Klarinet Archive - Posting 000251.txt from 2000/10
From: "Mark Charette" <charette@-----.org>
Subj: Re: [kl] Just wondering ...
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2000 15:24:28 -0400
I wasn't going to answer this because it makes me feel a little strange
always asking for money, but I guess I should ... the last pledge drive was
two years back, and I know some of you weren't around back then.
From: "Gary Truesdail" <gir@-----.net>
> How many people watch or benefit from this site?
I've really no idea. I'd guesstimate that I've had in excess of 20,000
different people hit the site (Klarinet & the Web site). The most popular
page (the Bulletin Board) is averaging about a million hits a year right
now.
Klarinet footed the original bill for the equipment when I went off the old
DEC Alpha that was running the site (the amount of time I had to spend
porting all the software to 64-bit clean was just taking too much of my
time); however, there's no reason that the Klarinet members alone should be
the ones helping out. That's why I went with sponsorships & Web pages hosted
on the Sneezy machinery - it's defrayed all the bills since then and allowed
me to expand some services. I purposely keep the Web & sponsorship
(advertising) rates low so that the "little guy" can get the same exposure
as the larger companies. Indeed, at present I don't have any really large
companies sponsoring Sneezy.Org . Hopefully that'll change someday.
I've been trying to come up with ideas - I may put up a new "Help Sneezy"
page especially now that I've set up a PayPal account so credit cards can be
accepted. I will be selling some small products via Sneezy shortly, whereby
I'll mark up the items a bit so I can make a bit of money. I already make 8%
for people buying sheet music from SheetMusicPlus via the Sneezy Web site -
that's been a pretty steady $25 or so/month. It all helps ... If I put up a
"Help Sneezy" page I'll let everyone know via a .signature . I'm not going
to do the big push to raise money this time. I figure after another year or
so it'll be self-sufficient again via Web sites & sponsorships.
I don't want to charge for services - almost no "pay per use" systems have
succeeded - and I don't want to have irritating pop-ups & banners on the
site. It's been kept relatively low key & I want to keep it that way.
Mark Charette
(PS - the old DEC Alpha is still doing yeoman's service as the acoustics
research server at Ohio State - http://hughes38.som.ohio-state.edu )
TANSTAAFL
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