I've made quite a few posts in the past explaining all of my reasons for joining Flashlink, but I'll see if I can do so again. I think it's a bit presumptuous of you to say that we are "profiting off our users". The little bit of money that's left above the cost of running the site so far has gone towards paying past site debts.
Originally posted by CtrlAltDel
1. banners, nice i see them, if they arnt really making a dent in the cost, nuke them. better options later.
Banners are still bringing in about one hundred dollars a month, which goes towards paying about 1/7 of our hosting costs. They will most likely always be here (and every other gaming site on the internet) unless they don't bring in enough revenue to even bother.
Originally posted by CtrlAltDel
2. hosting plans, how expensive is the one you are on now, is it too big of a plan for where the site is now? there should only be room for like 10-15% growth in your current plan from where you site is now, at that time, get a new plan. Its more cost efficient in the long run.
Several people have claimed that we could find cheaper hosting than what we have now, but I've never actually seen any suggestions that provide reasonable alternatives. We've been with Verio hosting for over two years now, and they've always been great to work with. The site is monitored 24/7 to make sure it's always up, they've been very leniant when we've went above and beyond our alotted bandwidth, and they provide excellent service when we need things changed on the server, etc. I wouldn't change hosting providers unless I was absolutely certain that another company would provide similar or better service at a lower cost.
Originally posted by CtrlAltDel
One way to accomplish this, approach the game companies and the Big Boys. What I mean by the big boys are the other big sites out there. Work out some banners with them to your your name out there a little more. Just visibility banners, yeah they take up space, but they do wonders for traffic.
I stay in good contact with a lot of the big gaming sites out there, and most of them have a link to GameBanshee somewhere on their site. In addition, I always let them know when we have news-worthy content to help bring in traffic. None of the big sites are going to do banner exchanges when they can make money displaying banners in that same space.
Originally posted by CtrlAltDel
Game companies, start working out exclusive interviews with game companies, demos, extra media, possibly even banners with them. Things to make your site more in demand then the other rpg sites. This is something that you could charge for...exclusive content.
We've done quite a few interviews in the past, and are always talking with developers to try and get more. Whenever we get "extra media", you'll see it posted on the site within a day or two. However, these types of things are to get traffic (through other gaming sites posting news about them), not to charge for. I think it's very disrespectful to ask a developer to take time out of his/her busy schedule to answer our questions about a game, and then go make it a subscription area. I don't want the developer who took their time to answer the questions having to subscribe to Flashlink just to see it on the site.
The content I *do* feel is worth charging for are things like walkthroughs and equipment databases. These are the things that take weeks or even months to create, and all the work is done by myself or another GameBanshee editor. People have the choice to read a walkthrough on the internet at another site, but if they feel ours is better, then I think a subscription to view it (thus keeping the site afloat) is reasonable.
Equipment databases are even more time-consuming than walkthroughs, and I feel this is where GameBanshee really shines. For example, you can find a text list of the equipment in the Infinity Engine games on other sites. This text list is easily exported using IE editors out there, and many sites can have a list of the equipment in an hour's worth of work. We could do the same thing, but we don't. I can't even tell you how long it takes to screenshot *thousands* of magical items, crop them all, sort them by item type, create an equipment section to view them all, and then list every location in the game that you can find each item. It's a ton of work, and I feel it's worth charging a subscription for in order to keep the site running in the future.
Originally posted by CtrlAltDel
Another thing, hosting sister sites.
Ever thought of charging people for space on your server to do little clan sites or fan sites? That is something worth charging for, as I am sure many people would like to do that but just dont have the means to do it.
This used to be a great idea, and a lot of sites did just that. In fact, they didn't even charge for hosting, you could set up a fan site for free. All you had to do is display the hosting site's banners. However, since banner revenue is no longer bringing in enough revenue to cover bandwidth, it isn't worth it anymore. The only sites still giving free hosting are the really big sites like GameSpy, who have a sales team selling their banner ads. They get a much higher premium for their banners than we would using an ad agency, so it's probably still profitable for them.
I'm not really sure why you feel charging a subscription for a small percentage of our content is "such a cheap way" of keeping the site running. Take a look at a lot of the bigger gaming sites out there - GameSpot, IGN, etc. They all charge a subscription fee for certain content, and I guarantee more sites will follow in their footsteps. With advertising revenue as low as it is, it's the only way to keep a site running and bring in enough money for future additions, site renovations, and maybe a paid editor or two.
