DisneyFreak, the site is non-profit making. Infact it is heavily the other way around!!!
I dont wanna keep making a point here, but I know some people may not be aware of what the costs are of running a fairly big site.
A quick run down..
FORUMS.
For maximum performance, this forum runs on its own Dell PowerEdge Server - Cost to buy $3000.
The Forum software - Costs $100 per year
The Internet conenction for the Forum server is a dedicated 512k line - Costs $100 per month.
So after buying the hardware, each year, this forum costs around $1300 to run, plus the time it takes me to keep it in order, fix problems etc.
There are currently 350 members of this forum. If half of those people paid $1 per month, costs would be pretty much covered for current demand. Any money gained beyond that means I would have enough resources to add more content, that I currently cannot because of the amount of money it costs me.
MAIN SITE.
5 years ago the site cost me $10 per month to run.
Now it costs between $100 - $150 to run, just in Hosting charges. This costs is also the CURRENT cost. I have loads of videos and sounds I would like to put on, but I cant. If I did, the traffic generated by several thousand people downloading the file would cost me maybe $100 extra that month. So the question I am faced with all the time is this.... "shall i add a new video clip today?" "well no, because if I do, at the end of the month I will get an additional bill for another $100!
Does this make sense to you? It really is a difficult situation. Without money coming in from somewhere, I will not be able to keep it going. Banner ads are not doing the job, so the only other source is from the people who use it.
Here is the information I posted on the site.
As those of you who have been coming here for a long time will know, I have always had an up-hill battle against problems with hosting. Well guess what - its happened again! Data transfer charges have increased, and one of my current hosting providers has terminated my account due to the amount of traffic generated.
It is my goal to make the site as big, and full of photos, sounds and videos as possible. However, the more I add, and the more visits I get, the more it actually costs me to host the content - so as the number of visitors increases, so does the running costs.
To give you an idea of running costs, the site currently costs in the region of $100 - $150 per month, depending on how much data is actually downloaded in a given month.
The first step for me to try and fund the site was via banner advertising. This currently brings in around $20 to $50 per month, depending if any of you guys buy anything from the banners!! As you can see, this is a long way off covering the running costs. I am currently funding the remainder myself, however, as traffic continues to increase, I can see the day where it will be economically impossible for me to continue to fund the difference.
So now onto the next option. It has been suggested by some regular visitors that they would like to make a voluntary contribution to help support the site. So if you come here often, and enjoy the content, by giving a small amount (say $10 or whatever you feel you would like to contribute), you would become a Supporting Member of this site, and would help to ensure that the site can continue as it is, adding new content, news and interactive features. WDWMAGIC.COM is not a business, just something I do in my spare time that has grown from a 1 page website 5 years ago, to what it is today, over 800MB of content, 2000 visitor sessions per day, and an online community all of it's own.
If you would like to contribute, you can do so using the Internet standard payment system - PayPal. The email address to use at PayPal is
steve@wdwmagic.com.
Thanks for your support! Steve.
(except for that Ryan character, coming in here and stealing Maria away from me)
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