Revenue?

[Sir Lawrence]

Selling ad space on MUScoop?  Congratulations!

[Gwaki]

the server has got to be expensive to run

[Skatastrophy]

the server has got to be expensive to run

*servers

http://www.whois.ws/whois-com/muscoop.com/

The initial hardware cost of running a site quickly pales in comparison to the monthly cost of increasing the size of your pipe to the Intertubes. 

The real cost involved is time.  I run a couple community websites on the side and I'm a software consultant by day.  If I could charge my consulting rate for all the time I spent figuring out hardware issues, upgrading software, random forum admin crap and keeping people happy by continually adding additional functionality I'd be a rich man :p

It's only fair that the site admin makes an attempt at monetizing the site in order to recoup at least SOME of the cost involved in keeping a site up full time

[Marquette Gyros]

Selling ad space on MUScoop?  Congratulations!

I see the Mother's Day cookbook promotion every time I log in. 

Run an ad for Mother's Day flowers and my clickthrough business is yours.

[rocky_warrior]

In a few days we will run some flower promotions.

Right now - running a few ads we *think* may be useful to people viewing the site is just a trial. If it works to offset some of our costs, we may keep it going (and play with ways to keep if fairly unintrusive).  We don't want to turn our pages into a sea of banner ads, so suggestions on seasonal / targeted products are appreciated.

[Ahoya06]

How about donations as a way to offset costs? I know I (and I'm sure a lot of Scoopers would echo my sentiments here) would be happy to help keep Scoop going, and that may eliminate the need for ads.

[rocky_warrior]

How about donations as a way to offset costs? I know I (and I'm sure a lot of Scoopers would echo my sentiments here) would be happy to help keep Scoop going, and that may eliminate the need for ads.

We've thought about donations as well.  We're completely open to the idea, however there are some questions/thoughts with that as well:

• Would we get enough from an annual donation drive to cover all the costs?  If not, then we may have to run ads anyway.
• Are people more open to seeing a single banner ad on the site, or having us bug them once a year for a donation?

Like I said, we're just trying an ad right now (pre-mothers day) as a trial.   There are no goals to profit from the site, and we want to keep it a fan-driven website.  Spiral97 and myself cover all the server costs (with super-mods topper and SoCal helping with admin) - and it's not really a big deal.  However...

• We would like to insure that the success of the site is not dependent on our pocketbooks - especially now that the site is a well known and (mostly) respected source of Marquette basketball discussion & news. 
• As we gain more users, we may need to get more servers and bandwidth, adding to the monthly cost.

Never fear though, we're completely committed to the site (as always), just feeling out some options.  I'll add a poll to this topic, as a simple attempt to measure the opinions of ads vs. donations.

[Gwaki]

If you need space or something or bandwith for a large file I will gladly host it for you guys on my private server.

[rocky_warrior]

Thanks for the offer - though we have plenty of space and bandwidth with our current server.  The only problem we've ever run into is the CPU usage gets very high when we've got 300+ users online (since every user browsing and posting creates several SQL queries every minute).  Just for some details...

We have dedicated server for MUScoop.com
We can use up to 1.5 TB of bandwidth every month (never used more than 5% of that)
We have about 42GB of disk space left
Our "Max" CPU usage day came on 4/1 when Crean left - over 37% cpu usage in 24 hours -- which means we were maxed out a lot.

[Skatastrophy]

From my experience on my sites, ad revenue was negligible.  I've only ever tried AdSense ads though, so I couldn't gauge how much you'll make from your current ads.

A relatively successful donation mechanic that I've seen in practice is the monthly counter: i.e. the graphic on the bottom-right of this site:  http://www.thenoobcomic.com  (yes, I realize I'm a geek for reading the comic :p, but the donation mechanic listing the monthly dontations is relatively well done)

Here's a very descriptive blog post about how to set up your paypal account to accept donations (ignore the Christian Ministry parts, obviously)

http://www.christian-web-masters.com/accepting-online-donations-with-paypal

I'm assuming that you folks are technically inclined with regards to the Intartubes.  If I'm in err, feel free to PM or e-mail me and I'll be happy to help.

[Ahoya06]

Like I said, we're just trying an ad right now (pre-mothers day) as a trial.   There are no goals to profit from the site

I hope I didn't come across as insinuating that you guys were using the ads for profit, I totally get that you're doing it to offset the costs of running MUScoop, and I agree with that. If at all possible, it shouldn't come out of just your pockets, hence the fundraising idea.

I suppose each idea is no guarantee, and if the ads are working, I'd be fine with them, if it means keeping the site up and running.

Think we can get $100k from Judas for the site? 

[mviale]

Rocky - brilliant idea and thanks for your help!

Marc

[Skatastrophy]

Revenue could also be generated via Affiliate programs:

The company Replay Photos has a bunch of MU Basketball photos that people can buy... that's the one thing that I think that most people visiting the board have in common; a love for MU BBall

Here's a link to their affiliate program sub-site:

http://www.replayphotos.com/affiliate.cfm

If you haven't visited their site before to check out their stock, they must work the the University to get so many images from games throughout the years:

http://www.replayphotos.com/marquettephotos/gallery.cfm?pO=MAR&pC=&pS=&sE=*

[rocky_warrior]

The company Replay Photos has a bunch of MU Basketball photos that people can buy... that's the one thing that I think that most people visiting the board have in common; a love for MU BBall

We're already in their affiliate program.  You should have started seeing banner ads for them this morning (though the banner ads don't say "ReplayPhotos" - not sure why - but it's just the banners they offer.

[Skatastrophy]

We're already in their affiliate program.  You should have started seeing banner ads for them this morning (though the banner ads don't say "ReplayPhotos" - not sure why - but it's just the banners they offer.

Hmm, I suppose I should turn off AdBlock Plus.  I'm not seeing anything atm.

[rocky_warrior]

Hmm, I suppose I should turn off AdBlock Plus.  I'm not seeing anything atm.

If you just want to unblock one thing, the images & links are funneled through shareasale.com

[Skatastrophy]

If you just want to unblock one thing, the images & links are funneled through shareasale.com

It allows me the option to "Disable on muscoop.com"

I see them now