.

and

You could have premium skins that people could order and download for a few dollars. This is what DigitalBlasphemy does. I don't know how well it works but it can't hurt.

and

T-shirts, mugs, hats, etc.

None of these solutions will of course bring in big bucks. But the WinCustomize CD is bringing in $1000 per month. If each of these other items could bring in around the same you could end up with $5000 per month which would meet the difference between the Stardock grant and the site's actual cost.

In my mind, removing anonymous access, as useful as it sounds, would expose less people to Stardock's product range. So this would have to be managed carefully. I'm almost will to bet one of my least used appendages that most of us registered users already have subscriptions to OD, or at least one of their products.

Just my 1/2 cent...

JayG, no, they don't all charge......oops...I'm not supposed to know that....

they charge?
why do i always get bombarded with banners offering me free pictures of humans then?

feline thinks humans are strange