The forums are too much of a load for Matt's paying customers- too much of a load on bandwidth and causes downtime for paying customers. We cannot hurt Matt's business. My idea is to find out how to approach companies like Soko and K. Watanabe to try and setup an advertising contract. My forums get them a LOT of business. How many of you have gotten engines from one of the importers? Maybe other companies like JWT as well. Anyways, I need help in figuring out how to approach these companies with a proposal. Matt can setup the ad tracking easy, it's just how much do I suggest for them to pay me for hits and click-thrus and whatnot? I guess it would be nice to know all the people who have purchased engines from whichever JDM importer since they've been a forum member. That might help to persuade them.

I'm talking with Matt now and am going to find how how much he needs to host these things by themselves. I may need to take donations for hosting for a short time before we can figure something out.

If anyone has any other ideas, please suggest them. One idea I had was charging for work done at my place when people come over to help pay for them.

I'm more than happy to be the first to start a contribution fund if that will help. We should find out from Matt what it will cost to have the Forum hosted on a dedicated server. We've got over 1200 registered users here, a few bucks from each of us would keep the board up for at leas enough time to come up with a viable ongoing solution.

I don't want to loose this board, it's become a big part of my 'online life', and I'll do what I can to keep it running.

If the moderators open a fund, you can count me in for $25.

Chris

I can take away from biweekly lunch money. $25
Im down.

Could you please explain to me who is Matt and what you are talking about? I thought eric96 had the server, and Ben you owned the forum name. I'm in the dark on this Matt guy and how this forum really works, please enlighten me.

Matt Hunt (sr20de.org) who is David Evans (b15sentra.net) roomate, is currently hosting this forum, b15sentra.net, g20.net and 5thGenMaximas...



Ben, have you thought about setting up a paypal account for donations?


I've already talked to Matt about possibly getting our 5 sites together on a dedicated server. I'm currently paying Matt for hosting G20.net, I wouldnt mind paying a little more per month to help us all out.

I can make a donation towards the server too, $1000 or so.


Let me know... or just speak with Matt about this.

brian@g20.net

I currently have a couple servers and run a small hosting business. I offered to host Nissan sites a while back for free and things went well. Right now, the server is having problems, and they are related to vBulletin and MySQL which drives it.

The admin tasks in keeping this board up have become hours upon hours a week. I can't deal with it anymore and therefore must request that the forums go elsewhere.

I never expected anything in return, but now I can't justify the investments of time and money.

I'd also like to add that over the last several weeks I've been receiving emails with people complaining or generally bitching about weak/poor service or other things related to the forum. I'm not usually like this but in my current mind state: FUCK YOU. You do a better job and I'll happily applaud you. I put a ton of effort into trying to get these forums to stay online, and I'd love to keep them. The reality is, I can't justify the time anymore. Nor can I justify walking out of a day of classes to 14 angry voicemails from clients that I have longstanding business relationships with.

I also participate in an online club for my Yamaha Venture. We went through the same growing pains with servers that this forum is experiencing. We ended up making the group a club with a $25 per year membership fee. The forum is still freely accessible, but most regular participants pay the $25 fee. From that fee the club hosts it's own server and also gives the members some trinkets such as pins, patches, etc.

I'd also be willing to donate some money, I already sent you a PM about that Ben. I can ask the hosting company that I use how much it would cost considering how much bandwitdh and stuff this board uses.

How much bandwitch and disk space does this board use? In case we want to ask around different hosts and stuff.

Jose...

Thank you for the information Matt. Okay now that I know the situation. I'll chip in too.


Put me down for $25.00 as well

Might I suggest looking at www.TurboBuick.com and what they've done. The banner ads are turbo Buick-oriented only, and the click-thrus are tracked.

However, as the owner of a website that generates money from internet advertising, I can tell you this: You will not make much, if any, money via this route. Internet advertising rates have been in the dumpster for over a year, and will not be bouncing back soon. You might generate $100 a month if you're lucky. Just reality.

My suggestion is that this forum become a business, and is setup and run just like one.
Expenses:
-Server/space
-Time (which is money) for administrative duties/maintenance

Income:
-Banner advertising
-SR20DE Forum merchandise (think of one of our more post-hungry members in Louisville, KY who works for a company that produces this stuff...)
-Membership dues (small, yearly, one-time fee)
-National/regional/local geek-outs or meets as fund-raisers. It can work.

Set up a business plan and stick to it. Obviously, the goal is not to be wading in dollar bills at the end of every year. Rather, it is to merely survive and maybe have a few bucks left over come December.

This approach is working with EZboard's various communities. They have every site setup a 'community chest' for donations, etc., to pay the bills.

That's my take. Take it for what it's worth. This site has become too valuable to me (and others) to just let it go away. With a little work, it can survive and pay its own way. Despite what others may say, this forum is indeed full of useful information and helpful people who know their stuff. If we work together, we can keep it that way and take it to another level, IMHO.

I have a great deal of flexibility if we were to team up with others such as b15sentra.net and get our own machine. This is all hosted on a rack that resides at Netaxs in PA. It's a very nice setup, and I can get a very good deal on bandwidth. We wouldn't need to spend more than 500-700 for a great machine, and monthly fees would be in the $100 range. For what we would be doing, that isn't a lot of money.

I'm open to paying yearly dues ($25?) on two conditions:

1. Make public exactly what the costs are.

2. No pop-up ads.

where can I paypal my $25.00 to? :D

Originally posted by Calum
I'm open to paying yearly dues ($25?) on two conditions:

1. Make public exactly what the costs are.

2. No pop-up ads.

No. That is the worst idea possible. If you have to pay to access the site we will lose 90 percent of the members after it took a couple years to get as man as it has now.

Also, if it's a pay site, it is no longer considered a public forum, and that brings a whole sort of different issues with it.

Ben

Stickercastle owes about $15 royalties for forum decals. Not much buy hey, beats a poke in the eye.

If you want me to setup a donation page I could do that if you don't have a paypal account. I could cut you checks from it, just a thought.

Also I am willing to donate the time to muster up advertisers. I have done pretty well with my business and would not mind.

BUY STICKERS! SAVE THE FORUMS!
:D

How about a $1 for a for sale listing? People tend to sell stuff here to avoid the fees and hassles of Ebay. I think it is a good idea.

When I am lying in bed I will thinkof something else that could work.

...I'm very dependent on this forum... tell me what to do or how much to send...

IM down for 25 matt let me know what to do..

I think that the forums are great too, and I am willing to make a donation to help keep the forums alive. I think that were are really starting to grow as a community. I have always loved the SE-R mailing list, and always will, however a lot of the big posters there have been around for years, and at times the atmosphere is a bit too formal and stuffy for my tastes. I like the more laid back stance, fresh faces, and organization of these boards.

You can see many exciting projects taking place, as people test the waters with the VE, Ben makes the $2003 GRM car, and a little flavor is added with the DSM, Miata and F-body guys. We are also slowly amassing a great volume of information in the form of old posts, that will be very useful to many of us. Hell, Andreas' posts alone should be written on scrolls of genuine Nissan paper and tucked away in a top secret location.

I agree with Jordan, that we should not charge to read the boards. That would greatly detract from the number of members we have. It is going to be hard to wrestle money out of companies to sponsor the board, especially in these economic times. Perhaps though, we could try to get money in the form of a one time donation to buy the physical server itself. A few companies that come to mind that have made some cash from traffic on this board, that maybe could make some donations:

Jim Wolf Tech
Hotshot
Apex Motorsports
SR20Development
Andreas Miko
Soko/Soken
JGY Customs
Courtesy Nissan


Keep in mind, that many of these companies are small, or are actually just an individual, so it might be hard to get any charity from them.

Someone was selling a Hotshot gift certificate the other day, it generated a lot of interest. Perhaps, companies could donate gift certificates, which people would pay for and the proceeds could go to the messageboards. Not a bad tradeoff, considering many people might order more than the amount, of the certificate.


On the bright side of things, I would imagine that once a lot of the cost issues get nailed down, we shouldn't see too much insane growth in the traffic/number of users, because there is a limited amount of SR20 vehicles, and a even more limited number of enthusiasts who own them, and you have to figure that many of them have already found this place.

I am willing to help you guys out in any way needed. Tell me where I can send my $30 (cause I love the boards $5 more than all you other wussies;)).

Finally, Ben, Matt, and all the other moderators, people behind the scenes, etc. Thanks for the hard work, we appreaciate it more than we show at times, and more than you will probably know!

Just an Idea. JWT and some notable others need desperate help with thier web sites. Maybe we could offer them a reduced hosting/design fee to help cover some of our expenses.

Steve