Plastic, what you call "free spirit" I call parasitic spirit. There is nothing noble with leaching off the work of others and not giving something in return. If websites have to charge users directly to keep in business, that's because they have no choice. Those who find ways to get around that aren't noble or heroes, they're just parasites.

I can't talk for other sites. But for this site what is burdensome are the people who download many megs of stuff who haven't bought anything. If wc someday goes to a subscription, i bet it starts with the site checking to see if you've at least bought one of the apps on the site. why should some leach using a warez copy of WB or unregistered shareware one get a free ride? wouldn't be hard to tie the user accounts here to the customer database and say "Sorry buddy, you've downloaded 10 megs of WindowBlinds skins and you're not in our database, you need to either register WB, buy OD, get a subscription or go somewhere else."

Subscription web sites will never work.
I am totallty conviced of this. All the sites that have tried so far have failed and closed down. The day web sites will start charging fees, a lot of people starting with me will simply diconnect from the Net, for good.
Of course, there will always be the odd web site that will try to charge for subscriptions, as others have tried. Some people might even be stupid enough, or rich enough, to go for it.
But like Cygnus, I pay 50$ for my Internet connection, and a little less for my cable. I am NOT subscribed to any specialised pay channels, just as I won't pay for a specialised pay web site. Sorry, but 100$ a month for information is enough.
If a web site doesn't have the revenues to stay afloat, close it down, as it has always happened, since the last 6 years.

Before the dot coms, there was modest but reasonable banner ad revenues. The dot com madness arrived and everything sky-rocketed, including the cost of banner ads; it was INSANE and quite obvious that it wouldn't last. Now that the unavoidable has happened, the banner revenues plunged as much as NASDAQ has. But NASDAQ is coming back slowly, just like banner ad revenue will be back. Not as high as it was during the madness, but everything will come back to what it should be.
Advertisers pay, that's how TV, newspapers, magazines, etc. work. The Net isn't different. It's just an infant still with it's identity crises and it's hesitant baby step.

Content will always generally be free on the Net. Oh, and please give that "free loader" crap to somebody else. Anybody here feels like a free loader cause he gets FOX for free?

Good discussion guys.

I was talking to Gorman on this very issue. The reason it's a problem now is that unlike 5 years ago, there are a TON more people on. And those people are using a lot more bandwidth than they used to.

That's the variable no one brings up. The Internet has exploded in # of users and now it takes a ton of bandwidth.

Let's use WinCustomize as an example. Compared to skinz.org, it has hardly any skins. Skinz.org had a ton more skins. But this month we'll do around 3 TERRABYTES of traffic. Skinz.org never even remotely approached that kind of traffic in a given month even though it had far more skins. That's because there weren't nearly as many people on and those people weren't downloading nearly as much stuff even a year ago (a guy on a cable modem can download many megs per day).


If your website uses 10 MEAGABIT of bandwidth and it costs $700 per month per Megabit, that's $7,000 just to pay for bandwidth. Add in misc hardware and co-location fees and other maint. agreements and you're at $8,000.

Think about that -- even if you were doing it as a labor of love, it still would cost you $8,000.

The guy running the site is going to have two choices:

[A] Decrease bandwidth use to cost a lot less.
or
Get revenue coming in to pay for it.

(or some combination).

I happen to agree with Plastic in many points. Why should Plastic have to subscribe if he's not benefiting proportionately? Let's say WinCustomize had a subscription model, why should Plastic pay? Has Plastic downloaded 200 megs of stuff? I doubt it. So why should he pay?

Somehow, some way, websites need to have a system in which those REALLY using the site pay. They're the ones who should pay and the ones most likely to pay really.

In WinCustomize's case, I imagine it would target those who are using up the bandwidth. That makes sense to me. I doubt anyone here has downloaded more than 100 megs of skins. But there are tons of users who have downloaded 300+ megabytes of skins from this site. And those users haven't even registered anything. So from WC's, it would want them to either buy something or go away. Either way would be fine.

The problem with net advertising is actually that they're trackable. I don't think they're any less effective per dollar than magazine ads or newspaper and TV ads.

But some way has to be found to pay for the bandwidth either in getting rid of the bandwidth hogs or getting them to pay their fair share.

Drag the problem is that people have been using the net for free for years and now because the dot com numbskulls screwed the pooch we joe users are expected to foot the bill now? Ain't gonna happen. We lived without the internet for years and will continue to. If you webmasters want to make money on their sites, they better give something of value in return. Not access to ''content'' but something tangible.

I'm not at home right now, so I'll just reply quickly the last post from paxx.

-- quote --
If a web site doesn't have the revenues to stay afloat, close it down, as it has always happened, since the last 6 years.
----

Well, here's the problem, can you think of a way for sites to make money other then a revenue model? Exactly, that's the problem; no one has been able to come up with something that actually works besides memberships and merchandise. After looking at some numbers I've come to the conclusion that merchandise, as cool as it is, simply won't pay the bills from month to month. You seem to not exactly be in favor of a subscription service; however, at the same time you think if a site can't stay afloat (i.e. running off of its revenues), it should be shut down. You also go on to say how become of the whole .com shakeout has basically ruined the ad market; so if you aren't willing to pay for websites, and they have no other way to make money, then do you propose that every websites on the Internet gets shut down? I don't see the logic here. Anyhow, I'm not trying to argue; I'm just looking ahead, so to speak. As always, very good comments & a very interesting thread.

-gorman

ya ya ya. all that is well and good but you may just discover that people will find something else to do with their time. i'm not going to pay for 'content'. it's not worth anything to me. I would pay for a t-shirt or mug from this site because I get something in return and know that i'm helping a site I really enjoy but i would never just pay $5 per month to be on some website.

T-shirts and other products are definitely good sources of revenue. However, there are a few problems. 1) Chances are your profit margin per shirt isn't all that high, maybe 4 or 5 dollars per shirt. 2) There are only so many people who will buy a shirt. So if you figure you can sell 500 shirts and make 5 dollars a shirt, that is 2500 dollars. For most medium sites that will pay for bandwidth for about 3 or 4 months. That's not bad, but what about when those 4 months are up? On a site like wincustomize, it wouldn't even pay the bills for one month. Tangible goods are definitely a good way to make money; however, it is more of a supplement then a true revenue model.

To sum up everything I've said: websites have to start making money, or they will fail to exist. How a site goes about doing that has yet to be defined. I see the membership idea being the largest in the months and years to come, and products and other services playing a secondary role. That's just my take on things.

-gorman

gorman, as I said in my post: ad revenus are coming back, they are starting to raise a little again, and they will continue to raise. No it will never reach the ridiculous amount it was before the fall of the dot coms. But banner ads will come back.
Actually, banner ads already can bring some money in certain targeted margets. In this case I beleive Adobe, Windows XP, and other Graphics/skinning related companies would be willing to pay more in order to be featured on the site. Anyway, I am confident it will come back to a reasonnable figure.

Another solution is a sponsor driven website. The Stardock/Wincustomize example is a perfect one. Often, content on a web site can actually financially be benefic to a company related to the market. If not direct sales, web site traffic brings recognition, good reputation and of course visiblility.

The WindowBlinds.net libraries get a million page views per month -- a massive number and ad revenues only bring in a few hundred dollars.

So if you know of an ad place that is paying out enough to pay for a site of any size, please let us know.

What I meant to say in my last paragraph is that a company can gain revenus from a website it sponsors or owns. Like Stardock gets indirect revenus from Wincustomize.
As for adds, I refered to targeted markets. For example, we recently booked a banner for a client on a specialized magazine's website. It's costing 150$/month just for the little banner in a specific section of the website. Overall, on that site, there are at least 20 or 30 other banners (which are more like tiny buttons than banners), which calculated quickly probably brings 3000$ to 4500$ a month to that website. Not bad. The reason our client and the other advertisers there was still interested in paying that, is that the website in question has a very specific target audience, and every person that visits that site is a likely customer.

I might be wrong in thinking that ads can generate enough revenus to support web sites such as this. Maybe download sites such as this demands too much bandwidth to ever be able to support itself through advertisers, but I was talking generaly, not specific. I think web sites such as this one can only survive if it's backed up by a corporation that has direct interest in it. Although Devart or other skins sites may eventually fail once they get too much traffic, this one will survive because Stardock has interests for it to survive. Increased visitors on Wincustomize brings more sales to Stardock products.

And hey! This is a healthy debate. It's really nothing but opinions. Please no personal attack or sarcasm.

Heh, haven't read much lately (couldn't get in...), and skipped some comments - but something personal anyhow, about the parasite thing by Mr. Tandis...

I was and will continue to express a feel for, and promotion of some "free spirit", indeed. I don't understand why that's parasitic.

Personally, a couple of people and me do run a little website I try to put in some community-thing. You know, like promote other sites I feel are doing the same and all, help people and feel good about that...

So, what's wrong with concluding that will always be that sideline, small, but alive ?

It's also NOT saying the major approach is wrong or something. Subscription models, membership fees, whatever, you major webmasters do whatever you like, you've got every right to, and I won't judge that, I just leave, cause it's not my cup of tea anymore - evolution.

Once again, east is east, west is west. As long as I feel involved in this skinning thing, where those directions aren't fully set/divided yet, I sometimes feel the need to express what's east, or west - merely expressing my hopes, not my demands.

Forgot, and not understanding too. Ok, so I submit my website as "evidence" of contributing (hurrah)... but what I wanted to say, what about those people not running a site, not developing an app, maybe not even skinning, maybe just taking, but posting their comments, encouraging, asking, questioning, ranting, giving opinion - I experience these kinda actions on my behalf as giving as much as anything else. It just becomes parasitic when people forget their manners and take it all for granted.

This is a great discussion. You rarely see such good conversation on such a hot topic such as this.

Anyway, as Paxx correctly points out, WinCustomize will never go away because it's in Stardock's best interests for it not to go away. So Stardock provides the site with a gauranteed monthly grant.

The problem for this particular site is that it now vastly exceeds that grant and has only a limited time to find ways to make up the difference.

There are all sorts of different solutions specific to this site -- decrease bandwidth useage by removing high bandwidth sections (like wallpapers). Distributed bandwidth -- this is already implemented here -- we can direct a file to a particular location, it doesn't have to be on our server.

Speaking more generally, I tend to agree with Gorman but understand Emily's perspective that people are not used to paying. Sites will have to give something special back to users.

Example:
We are going to create a "Super Skin Browser" program this Fall that will let users directly apply skins from this site onto the given program and be GUI based rather than web based so it'll be much faster. A bit similar to the skinz.org one but with far mroe features. We could sell such a program for $15 to $20 to users as a way to help pay for the site.

and

You could have premium skins that people could order and download for a few dollars. This is what DigitalBlasphemy does. I don't know how well it works but it can't hurt.

and

T-shirts, mugs, hats, etc.

None of these solutions will of course bring in big bucks. But the WinCustomize CD is bringing in $1000 per month. If each of these other items could bring in around the same you could end up with $5000 per month which would meet the difference between the Stardock grant and the site's actual cost.

Or if you don't WANT to get bigger, if bigger is just too much expenses and trouble, you can restrict access, as you are doing in times of high traffic. I'm sure if you just removed anonymous access, a lot less people would bother to register in the first place. You'd probably cut a lot there.
If that's not enough I imagine you could limit the maximum number of simultaneous connexions to the server and distribute access priority according to status (those infamous titles: people with higher "ranks" will never be locked oput but people with lower access may not be able to access the site in times of high traffic.

Anyway, I think there are solutions. Not any that would please everybody, but since we said earlier that web sites are victims of their popularity, what I'm saying is you don't have to get bigger if you don't want to. Restrict access and the problem is solved. Well, THAT problem anyway, cause then you'll be stuck with the other problem of some people complaining. But oh well.

In my mind, removing anonymous access, as useful as it sounds, would expose less people to Stardock's product range. So this would have to be managed carefully. I'm almost will to bet one of my least used appendages that most of us registered users already have subscriptions to OD, or at least one of their products.

Just my 1/2 cent...

i'm not gonna pay for 'content'. sorry. i only pay for things i have to pay for. porn sites can charge because they all charge and always have charged.

JayG, no, they don't all charge......oops...I'm not supposed to know that....

hehehe! Busted!

they charge?
why do i always get bombarded with banners offering me free pictures of humans then?

/me thinks humans are strange