What's it cost to run a place like this yearly?

[Kosta]

I am just curious. To be honest I am a member of another site (not sport related) that is about FOF size/style or a bit bigger. The "owner" (a Danish guy) reckons it costs about $9000 a year.

My gut feel is (and its shared by a few others) that he's profiting on the side (he gets "donations" to continue operations).

Am I right? Anyone have an idea roughly of the cost. I would have guessed $900 not $9000.

[Chubby]

It's expensive, considering the server space and bandwith this site eats up and we don't even allow attachments anymore either.

[Kosta]

This other place doesn't have attachments either.

So is $9000 (ball park) about right?

[sachmo71]

Wow! I haven't seen Kosta in a while!
Good to see you! How's life down under?

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by Kosta

This other place doesn't have attachments either.

So is $9000 (ball park) about right?

I'm not sure of the question. This site has only cost the community the money for the board software (I can't remember but less than $200 dollars). The bandwith is free to the community from Gamespy (who I guess is making money on the pop-up adds. I have no idea how they make enough). There is no yearly cost to us.

[Kosta]

Hey Sachmo - life is good downunder (as always).

Grantdawg, I am not trying to pry about the cost of FOF... the question was is $9000 a year about right for a site of this size and style? FOF is just a convenient example. I thought people might say something like "no way that is too much" or "that is about right". As I said, the guy that runs this other site doesn't have the greatest rep, so the $9000 claim raised a few eyebrows. It might be right though.

[RawIsDan]

$9000 ? I don't see how if he's running just a board similiar to FOF. I run a VB board with about the same amount of visitors and we use about 15-20 gigs a month on bandwidth. The site costs me around $21 bucks a month.

[Coder]

It depends.. the FOF-community has the benefit of being able to use Gamespy as hosts. If you were to set up and pay for the host yourself, it all depends on how much bandwidth you'll use.

There are hosts that charge you between $50 and $100 per year, and then you get to add any kind of forum software to that pricetag. While the above mentioned hosts are cheap and might not give enough bandwidth, $9000 sounds waaaay too much for a single community.

[Ben E Lou]

The board software was around $160, if I recall. There are no other costs. My understanding is that our relatively high number of hits per hour is a plus for Gamespy's advertising rates.

[amdaily]

Originally Posted by RawIsDan

$9000 ? I don't see how if he's running just a board similiar to FOF. I run a VB board with about the same amount of visitors and we use about 15-20 gigs a month on bandwidth. The site costs me around $21 bucks a month.

I'll echo these comments. There are few reasons I could see a site similar in size and scope to this costing more than $1000/year, and even that is on the high side.

Edit - Here are two of the more reputable hosting companies that I have had experience with. At HTTPme you can get 6GB of space and 6GB of bandwidth per month for only $60. At ev1servers.net, leasing out a dedicated server with a ton of bandwidth for your site will barely get you to 1/4th of the aforementioned $9,000.

[Chubby]

Kosta - Does he have files you can download?

[VPI97]

Originally Posted by Coder

$9000 sounds waaaay too much for a single community.

What he said.

[Draft Dodger]

I have 70 gigs of transfer per month, for about $6 a month. I don't imagine this place is even coming close to that in bandwidth.

I could see $500, maybe $1000. $9000...I'm guessing the guy is either lying, or getting totally rooked.

EDIT: wonder if SkyDog or Ryan have access to see how much bandwidth is used per month/year...

[Bee]

A friend of mine runs a gaming website on the side and he gets more traffic than we do. He doesn't pay anywhere near $9000 a year. His cost per month depends on the traffic he has, but is usually less than $50 a month.

[Blackadar]

My guess is the guy is calculating the value of his time in that $9k estimate. It can take a lot of time, but the costs of running this site on an ongoing basis are minimal. I ran it for two years and didn't spend $100 of my own money.

[RandyChase]

Originally Posted by Kosta

Hey Sachmo - life is good downunder (as always).

Grantdawg, I am not trying to pry about the cost of FOF... the question was is $9000 a year about right for a site of this size and style? FOF is just a convenient example. I thought people might say something like "no way that is too much" or "that is about right". As I said, the guy that runs this other site doesn't have the greatest rep, so the $9000 claim raised a few eyebrows. It might be right though.

Heck, I'll gladly host and run it for you for half of that! (And unless I pay the mods a ton of money, I'll make a very nice profit on it along the way.)

In other words, that is a very high price. At least from my perspective. And I've been running online games, message boards and web sites for about 10 years now.

[cthomer5000]

oh, BTW the rent is due on this place. You guys should each mail me a check for $50.

PM me for details.

[Fritz]

every time you say that it make me want to butter all the way up your arm

[GoldenEagle]

Originally Posted by cthomer5000

oh, BTW the rent is due on this place. You guys should each mail me a check for $50.

PM me for details.

PM Sent!

[Mac Howard]

He must be paying someone to run the site, he's charging for his time or he's extraordinarily gullible. There's no need at all to pay more than $1000 and he should be able to come down to around $500 if he shops around.

[Bonegavel]

Sounds like your friend is running this out of his house and has purchased a T1 which can run you (depending on distance) $500 on up / month. If he simply has a domain and a forum and pays $9000 a year, I have some space I'd like to sell him.