hey chuck,

while I've noticed the wonderful growth of the site... which can only help the writers and entertain the masses even more, I am beginning to get concerned.

This site has grown so much. I mean... I just sat down and really thought about that today. How the heck do you spend so much time with it while keeping it free.

I've been at other sites... involved in such... and then got stuck with membership fees and frankly... it sucks. I was just wondering, if (and when) the site ever does get too big for you and your entourage to contain without some sort of financial backing, will it go to ads, or membership fees, or some sort of trust fund or something?

Just something Mike and I were discussing

currently, amiright is sharing a dedicated server with the other sites I run/maintain. If it continues to grow, I'll move it to it's own seperate server. At that point, the financial situation gets a little more severe.

At that point, I have to do something to make sure amIright is generating a larger amount of revenue. Currently I make a little from Amazon, and I do run ads along the top of inthe80s and amiright. I usually have a paid ad running on one site (but rarely both). I only charge $25 a week right now, which if I sell out half of the available ads (4 weeks on inthe80s and 4 on amiright) wouldn't make nearly enough for me to break even (my only real goal).

The nature of the site requires people to contribute stuff in order for people to be interested in returning each day.  Requiring people to pay to access what they gave freely, is quite frankly, never going to work.  Also charging people to just view the site, isn't going to work either. Advertising isn't really a huge revenue generator either (unless I run popups or other annoying ad formats, which I hope to never do).

I also know donations will really not bring in much (maybe an initial flurry of contributions, but not much in the long run).

I've thought about "premium" services, stuff that people who contribute some small annual amount of money, would get, that was created exclusivly for those people. I know other sites where that's worked out quite well in the past.  You never got it free, so you're not really taking a free service and making it into a paid service.

I've also thought about maybe a sponsered box, for parody authors to put their parodies at the top of searches, daily updates, etc. like Google does in search results (clearly identified). It may also work well for stuff that I could never easily offer to the general public (like enhanced voting information) because of the server overhead of stuff like that.

I like the thought of premium services, because it lets people to still use the site like normal, and people who help support the site get something in return. I have no idea what the proper pricing would be, and if enough people would sign up for it. Advertising makes the site look trashy, and never seems to return enough. Paid placement for parodies probably wouldn't generate much either.

Currently, the system servers up static html pages, instead of doing everything through a more dynamic back end, because it reduces system overhead, and lets me do more traffic, with lighter server demands. I know this is what the Drudge Report does, and it lets them serve obscene amounts of traffic with one server, so I'm hoping I can do the same for quite some time.

So the answer is, I don't know what I'll need to do. In the past, when I had more expensive hosting, I removed portions of the site to reduce traffic. I really don't want to do that again, since it ultimately hurts the site in the long run.

Hey chucky,

Why not have one of those "honor system" links posted to your site where people can make contributions.  I for one would chip in a few sheckels to assist.  The site is truly entertaining and worth it.

Yeah, maybe you would not get enuf to break even or retire, but whatever people DID contribute would at least defray some of your personal expense.

(Just a random thought) Perhaps a Cafe Press offering would bring in a little something to offset overhead... maybe "I'm an Amiright Superstar" T-shirts or somesuch.