just a thought

[ausjack]

Well I've been thinking and wondering what people thought about running a raffle type thing and as I only have an account my pension goes into, I'd like people to put the money into Mark & PP's account and that can be my little contribution to the site. Do something like $1 a ticket or 3 for $2 or 3 tickets for a $1 or 8 for $2 or something along those lines so everyone can play and have pretty much the same chance of winning.

I won't go any further until I get some feedback and we can work out some ground rules..just a thought people :good:

[trout]

Bloody good idea AJ.:yahoo:
If you need a hand with some coins to raffle sing out mate.:angel:
Nothing like a good old fashioned "Chook raffle" to raise a few quid for a good cause :yahoo:
Bite yer bum Mark :ok: , this way we can help (if only in a small way) to alleviate the rising costs of running this forum without compromising its integrity :friends::drinks:

[ausjack]

thanks trout :good:

[purplepennyhunter]

There's no need mate really. We enjoy the feedback everyone gives and it's not our site, it's yours. Ooooh we are the enablers!! We love our hobby and it's great to have a place to chat about it.

[ausjack]

tiz all good, just show how much others and I appreciate and care for it all and all the effort you both put in and the members for sharing their valuable knowledge and thoughts :give_heart:

I have gained so much you wouldn't believe..including some really good mates :good:

[trout]

I just had a look at my stats and I am responsible for 13.75% of all the  posts on this site.
Surly I am due a rent bill by now :angel:

[Fulvio]

Guys, while a raffle is a good idea for lots of reasons, its clear there's not a lot of understanding about costs.

For any site, there are standing costs, running costs and maintenance costs.

Standing costs are things like domain name registration and setup charges. They're one off, or trivial. Domain names cost around the $25 mark or less for two years for example.

Running costs are also fairly trivial, especially if there is an existing site hosted alongside. There may be an annual fee, ranging from free to a few hundred dollars, and there may be data caps, but generally its not too dear for low volumes, and its a package deal. For example, I have four domains hosted at Australia Online. Three are free because they're my personal domains and that of a club I ran. The fourth is commercial and costs $60/year. Two of these four also cost $25 for domains every two years.

Maintenance is not measured in dollars (unless your own hardware is cohosted and therefore your own responsibility). Rather its the time that goes in to keep things running smoothly. Everything from dealing with outages to approving accounts to moderating content.

As I understand it from previous comments by Mark & PP, they do this for love, and the business pays the necessary bills. I'm sure the taxman foots part of the bill anyway. What really makes the difference is not a couple of bucks but good moderators and enthusiastic participants to take some of the load off.

So yeah, lets have raffles, but think of a better use for any proceeds.

[trout]

Guys, while a raffle is a good idea for lots of reasons, its clear there's not a lot of understanding about costs.

For any site, there are standing costs, running costs and maintenance costs.

Standing costs are things like domain name registration and setup charges. They're one off, or trivial. Domain names cost around the $25 mark or less for two years for example.

Running costs are also fairly trivial, especially if there is an existing site hosted alongside. There may be an annual fee, ranging from free to a few hundred dollars, and there may be data caps, but generally its not too dear for low volumes, and its a package deal. For example, I have four domains hosted at Australia Online. Three are free because they're my personal domains and that of a club I ran. The fourth is commercial and costs $60/year. Two of these four also cost $25 for domains every two years.

Maintenance is not measured in dollars (unless your own hardware is cohosted and therefore your own responsibility). Rather its the time that goes in to keep things running smoothly. Everything from dealing with outages to approving accounts to moderating content.

As I understand it from previous comments by Mark & PP, they do this for love, and the business pays the necessary bills. I'm sure the taxman foots part of the bill anyway. What really makes the difference is not a couple of bucks but good moderators and enthusiastic participants to take some of the load off.

So yeah, lets have raffles, but think of a better use for any proceeds.

Cheers for the update fulvio :good:
I have NO idea of the costs involved in keeping a site open as I have never done it :ok:
Good on ya mate, I feel no where near as guilty now :dance2:

[Fulvio]

Trout, its a wonderful learning experience and I recommend everyone have a web presence. You almost certainly already have free webspace as part of your ISP account. And you can get more free space from many sources, such as Google. You won't have your own domain, and you probably won't be able to install things, like a forum, but you can still learn heaps about how its all done.

Do give it a try, it costs you nothing.

[markn]

The actual hosting costs of this site are negligible right now, in the order of about $25 a year.  But, the bandwidth it's consuming is taking me over quota and excess usage is relatively expensive, it's been between $10 and $30 a month for a few months now.  Normally you'd just upgrade your hosting plan for a few extra bucks a month and move on but I've been using the same web-host for 10 years and I am on a legacy plan.  Upgrading to one of their newer plans means a complete rework of all my web sites and requires me re-test of tens of thousands of lines of code and it's just not worth the effort.  Even if I did have time to do the work I am not inclined to tinker with anything because the websites that could be broken are the ones that keep my kids fed and allows PPH to live in the luxury she demands.  So that's not going to happen.

I use another web host (Linode www.linode.com) for more data intensive web applications and I'll be setting up a new virtual host there to move this site to.  The flat cost will be US$19.95 a month plus domain costs (less than $10 a year).  The bandwidth is essentially unlimited, as is disk space.  There may be cheaper deals around but I only use reliable web hosting companies and they cost a little more.  Linode is fantastically flexible and it will allow us to setup a wiki on a sub-domain very easily and host the database on the same machine (rather than just in the same data center).  It'll be much better.

Anyway, onto the raffle.  PPH and I do not require any financial assistance to run this site.  It's not a matter of pride, it's simply a matter of separating forum activities from financial activities.  Trying to collect money from coin forum members in Australia failed rather spectacularly in the past and there's still bad blood about it several years later.  We don't want to go down that road again.  If we ever want financial assistance to run the site it will most likely be limited to selling advertising.  And then it would just be to recoup costs rather than giving us any sort of financial gain.

Thanks for the thought AJ but if you want to hold a raffle donate the proceeds to Legacy or some other worthy charity.

[ausjack]

Thanks for all the info team, very interesting. Well if people think it could still be a goer and if it would be ok with you Mark and PP I'd still like to have it put into your account and I'll get something nice for me or for more prizes..just thinking out loud at the moment
WOOHOO look at me new badge, thank you :cray:

[Fulvio]

I know I've said this before, but the forum model is rather inefficient, especially with limited data. Moreso when the same site hosts photos. The answer I believe lies in using a range of other resources as well.

For example, one of the clubs I'm in has a website running Joomla, which is a Content Management System for those who haven't heard of it. Last time I checked there were over 75 million websites using Joomla. There are many many options for extra modules on such sites, including Forums, Wikis, Galleries, etc etc etc.

After some testing however, we decided hosting our own forum was not the best way to keep people in touch. Apart from the data and storage costs (while we don't pay for either, we DO have to not become a burden, which we only did once when a news item took us over 50,000 visitors a day for a week), there is also the fact that forums need people to be proactive and log in and find posts they want to read and contribute to. So instead we went with a Google Group, which delivers content via email as well as the web interface, and costs us nothing as we don't need to host it.

When Google+ launched, we moved there as well, with a range of services, both private for members only, and public for outreach. In addition, we have a presence on Facebook, but have found that it is a very poor alternative to our other services.

The key thing is keeping people in touch, and a part of the community. We have a combination of resources that achieve that, and at virtually zero cost. When a post is made to the group, we can be sure every member receives it, which we cannot be sure of on our website, a forum, facebook, G+ or similar.

For this community, I think that a range of services would also work better. Think about what we're about...

Relationships: The friendships we've formed through this and our previous forums.
Information: Whether upcoming events, pics of our latest finds or general news.
Education: How to do things, how not to, and what happens if you mess it up.
Promotion: Bringing more people to our fine hobby, and into our community.

Everyone has different interests and priorities of course. So one size doesn't fit all. But I believe we're all here at least partially for the relationships. The rest seem less important to us, and promotion we don't seem to do at all.

So what's wrong with adding a Group for the social aspect, G+ accounts for photo hosting/sharing, and a G+ Community for promotion? None of these would cost us anything, and they all come bundled under a single account which also gives access to lots of other services. When something is happening, its so easy to post an Event and have it automatically show up in everyone's calendars for example.

I'm not saying to ditch the forum. But easing the pressure has to be a good thing, surely? And cutting down on the photo storage, page reloads etc can only help.

Besides, I'm sure many of you already have Google accounts, and are probably familiar with the offerings. For the rest, its all pretty painless and easy to set up.

[robbiegal]

I like a woman who demands a luxurious lifestyle
classy chick there mark

advertising fees is a great idea, so when we have big or vest pocket dealers pop in to peddle their wares, they can do so within a forum approved process  

forums like these can be a great advertising catalyst for web auctions, bricks and motor businesses and collector trading

it is worth following up on Mark as I reckon that there is quite a bit of business originating from this forum

rob

[Ozcoins]

I know I've said this before, but the forum model is rather inefficient, especially with limited data. Moreso when the same site hosts photos. The answer I believe lies in using a range of other resources as well.

For example, one of the clubs I'm in has a website running Joomla, which is a Content Management System for those who haven't heard of it. Last time I checked there were over 75 million websites using Joomla. There are many many options for extra modules on such sites, including Forums, Wikis, Galleries, etc etc etc.

After some testing however, we decided hosting our own forum was not the best way to keep people in touch. Apart from the data and storage costs (while we don't pay for either, we DO have to not become a burden, which we only did once when a news item took us over 50,000 visitors a day for a week), there is also the fact that forums need people to be proactive and log in and find posts they want to read and contribute to. So instead we went with a Google Group, which delivers content via email as well as the web interface, and costs us nothing as we don't need to host it.

When Google+ launched, we moved there as well, with a range of services, both private for members only, and public for outreach. In addition, we have a presence on Facebook, but have found that it is a very poor alternative to our other services.

The key thing is keeping people in touch, and a part of the community. We have a combination of resources that achieve that, and at virtually zero cost. When a post is made to the group, we can be sure every member receives it, which we cannot be sure of on our website, a forum, facebook, G+ or similar.

For this community, I think that a range of services would also work better. Think about what we're about...

Relationships: The friendships we've formed through this and our previous forums.
Information: Whether upcoming events, pics of our latest finds or general news.
Education: How to do things, how not to, and what happens if you mess it up.
Promotion: Bringing more people to our fine hobby, and into our community.

Everyone has different interests and priorities of course. So one size doesn't fit all. But I believe we're all here at least partially for the relationships. The rest seem less important to us, and promotion we don't seem to do at all.

So what's wrong with adding a Group for the social aspect, G+ accounts for photo hosting/sharing, and a G+ Community for promotion? None of these would cost us anything, and they all come bundled under a single account which also gives access to lots of other services. When something is happening, its so easy to post an Event and have it automatically show up in everyone's calendars for example.

I'm not saying to ditch the forum. But easing the pressure has to be a good thing, surely? And cutting down on the photo storage, page reloads etc can only help.

Besides, I'm sure many of you already have Google accounts, and are probably familiar with the offerings. For the rest, its all pretty painless and easy to set up.

I have a few comments to share as well.
I have a philosphical leaning towards
"Data that is important to you, should be controlled by you"
What does this mean in the case of someone running a forum?
To me that means that images should not be hosted "here, there and everywhere" and should be actually part of the forum.
Images stored on the forum are not going to go missing by
-getting removed from a third party host
  -by the original poster
  -by the host turning off the service
  -by the host going broke
  -by rules about bandwidth limits being exceeded
etc, etc, etc

I also do not really want to use google for everything I do.  While it is in THIER interest to know everything about me, it is just not really in MY interest for everything about me to be stored by them.

[Nevol]

I also do not really want to use google for everything I do. While it is in THEIR interest to know everything about me, it is just not really in MY interest for everything about me to be stored by them.

I agree!