The value of GaySpeak

[LONDONER]

I must commend this thread (https://gayspeak.com/Thread-Mental-Healt...#pid704408).  It is one of the reasons that GaySpeak is worth its weight in gold. 

I don't troll the Internet in search of gay chat sites and I joined GaySpeak a number of years ago, so long ago that I don't remember how I found it. To the best of my knowledge this site is unique in that it is not a hook up site but a site where one is able to express every point of view not necessarily related to sex. 

Wen I say I commend the above thread it is because the replies have all been unjudgemental and supportive.

Many people missed GaySpeak whe it went off line and I was sorry that Andy's attempt to garner funds via crowdfuning met with so little response.  I'm glad tha it's up and running again but how many are willing to support it financially?

[LJay]

Londoner, we simply need more members. With a larger base, those who are able can contribute a small amount and the site will continue.

There are so many asking for funds. It is frustrating not to be able to support all that one would wish. Still, we can scrape up a little change once in a while.

[LONDONER]

Londoner, we simply need more members.  With a larger base, those who are able can contribute a small amount and the site will continue.

There are so many asking for funds.  It is frustrating not to be able to support all that one would wish.  Still, we can scrape up a little change once in a while.

Agreed, but 100 members donating just  one pound each would not be a great hardship.

[InbetweenDreams]

I do agree with @LJay in order to sustain donations that meet or exceed @andy's goal...which is about $129 USD we simply need more active members. I don't think anyone here disagrees about the value of GS @LONDONER nor are people unwilling to donate, just simply aren't able. I know several people who are now unemployed due to the pandemic or are on fixed income. There might be other reason someone might not donate, such as residing in a country that isn't LGBT friendly, might not want transactions going to a LGBT site, or risk breaking anonymity.

So by all means, if you can donate, donate. If you can't or don't want to for whatever reason it's fine. If you want to really help GS for the long wrong, invite more friends. More active members means more threads, more threads that might bring more visitors off search engines, more activity, more people means more donations. It is easy to throw up a website, it is not easy to have one that is successful that has returning visitors. I know all too well how that is.

As far as site costs. They are high, but webhosting is all over the place. "Rolling your own" is by far the cheapest option. If you can do port forwarding (and have a public IP address that doesn't change or change very often) then you can easily do that. It saves a lot of money. Now GoDaddy which is based in the US has hosting plans that cover the cost of SSL which is the big ticket item normally that cost $19.95 USD...which isn't a bad deal (that's hosting and SSL plus all the other crap they stick in there). They charge $79.99 USD yearly for a DV SSL which is what GS and most sites use. There usually fees and other things such as private registration of your domain that come into play but costs associated with hosting can be reduced, a lot, from £1200 to about £275 yearly...that is of course not counting Andy's time to develop, fix bugs, etc. Could be as low as £80-100 a year for self-hosting. There are still "hidden" costs such as having to replace a hard drive or other computer parts that decide to go bad. The bottom line is if the cost of keeping GS up and running is an issue there are options. I'd be happy to host GS if it came down to that, although I doubt Andy would want some rando hosting his website. I just don't always have money to donate, but I am willing to support GS any way I can.

That being said, yes, we should encourage people to donate if they can but we should also be careful as not to alienate or guilt people into donating money they may or may not have. The costs I show from GoDaddy may not cover all fees, taxes, expenses that are actual and thus may not be complete. I am not by any means saying that the costs associated with hosting GS are inflated or anything like that, there are a lot of hidden things that can go into hosting and even in self-hosting you have to have a computer...it all costs money and usually more than you first realize.

[CellarDweller]

Agreed, but 100 members donating just  one pound each would not be a great hardship.

According to the memberlist here, GS has approximately 940 members. However, how many of those members are active? According to the last visit, about 40 members have been visiting daily.

GS needs a more active membership.

I also want to follow up on what InbetweenDreams has stated above. Using the USD denomination, Andy is paying $1,548.00 USD to keep GS up and running. I am not a techie person in any way, but I am a moderator and admin at another forum, and that forum is running at a cost of $227.88 (USD) for the year, a difference of $1,320.12 a year. The $129.00 (USD) that Andy is paying is high when compared to the $18.99 USD that the forum I admin on is paying.

[andy]

Thanks guys... I really appreciate all your feedback and ideas! (also, thanks to everyone that has helped by making a donation/s!)

I didn't mention it but I've been approached a couple of times to run graphic gay porn banners and ads but declined them as that's not really what we are about!  It does seem nigh on impossible to make any money with a gay themed website unless it features porn!   Google Adsense also won't allow their ads as they think the site is adult themed (not suitable for children) if it has the word 'gay' in it!

Another option is to keep the site free but force (non porn) ads but members who pay a small £1-5 monthly subscription fee can be completely ad free?  There would also be other benefits / features that come with the subscription.

Let me know what y'all think!


Andy x

[seeking]

I never know it costs that much for a forum. What are the costs actually ?

[andy]

Hi @seeking

There's the dedicated server resource (the site's own server) and having it running/available 24/7, associated maintenance costs, software/script update/license fees (the ones that aren't free or I didn't create myself), and other costs that @InbetweenDreams mentioned above. I don't factor in my own time and effort into the equation. I'd just be thankful if the running costs are covered and I'm not too much out of pocket myself.

Andy x

[InbetweenDreams]

I never know it costs that much for a forum. What are the costs actually ?

I don't know to be honest. I can speculate and my thinking is the £100 might not be all that outlandish. If Andy is self-hosting, you still have to pay for the internet and most ISP's at least in the US want a premium for static IP addresses and port forwarding. That can be a big chunk of it right there. Also if you're self hosting, you still need a webserver...whether that is a full blown server or a raspberry pi (I really doubt GS is hosted on a Pi, page loads too fast imo). That costs money, especially when you have something like a hard disk crash, upgrades, etc.

Finally, whether you self-host or pay for webhosting you still have to pay for domain registration which is normally pretty cheap until you add stuff like private registration. I don't know about you I don't like people being able to look up my address and phone number by doing a whois on my domain, and that is of course an extra. You also need a SSL certificate, this allows traffic to and from the website to be encrypted and help protect everyone's information. That's usually a big ticket item costing $80 USD on up and has to be renewed annually.

Plus Andy's time is worth something. He spends a lot of time doing work on the site.

So I don't think the monthly goal is unreasonable, especially once you start looking for hidden costs.

edit: read andy's response above..

Thanks guys... I really appreciate all your feedback and ideas! (also, thanks to everyone that has helped by making a donation/s!)

I didn't mention it but I've been approached a couple of times to run graphic gay porn banners and ads but declined them as that's not really what we are about! It does seem nigh on impossible to make any money with a gay themed website unless it features porn! Sad Google Adsense also won't allow their ads as they think the site is adult themed (not suitable for children) if it has the word 'gay' in it!

Another option is to keep the site free but force (non porn) ads but members who pay a small £1-5 monthly subscription fee can be completely ad free? There would also be other benefits / features that come with the subscription.

Let me know what y'all think! Wink


Andy x

I do remember Google being tightwads about "gay" being adult themed. Somehow I was able to get around that but I don't quite remember how. Of course, my problem is I simply didn't get enough traffic, enough clicks on the ads to get anything. I think the main culprit was having anything sex related on the front page or ads appearing on pages with adult content...which can be in a lot of places. So that limits where you can stick ads. And all the fun trying to stick their code in the template files is loads of fun, or it was on phpBB.

I suppose a "premium" membership could help. A lot of websites do force ads now. Which is fine, I think a lot of the reasoning behind ad blockers were from all the really bad and some dangerous ads that would try to force malware on computers...that seems to be less of a problem today fortunately.

I do think that if we had more active users, perhaps more transient users something like a "swag" store would be helpful. I say transients because once all of us buy some merch sales would just drop off. Not sure how that sort of thing works but could also be something both neat and helpful....

[seeking]

Another option is to keep the site free but force (non porn) ads but members who pay a small £1-5 monthly subscription fee can be completely ad free? There would also be other benefits / features that come with the subscription.

I think this is a pretty good compromise and I wouldn't mind seeing some ads if it means we can keep the forum running !