The cost to host microlighters.co.za in South Africa

[DarkHelmet]

We have now had the site hosted in South Africa for the past 2 months and the costs are ludicrous. You want performance, you pay, unfortunately.

When the site was hosted in the USA we were attracting traffic of about 15GB, now, since in SA, we are up to almost 24GB. At a cost of R4000 per month. See the attached stats.

How important is performance of the site to you?

We need to explore some alternatives to cover the cost.

1. We contribute monthly to hosting fees
I like the way the site performs but the cost is just ludicrous! I don't understand why they charge for bandwidth in SA but alas. We can add advertisements (I HATE them) and see if that alleviates some of the burden.
2. We find a SA host that will not charge bandwidth
I can host it on my ADSL at home (no bandwidth fees) but do not have continuous power. I have a generator wired into my house but it is a manual switch over. So if no-one is here the site goes down with a power failure. Has someone got an AMF lying around?
3. We move back to the US

The banking details for the forum:
ACCOUNT NAME: MICROLIGHTERS FORUM
BANK: ABSA
ACCOUNT NO: 9203583195
BRANCH: 632005

[Morph]

DH and I have been speaking and I have a secure server room in Cape Town, complete with UPS and autostart generators. I can host a Linux based server in the room, free of charge. The only requirement would be to put in a uncapped ADSL line with a fixed IP address. This would propably cost us R2400 per month paid directly to the service provider with no hidden costs like bandwidth usage. At the moment the current setup is costing us R5000 per month and is constantly growing based on usage.

We are not sure of the speed implications, but we will set up a test environment to DH's house and if we are happy with the performance we can follow this path.

The Microlighters account is sitting at R9000 at the moment thanks to those of you who choose to contribute. THere have benen some big single contributions but the monthly income is not that high. DH has so far not taken any money to cover the hosting fees and he has personally paid the R5k per month I'll get a statement of the cash flow and publish it here

Other ideas?

[gertcoetzee]

Morph,

Having a quick look at the "Aircraft parts and accessories" classifieds, I see that of the items advertised in the past month, for those who has been tagged as sold (excluding two where prices asked is not mentioned), the asking price is a total of R51650. Guessing that some bargaining was done, let's say it generated only 75% of that, i.e R38737. My suggestion is that all advertisements make a honour bound 10 to 15% payment after an item was sold to microlighters.co.za.

So far this month from "Aircraft parts and accessories" alone the fund would have been R4000 richer.

My suggestion is a fixed advertising prepaid fee of R500-R1000 (scaled according to asking price, and capped at R1000) for classifieds in the "Aircraft for sale" section. Going through this section, you will see that the success rate of advertising is very high - so far this month, aircraft listed as sold generated R967000 for sellers.

Gert

[AndyG]

I will happily pay a fee towards the monthly costs. Come up with one and let us know.

[Tumbleweed]

Not trying to flaunt a commercial or compete with mags, but how about offering advertising to "Fly in Destinations' with a link to their site. Maybe a window alternating the eg 10 advertised spots @ R 200 per month for 3 months.

Maybe get the adventure into the cabbage patch flyers.

[ZULU1]

DH, I used this company when based in Swaziland, very switched on but unsure what size they go down to. To design and build one is straightforward just takes precious time.

Maybe worth a call

http://www.vrengineering.co.za/

Ciao Paul

[slysi]

Firstly thanks to DH and Morph for all their efforts in this regard, it is certainly highly appreciated . My thoughts are as follows.

I am sure that many forum members are more than willing to contribute funds to the cause however I do not see this as a viable, sustainable alternative as we will get people that either forget to pay, or stop using the forum. The income would consequently be quite variable and I would not like to see DH or Morph carry the can in this regard as their will be times where outgo exceeds income. The last thing we all want is to start a debt collection service. Not very condusive to healthy aviation debate.

I think the idea of charging for advertising is a good one, I just wonder is who will administer the collection and accounting thereof. I would certainly volunteer if needed, being a beancounter helps sometimes.

But I think the most important question is the old cost vs. benefit argument. Is the benefit of having speedy performance worth the monthly cost that is being incurred? What is the price differential between hosting in the US and hosting in SA? What is the difference in performance (is this something that can be measured?)?

We need a speedy resolution to this one guys and gals as it is unfair on DH who is bearing a substantial financial burden at this point. I am sure you will agree that the site is worth contributing to

[Uncle Spud Murphy]

Greetings,

I know that I am new to ml.co.za and I have no wish to be disrespectful but I replied to Morph's "Contributions to the Forum" and I do believe that what I wrote there applies to here as well.

Perhaps my arithmetic is a little ambitious and OTT, but even with half the amount suggested subscribed on a regular basis ml.co.za and its members would benefit greatly and it would take the pressure off the few who do so much for so many.

Avdb

[skybound®]

I have been down the road many a time on this one with Chris and 'flying' with reviewing the best means to keep AvCom on the air at best cost. We are yet to find any affordable alternative in SA. So often we get this unlimited cap offer and as soon as we ask for it in writing, they ask how much we want as unlimited and when we reply with a minimum of 30gig per month but closer to 50 - they go very quiet and indicate that their idea as to 'unlimited' is about 5gig. Even on an ADSL line at your house type cost is going to get scary as already indicated.

Slysi has hit the nail on the head - cost vs benefit. Just because we are a bunch of okes trying to make this decision, it should not cloud your judgement. Treat as if this site belonged to you and you had to pay the cost. I would hazzard that we would all make the same decision - take it offshore where it is far far cheaper - probably runs at about 15% of current cost. Is the response time really worth the additional spend?

Also have to look at the sustainability of any model you choose. This current model as I already stated in the contributions topic I believed is not sustainable. It is just too costly. Any model with high administrative burden (like billing advertisers) will also take strain at some point. So any revenue generating model should be kept really simple.

When appeals are put out to members of the forum, you will be lucky to even get 10% response. Also as stated by the admin here, old defunct accounts are not removed, so the number of members is far less, and active members even less - that is just the nature of these boards and no reflection on any person. (I did a small study not so long ago, where I checked a number of forums, and if one looks at how many user have more than 20 posts for instance, you get down to a very few members) For instance there are only approximately 250 members here with more than 20 posts. So realistically you can rely on 25 (10%) of the people making voluntary payments, and that would probably be supported by the number that has already contributed.

In summary, cost vs benefit must be carefully considered in addition to ensuring a sustainable model is chosen.

[Uncle Spud Murphy]

Excellent article Skybound,

Very sad but realistic and blows my suggestion right out of the water

Avdb

[DarkHelmet]

I am taking a backup now and will restore it to my server here. I will publicise the URL so we can test for integrity. If all goes well I will disable the current host round about Wednesday and set up the redirect.

[kloot piloot]

Simple suggestion, but how about a billing system like SMS. R 1.00 per log-on or posting ? Or will admin kill the benefit ?
I'm a bit of a techno-retard though.

[slysi]

I am taking a backup now and will restore it to my server here. I will publicise the URL so we can test for integrity. If all goes well I will disable the current host round about Wednesday and set up the redirect.

Ermmm....can you translate to english please

[slysi]

Simple suggestion, but how about a billing system like SMS. R 1.00 per log-on or posting ? Or will admin kill the benefit ?
I'm a bit of a techno-retard though.

Major admin, kloot pilot. Comes back to cost vs. benefit argument. Don't want to steal anyones's flying time

[Morph]

Ermmm....can you translate to english please

We are setting up a test system on http://www.microflying.co.za that will test the ability to run the forum on an ADSL uncapped line.