Splitcoaststampers.com - the world's #1 papercrafting community
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This may be a silly question or frankly none of my business, but I was hoping that someone might be able to inform me as to how this site is paid for. I had been wondering about contacting one of the "upper-management" types - like Jenn or Beate to find out what we could do to show Davin and all how much we appreciate them and this site - and then up popped the paypal link before I got it together to get that question out there.
The webspace this site consumes must be huge at this point. If there is anyone out there who can help inform those of us who are out here in lala land not knowing even the slightest thing about putting together a project of this scale I for one would truly appreciate it and it would help me decide what to do regarding the Paypal option.
I love this site and you all for putting this together and would like to have more information so that perhaps we can help support you in this HUGE endeavor. Please give us more information so that we can figure out what to do - for example - if every member gave you $1,$5, $10, $25 - what do you need to keep this thing going? Do you have sponsors? I know I've seen links and have gone to some of them, but they seem to change and then I can't find the one I was interested in.
When we add pictures to our favorites file (which I haven't done just because I have been wondering about it consuming more of your "space") does this cost you money? I do have many, many more questions but I'll try and control myself for now.
Thanks again for a wonderful site and please educate us as to what we need to do to help you out
I think Daven is the best person to explain the financial side of managing the site, so I'll leave that part to him. If you're looking for info about the ads already on the site, there was an article posted by him back in November. It's pretty interesting reading. Check it out here: Forums at Splitcoaststampers
It explains how the site gets some revenue from users clicking on the ads up top. There are no corporate sponsors, no "brought to you by" anythings. Just a site for people to share and learn, and ogle!
Daven started this with his wife Tracy a year ago, and have put forth much time and effort to get it to where it is today. It is so nice to read how happy everyone is with the site, and to see more people joining every day. The membership here has grown in leaps & bounds in the past two months. The number of posts/day, the number of things uploaded to the gallery (WHEW you guys love that multiple upload thing!). . .It's just amazing!
It was not inexpensive to have the site on a shared server, and surely that has changed since the move to a dedicated server. So whatever you can do is appreciated, I am sure. Enough of my little love fest here!
this could be a reaaaaally long answer, so I'll try and control myself and keep it short. I'm also at work now, so I'll answer this little by little as I have a few minutes.
Everything should be prefaced by the fact that when we started all this, we never really thought about what would happen if people actually showed up I was astounded by the fact that there didn't really seem to be much in the way of community sites for stampers (as contrasted with scrapbooking sites, for example), but beyond that I just figured we'd put it together and see if people liked it.
Fast forward to today and we're still getting 50+ new members every day...
I know this was posted some time back about members possibly paying for a membership/subscription to have access to the website. I would be more than willing to pay a membership/subscription fee to have access to this site. Maybe it could work like a magazine subscription where you pay a yearly subscription fee and renew each year. I just don't know what a reasonable fee would be. I pay $15 to $30 per magazine subscription for several stamping magazine I've subscribed to (and they are not monthly, but usually quarterly).
Maybe Daven could set up a poll (another one!) to see what members would be willing to pay on a yearly basis.
Daven please reply regarding the "My Favorites" gallery. Does this take up more of your space. I feel guilty everytime I put another card in my favorites file but I just love all these cards I see. I'll never have enough time to CASE them all.... but I'm trying.
Thanks to everyone's creativity. I'm becoming a better stamper.
Jen
Here's my $ .02...
We have upwards of 5,000 members as of last count. If each of us contribued $10.00 (and it's worth at LEAST that, isn't it?) that would make $50,000. Now, I am not sure what it costs to maintain a site like this, but...
It would be helpful if we did have a handle on what the cost is to the creators. Like I said, $10 is a pittance compared to what I get out of this site. If we each contributed $5.00, what would that accomplish (really, I want an answer). If we each contributed...and so on.
Thanks for all you do, Daven, and all the SCS "staffers", too! I consider this my stampin' chapel -- it's where I come for inspiration, hand-holding, and just plain "peace and quiet!"
Becky G
currently, we pay for the site through the text ads that you see in the gallery and on the Resources pages. these do cover a major portion of our out-of-pocket costs and we've been real happy with this arrangement - the ads are unobtrusive, and also "useful" in the sense that they're targeted to the content of the page they're on.
long-term we'd like to have the site be self-supporting, in terms of covering the *time* costs involved, compensating others who are involved in the development and maintenance of the site, more and better contest prizes, and improving and upgrading what we're doing - what you see now falls far short of our "vision" of what could be.
we've considered various ways of making the site pay its own way. subscriptions could work pretty well, but I've set this idea aside for now just because of the time involved in setting up and maintaining a structure to support subscriptions - taking payments, how to treat non-subscribers, the "marketing" of memberships, programming time, etc.
the paypal option is good for us right now because I don't like the idea of *requiring* a payment to use the site, it was simple to implement, and it doesn't add any complication to the way people use the site or the way we develop it. we'll do more advertising eventually, but it'll never be annoying or obtrusive.
okay, webspace. no worries about this! now that we've moved the site to it's own computer we have tons of storage space. storage in general (hard drive space) is so cheap these days that it doesn't really become an issue, especially on the web where there's an emphasis (because dialup connections are so slow) on keeping content "small". we'll never use up our storage space. so, there's nothing you do that directly costs us money, the expense involved is in making the site available and also the time costs of running it.
the problems we're having with the site right now are related to the databases that hold all the information related to the gallery and forums. like I described in the news note the other day, when we get a lot of people on the site these databases aren't optimized enough to handle all the requests for information that they get. so eventually these requests start stacking up and stacking up and pretty soon the computer gives up and refuses to do anything for anybody. we'll get this fixed though. despite our recent growth, there are still many thousands of sites out there far more busy than ours. we just have to spend some time on "behind the scenes" stuff to make things more efficient.
we love working on this site and would love to spend even more time than we do already maintaining and improving it. real life gets in the way though, when you've got to do those things that pay the bills. I can foresee a day when perhaps this site becomes more than a voluntary effort on our part but it will require, in the most simple terms, that we translate site traffic into dollars. there's lots of ways to do this, including those things that I've already talked about - text ads and donations. eventually we'll look to advertising to do more of this. with ~6000 stampers in one place, we have a pretty good value proposition for anyone with a craft-related product or service to promote.
for now though, the paypal option is the best way for people to help us cover our costs. if we were doing subscriptions we would probably set a one year subscription at $10-$15, so use that as a guideline if you wish.
hopefully this answers at least a few of your questions!
Thank you Davin for helping us better understand what goes in to putting together this awesome website!!! Hopefully you will see the dollars role in over the next few days, weeks and months - we definitely don't want to loose this place and to know that you have loads of space available for us to store our favorites - well you can probably count on hordes of us to inundate you with those desires too!
Have a fantastic day - and thank you again for helping us better understand your needs!!!
Yes, thank you Daven for putting some light onto this subject! I for one will be sending in some cash in the new few weeks (after vacation, buddy). This is a wonderful site and a few bucks from me towards the upkeep on this website is money well spent. Just my way of saying thank you!
Jenn and Beate, I will send you your own personal payment for all your hard work! Paid in full! Now doesn't that sound kinky (in a stamping kind of way)! LOL.
Thanks again to all of you for the hardwork. We so appreciate you all! Do you feel the love, baby?
Jenn and Beate, I will send you your own personal payment for all your hard work! Paid in full! Now doesn't that sound kinky (in a stamping kind of way)! LOL.
Kinky, inky, however you want to put it...add that to the lingo! :P LOL
I am glad someone asked this, too!! I am more than happy to pay a 'subscription' and donated a couple of days ago... What would we do without SCS?!!?!??!
Great job Daven and everyone else that helps out!! I have only been here a few months but would be totally lost as a demo without you!!!
I was also wondering if there was a way to pay without using Paypal. I LOVE this site and have no problem with donating but I have had a problem with Paypal in the past. Please let me know!
I jsut made my donation through PayPal and received an email receipt immediately like in nano seconds. Wouldn't it be great if every SCS participant made a donation for this worthy cause. This to me is so much greater than a magazine subscription, because I get to see a lot more and participate in the forums. Thanks to Daven, Tracy, Jenn and Beate for all the work they do for us.
Thanks again for this site...I USED to have SO many sites bookmarked but now it's just SCS! I've contributed to the fund. Keep up the great work! We're lovin' it (and you!)
Location: It's for me to know & you to find out!!!
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Good Morning.
You know everyone does such an awesome job taking care of this site. It's great. :lol: I really would also like to know what to do if I don't want to go through PayPal. Please let me know ASAP.
Thanks so much for all you do Shannon
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Shannon #4236
Happy Stamping
"Remember it took you a while to put the weight on, so it's going to take a bit of time to come off, so be patient."
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