First of all, thanks to everyone that does support the site. You may not realize how much it helps! I hope you feel that your investment in the site was a good one.
The number of people that do support it is a lot smaller than I had originally hoped.. I suppose if you can get it for free, screw it... let someone else pay for it :confused:
There is this lasting thought that the internet is "free". I can attest, DRN is not free by any stretch. I'd be willing to bet that the raw cost per month is more than the majority of the member's mortgage payment. Add to that software lease costs, programing costs, time and ever growing bandwidth costs it's getting more expensive nearly every month. The more we grow, the more it costs. If I logged my time developing the site my accountant would literally shoot me :scream:
There are a lot of sites out there sitting on some server farm (with 300 sites on one box), costing the owner 14.95 a month, they assume that's enough horsepower. You'll also notice those sites have very few members. They'd be amazed to find-out what 60 gigs /month of high-speed data transfer and 4+ gigs of server space would cost... to deliver from a hot-rod dedicated machine (DRN is on a dedicated, Dual pentium box with 1gig of ram).
I had always hoped that advertisers would offset the costs, but since the ".com" dump, ad rates have taken a major turn downward, nearly to the point that it's not worth even having advertisers.
It's just all a balance I guess... as long as I can afford it, it'll be here. Some of you know, the web is my business and while DRN was never intended to be a money maker, if the day comes that it turns a profit, so be it, but that won't happen until those who work (moderators) the site are compensated for their time and effort. I'd just like to see it out of the red, lol.