Our Operating Costs and Revenue Transparency

[Julian]

The numbers have crept up a little, hosting is now $31/month. We have stopped purchasing Xenforo add ons as we've pretty much got the forum to a state that works well. We have discussed ways to cover the hosting costs beyond the admin team, but keep coming back to the fact that we didn't like the whole donations process that happened at that other place. So for now, we're just paying it.

We have contemplated donations, or even a banner that vendors could pay for that would cover hosting and giving us some "operating" money to have giveaways etc, but then we face tax and incorporation issues....which drives up our complexity etc.

So for now, we are keeping it as a hobby, no revenue, no donations. We've already exceeded the highest number of concurrent users of the other place, and the servers are humming along nicely. So don't expect hosting costs to increase to fast.

Now that we are paid up until March of next year....we can see how it goes...and perhaps in a year we'll have a "Hosting Donation drive"....or perhaps not...time will tell.

For now....we are just enjoying how well things are working and how much fun we are all having!

 

[Bruce]

d I am wondering if the numbers from early 2014 are still current for mid 2016

The forum operating costs remain low. Currently hosting costs including backup are $24 per month.

Other costs are;
Domain renewal ~$18 per year
Annual Xenforo License Extension $65

That totals $371 a year or $31 per month.

So our operating costs is less than a cent per month per user.

We have used 75% of the storage available with our current hosting plan. Digital Ocean is planning to offer add-on storage options. If they do we will purchase additional storage. If not we will most likely transition the forum to another provider.

We are using less than 10% of our allocated bandwidth, cpu and disk.



We are continuing to see usage growth compared to 2015 and huge growth compared to 2014.

May 2014



May 2015



May 2016

 

[Bruce]

A couple of notes on this;

I am using work projects to test other similar providers so if we move we will not do so blindly. I moved our forum from one Digital Ocean server to another last year. The entire process took around four hours one night. The time required should be similar if we move to another provider.

Renewing the Xenforo license provides access to updates. I wait until a meaningful update is released to renew. I see this as way to encourage Xenforo to innovate and hope other customers do the same.

 

[jawsf16]

So our operating costs is less than a cent per month per user.

So everybody needs to mail 12 pennies to @Bruce immediately!!

Seriously, y'all are awesome and you know we have plenty of faithful members willing to help out in a second.

 

[Mainah]

Thats a couple of cases of good beer per month just in the fees not to mention the time. Thanks so much for making this a great forum on your own dimes and time. If the expense funding model needs to change I would guess you would have plenty of support.

 

[itsdgm]

Thanks @Bruce and @Julian and any other moderators for all of your efforts. If there's ever a need to spread out the cost, One easy way to "raise operating costs" would be to have a forum "garage sale". We could post up boating related items for sale and have the proceeds go to a forum PayPal account. It would also be a great way to get some stuff out of my shed

 

[Britboater]

I've only just noticed this thread , I was always under the impression it had sponsors. I've always resisted donations to forums but I'd gladly contribute to this forum as its excellent in it's format and running, just don't allow pop ups please.

Hats off to all involved .

 

[Scottintexas]

maybe we should have a drawing and everyone who wants to can submit their name and the winner gets to pay to host the site for year (or six months)

 

[Andy S]

Or how about a raffle? Everyone that wants to play buys a ticket for a $1 and whatever money is left over after paying the operating expenses goes to the winning raffle ticket holder.

 

[2nazt]

Good idea @Andy S

Maybe like a swag raffle, people buy a ticket for a dollar or two, and winner gets a shirt rest of the money goes to site costs. Once a month contest thing , I think a lot of people would enter. You may only have to do it once, or use it for funds for meet ups or regional leaders to have a big flag at a meet up in a region to get other members.

 

[Zarrella]

Sell tickets.....Give money to @Julian .......Julian buys beer......Julian pays operating cost! Seems far to me!

 

[BigN8]

I'll pay for 6 months if you will add a banner to the top of the page that reads, BigN8 Rocks"!!!

 

[Andy S]

Good idea @Andy S

Maybe like a swag raffle, people buy a ticket for a dollar or two, and winner gets a shirt rest of the money goes to site costs. Once a month contest thing , I think a lot of people would enter. You may only have to do it once, or use it for funds for meet ups or regional leaders to have a big flag at a meet up in a region to get other members.

I actually got the idea for the raffle from the Nenana Ice Classic from Nenana, Alaska. I would think only doing it once a year would be the easiest way to manage it. However, I like your idea of maybe do a similar raffle for each big meet up to pay for fees or gifts to be used at the meet up.

 

[Hector Corzo]

I am a new member and have found lots of interesting and helpful information here, I am a member of other groups and don't mind helping financially when in need. thanks for the transparency..... you don't see that often in other groups.

 

[Trevor Shipman]

I’d be MORE than happy to chip in on covering costs here and possibly more for helping fellow jetboaters. By far the best community I’ve been a part of.

 

[Weeb]

I am a new member and have found lots of interesting and helpful information here, I am a member of other groups and don't mind helping financially when in need. thanks for the transparency..... you don't see that often in other groups.

+1. Maybe we could improve the finicky search engine.

 

[swatski]

+1. Maybe we could improve the finicky search engine.

I still use it, and it is crappy, but some say using google search with JB.net scope works best. IDK.

--

 

[Julian]

+1. Maybe we could improve the finicky search engine.

some say using google search with JB.net scope works best.

Yeah, the forum search engine isn't very good. Google works much better, especially for short words (3 characters). So if you want to search for "YDS" for example, use google and enter the following:

YDS Site:https://jetboaters.net

This will show you all our site hits first.

 

[Julian]

The forum search has gotten better with new versions. Google with site:jetboaters.net is still the best.

Forum operations costs have crept up as we've grown to over 25k members....but still manageable.

 

[bronze_10]

Julian, I still think most members would be fine with a small advertising package to help off set the costs.