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Is The Mac Web Suffering Financially? |
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 Something interesting for the weekend. Late last week I received an email from Dave Zeiler at the Baltimore Sun, requesting some info regarding the recent increase in Mac sites who have gone to subscriptions, or have been soliciting money.
Following is his email and my response.
Dave Zeiler wrote:
I write a weekly column on Mac issues for the Baltimore Sun's Web site, Sunspot.net. Perhaps you've seen it.
I'm doing my next column on how well the Mac Web is faring financially. There was another wave of Mac sites asking for donations or subscriptions over the summer, , so my plan is to give folks an update on where things stand by talking to a few Mac Web operators.
Here's an idea of what I'm after:
1. In general, where does the money come from? Is the bulk of it generated from ads?
2. Can a person live off the revenue from a Mac Web site?
3. What percentage of Mac users on the Web do you think care enough about the various Mac-oriented sites to pay for it??
4. Where do you see the Mac Web a year or two from now? Is the problem of solvency getting worse?
Do you think some sites might be forced to scale back further or shut down?
5. How difficult is it to operate a Mac Web site? What exactly does it entail?
6. Why did you start your site, and what keeps you motivated to continue?
-- Dave Zeiler
The Mac Experience
The Baltimore Sun
www.sunspot.net
John Monahan wrote:
Hi Dave,
I have seen your column and I hope I'm not too late to respond to this, as I'm more than happy to help out!
I tried to address all your questions individually, but couldn't answer some. Therefore, I'll just give an overall statement - hope that's ok.
Anyhow, "2 Guys" doesn't make any money, and that was never our intent. We pride ourselves on NOT having banners of any kind, as we just want to offer a free place for the Mac community to swap ideas around (and have some fun and enlighten the ignorant, all that good stuff). Besides, not having advertisers means we can be free to do whatever the hell we want, be crazy, say pretty [much] anything, without anyone telling us otherwise (except for the occasional Windows person who lashes out at us).
The costs for the site really aren't that much, so not having a revenue stream isn't a big deal. It's hosted on a 266 Mhz Lime iMac with a halfway decent broadband connection. It works for now, as we only get about 500 hits a day. If we start getting more popular, we may have to get a new machine and a better connection, but we would probably still foot the bill ourselves.
Now, we do have some ideas to make some money from the site (we're not COMPLETE idealists/idiots, just mostly) but really that's only from advertising our sister site, the upcoming "2 Guys Web Design: http://www.2guyswebdesign.com [Ed. - more on this later!]
Getting back to that iMac we run it on - it runs OS X of course, as the site is PHP and MySQL heavy, and hosts some other smaller sites on it as well and seems to take the load without much of a strain. Using PHP, we made an easy-to-update web content management system (almost blog-like) with tiered administration levels. So there's really not much to maintaining the site.
I don't think anyone could live off the money they make from a Mac site (unless you're selling a product or service), and I think about 15% of Mac users would pay for a site.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the main reason for starting 2 Guys has always been the passion for the Mac and what it lets you do. As we've talked about on our site before, there are no "Windows Fan Sites", but there are TONS of Mac fan sites. Why is this when 90% of the world uses Windows? Well, I think you have an inkling, and I hope you include that in your article ;)
Any other thoughts on this? Is it getting to be bad? Has anyone paid for other sites (i.e. MacSurfer, VersionTracker, MacFixit, etc.)? If you run your own site (I know you're out there MacMind!) are there any costs that are problems?
I'm sure Dave would appreciate any comments on this, as he could take them into account for his article. Plus, your name might get mentioned and you could be famous! Or not ;)
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October 18 2003, 1:32 PM EDT, by
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Comments:
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| iKen |
10/18/03, 1:51 PM EDT |
Good e-mail response Jonahan. I hope that he mentions that not all mac websites cost a lot of money to run because of it. :)
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| rlhamon |
10/18/03, 3:06 PM EDT |
Great e-mail response and I sure do hope that 2guys will always remain free. I also see that the reason why some place are charging is one to keep trolls out of there forums and to help with the domain price and website upkeep if that is needed. Also other groups give free wear and the donation is for the software that they gave you which is to be expected.
I could see if the site is costing you 30 bucks a month you'll sell advertisements to equal out the cost and if your site have a lot of traffic and the bandwidth cost is extremely high.
Also if the donations or any other fee's went toward a user group I would say that would be a very worthy fee and people would be happy to pay.
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| Bob Pensik |
10/19/03, 1:05 PM EDT |
good e-mail response man :-)
but i think that he has a good point it must be hard for some Mac sties to stay afloat if it costs even like $50 a month, so i can see why they need donations, and i do think you are right, even tho people, like myself, love going to all these sites they really don't have the resources or desire to donate, that is why it is great there are places like 2Guys :-)
I love this site, i come here at least once a day :-) i hope it stays free :-) but i was kinda surprised to hear that you only get about 500 hits a day!!
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| Jonahan |
10/20/03, 5:02 PM EDT |
Hehe ... thanks, and yeah, it's around that much - maybe closer to 1000 a day if we're listed on MacSurfer.
We'll stay free for as long as we can afford it, you can be sure of that :)
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| Chris |
10/21/03, 4:27 AM EDT |
Well, your website has the content of a 10,000 hits-a-day site even if it doesn't get that many.
I was also surprised to hear it's only 500-1000 a day. Do you guys want that number higher or are there badnwidth concerns?
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| RedRefelx |
10/23/03, 1:27 PM EDT |
Bravo, bravo, BRAVO!
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| Jonahan |
10/29/03, 3:54 PM EDT |
Chris, many thanks :) (blushing)
And yeah, I guess there would be some bandwidth concerns if we ever got that many hits, but we would love it, and we'd find a way to accomodate!
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