Subscription Drive: Status report
We're not going to make it..
Thursday, October 13, 2005 by Frogboy | Discussion: WinCustomize News
If you click HERE you can see WinCustomize's traffic details. Most sites keep this kind of thing secret but we tend to operate as transparently as possible.
The key figures are: 788,000 visits per day average. 5.5 MILLION visitors this past week.
13 days into the WinCustomize subscription drive, we have a total of 345 people who have re-subscribed or subscribed new. Quite a few of them are individuals who re-subscribed long before they needed to or bought a subscription for someone else. That means a very small number of people are doing a lot of the heavy lifting for the site. 345 subscriptions means $6,900 in revenue (thank you to those who have subsribed).
As you can imagine, running a site that gets 5.5 million visitors every week is very expensive. Especially when it's on a download site. For instance, Kol's VistaXP skin has been downloaded about 2,000 times today. It's a 2MB file. That means 4,000 megabytes (4 Gigabytes) of bandwidth were used just for that one skin. So as you can imagine, the bandwidth costs of this site are immense. Moreover, as skinning gets more popular and more users interact, we need full-time people to code and manage the site. Thank goodness we have volunteers who actually run the site and a day to day basis or else there'd be no WinCustomize.
Which brings us back to the start of this news item. WinCustomize costs probably around $300,000 a year to run. That's bandwidth + salaries. Anyone in the Internet business will tell you wer're running the site on a shoe-string. A site in the top 3000 or so most popular in the world would typically cost far more. deviantART, for instance, has around two-dozen employees working just on that site.
So what happens to WinCustomize when October 31 comes and we're not even close to our goal? Well, for skinners, subscribers, and SD Customers the answer is, not much. Skinners and subscribers are going to get new stuff -- we have a Halloween skin in the works for instance and there will be subscriber-only content made in the future.
For regular users it's going to be a different story. Users are going to have to start creating accounts to access skins made that month. We'll also have to put in some code to make it more difficult for someone to simply create a duplicate account. This will likely drive away some users -- which will be part of the goal.
In the midterm, the site will begin focusing more and more on the community with the community defined as people who care about WinCustomize. That would be the skinners, the subscribers, and SD customers. People not in that category will still be able to do many things on the site, but it will be much more restrictive.
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Reply #162 Friday, October 21, 2005 1:11 PM
| Is that figure still correct? Brad says the site costs $300.000... Become a member for $1 per year...case solved |
Great Idea LeCrayon. I've got four bucks sitting in my paypal account...heck even two is worth it! Throw some extra money into skinning competitions.
Reply #163 Saturday, October 22, 2005 7:28 PM
Reply #164 Sunday, October 23, 2005 3:32 AM
| I am on a fixed income too, but I think 19.95 is a great deal for what I take from this website! We are given enough time to see if we like what is offered here before becoming a member. If you subscribed and are complaining then I think maybe you just like to complain! |
TOTALY AGREE.
Reply #165 Sunday, October 23, 2005 3:44 PM
You created the bandwidth nightmare by offering items for non-Stardock applications. If you wish to charge a fee, you should separate SD compatible items from others. Then, your fee is justified.
Remember, no one needs Object Desktop, WindowBlinds, or any other product you make. Each and every one of them is an addition to Windows, not a prerequsite to running it.
Reply #166 Sunday, October 23, 2005 3:54 PM
| There should be no one that has more benefits available to them than a Stardock customer. |
What you purchase with your Object Desktop subscription is just that: the software that comes with it, plus unlimited downloads here. The higher tier access is for people who directly support (by subscribing to) WinCustomize. They get additional services from the site plus some premium content.
The bandwidth problem is not just due to non-Stardock applications. It is due to too many people using the site and not contributing, either by being a Stardock customer, or a WC subscriber, or both.
I'm both an Object Desktop subscriber and a WC subscriber, so shouldn't I get a little something more than you, who only paid for the first?
Reply #167 Sunday, October 23, 2005 10:59 PM
More than a year ago I purchased Windowblinds 4.x, then I found the suites, so I upgraded to Object Desktop.
My OD subscription expired (I wasn't aware of a limit there when I made my payment) I didn't renew.
So, now Windowblinds 5 is coming up, for which I'm sure I have to pay an upgrade fee in case I'm interested.
And before that, you want me to contribute to cover the cost of your site.
It doesn't feel right to me, too much like "please throw money, let us catch".
So, why would I pay twice this season?
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Reply #161 Friday, October 21, 2005 12:02 AM
I figure it is time I give something back.
{you know, that whole circle of life thing.}
Plus I really like the halloween skin!!