mo money mo problems
posted by max on August 22, 2006 at 04:50:26 PM
if you haven't seen my latest ytmnd yet, check it out.
What I'm trying to say is YTMND isn't doing so hot, traffic and press is better than ever, but ad revenue just isn't keeping up with the costs of running such a high traffic site.
what this means is i'm going to need to stop focusing on new features as much and start focusing on making YTMND more profitable again. read more for further info (including shirt info!).
You are going to start to notice more ads on YTMND. I've always tried to keep them as out of the way as possible and as few to a page as possible, but YTMND just can't afford to do that any longer.
I've added pop ups to all sub domains for non-logged in users as a temporary solution. The front page is probably going to have a few ads added on to it in various places.
I'm currently waiting on a few more shirt designs and I'm going to post them later this week and let you guys decide which ones get printed. There are still around 20 XXXL of the old shirts so if you want one of the original shirts and are a hefty dude go here.
I also have someone doing some designs for a sticker, which is probably going to be screen printed on vinyl and I'll sell them in packs of 10 or 20 or something.
If you have any good ideas for shirts or hoodies etc, feel free to mail me a design at max@ytmnd.com and we can discuss it.
I am going to be sending out a demographics survey to all registered users via private message later today. Filling it out would be extremely helpful as I know almost nothing about most of you and can't really give advertisers a good idea of who you are! Better ads = more money = less ads = better ytmnd.
Last but not least, I signed a release for the Colbert Report to show some YTMNDs on there, so hopefully they should air sometime this week (if at all).
P.S.: if you run ad/popup blockers and are capable of/willing to disable them when using ytmnd.com, it might be helpful.
Click ads when you see relevant information about products you may wish to purchase. Ad clicks are worthless without people actually buying products.
What I'm trying to say is YTMND isn't doing so hot, traffic and press is better than ever, but ad revenue just isn't keeping up with the costs of running such a high traffic site.
what this means is i'm going to need to stop focusing on new features as much and start focusing on making YTMND more profitable again. read more for further info (including shirt info!).
You are going to start to notice more ads on YTMND. I've always tried to keep them as out of the way as possible and as few to a page as possible, but YTMND just can't afford to do that any longer.
I've added pop ups to all sub domains for non-logged in users as a temporary solution. The front page is probably going to have a few ads added on to it in various places.
I'm currently waiting on a few more shirt designs and I'm going to post them later this week and let you guys decide which ones get printed. There are still around 20 XXXL of the old shirts so if you want one of the original shirts and are a hefty dude go here.
I also have someone doing some designs for a sticker, which is probably going to be screen printed on vinyl and I'll sell them in packs of 10 or 20 or something.
If you have any good ideas for shirts or hoodies etc, feel free to mail me a design at max@ytmnd.com and we can discuss it.
I am going to be sending out a demographics survey to all registered users via private message later today. Filling it out would be extremely helpful as I know almost nothing about most of you and can't really give advertisers a good idea of who you are! Better ads = more money = less ads = better ytmnd.
Last but not least, I signed a release for the Colbert Report to show some YTMNDs on there, so hopefully they should air sometime this week (if at all).
P.S.: if you run ad/popup blockers and are capable of/willing to disable them when using ytmnd.com, it might be helpful.
PLEASE DO NOT RANDOMLY CLICK ADS, THIS DOES NOT HELP
Click ads when you see relevant information about products you may wish to purchase. Ad clicks are worthless without people actually buying products.
Add a comment
I get how it is...I have ran a high traffic site in the past. Not like YTMND, but I was still cranking out 10-15 GB of BW a day. Nothing compared to what YTMND no doubtedly cranks out, still. Hosting, luckily I was the designer/developer but for a while I was paying authors...it takes a lot. Hopefully Max doesn't do what I did...got so frustrated with having something that's making quite a bit of money...only to turn around and have to dump it back into it at the end of the month and finally sell it :\
*PAID ACCOUNTS* for a wealth of features = A profile w/picture & bio stuff (remember that old promise). w/exclusive ability to create sites and voting rights FTW: That's your call, maybe a site-wide vote for this could change your mind. Is the new redesign still showing up tommorow? Also I still suggest YTMND should have a single site that takes $1.00 submissions from everyone. SAVE YTMND.COM!, the best place on teh internuts :\
Smoothmedia, while I'd like to see premium accounts, there are problems with that:
1) It would discourage people from creating YTMND sites if they *have* to be a premium member to do so. Being able to get the hang of it before putting money into it is more helpful to everyone.
2) It wouldn't cause any problems in this area, but what you suggested would still allow people to make free accounts continuously to downvote/upvote over and over without tarnishing the reputation of their main YTMND account.
Personally, I'd like to see two additions to YTMND; both of which would help, one of which would help with the money situation:
1) Premium accounts that get additional (seperate) ranks on the front page (while still having non-popup ads). The extra chance of having your YTMND seen would be a great incentive for people to pay a small fee for a premium account.
2) It'd be great if a person had to vote a certain amount of times for their votes to start being counted. For example, a person must vote on 100 seperate Y
(continued from my last comment; didn't realize it was so long)
---------------
...100 seperate YTMNDs, and on the hundredth their previous and future votes start affecting the ratings of the YTMNDs they vote(d) on. That way the upvoter/downvoter problem will be less, even though it won't be completely gone.
I'm willing to go for a premium acct (with my other account, of course), but the whole joy of YTMND is that anyone can do it and its so easy. if people had to pay to make sites, that would officially be crap. I'd say premium = bio, no ads, colurful name. maybe a "top 5 premium sites". but any more and it's not YTMND anymore.
"Have you considered getting McDonalds to sponsor the site? http://mcytmnd.ytmnd.com/"
That gave me an idea :O. Selling ad space to specific companies in the form of a YTMND site could work. So many people visit YTMND every day; it's the ideal place to advertise (especially in a creative format). Of course, someone would be responsible for making said YTMND sites and it's very doubtful Max himself would have the time to do so, in which case a contest could be held in which YTMND users would compete to make the best YTMND for the sponsored YTMND site. Many YTMND users would participate to become better known, so it'd be a win-win situation. It'd likely need to be approved by said company, and it would certainly need to be locked from editing.
Thirty newsposts after owning Bauman, and here we have YTMND gasping for air... I'll buy a fad shirt, no problem. There anything you can eliminate to save bandwidth? Maybe eBaum's World itself?
This sucks... The internet's becoming more and more a premium medium. Always gotta pay for stuff... What happened to the good times?
I might sponsor a site in the near future to help out, if I can.
I would pay for a premium account with access to more features and stuff. I've been coming to ytmnd since the beginning, when my friend told me that there was a site where people made their own yourethemannowdog.com sites. This place is awesome and is an important part of me and my friends inside jokes. I'm in for a shirt too, word.
"We should just make this the Church of YTMND and get that tax exempt dealie. If
Scientology can do it, couldn't be that hard..."
Thousands of people spouting nonsensical BS and spreading messages of hate, and a small fraction of brilliant people... You're right. YTMND is a religion. But we're not science fiction authors, so we'll never be taken seriously :gay:.
Setting filesize limits for image and audio uploads for free accounts, then having premium accounts with free/no limit would likely work. People wouldn't have to pay to view anything or vote, or even create YTMNDs. They'd just be limited in how big their sites can be. Any space is more than enough for a free user.
smoothmedia has a good idea. Almost perfect in fact! The best thing about ytmnd is the ease to join and make a site, there very few places around that are this accommodating anymore. Free accounts could be limited to like 5 sites maximum, less than 10mb and a limit on the frequency that sites can be created (1 or day or something) also a per-deim of votes 20 a day say... This wouldn't interfere with casual users enjoying the site, but does give a decent reason to become a full member. You could also go as far as to only allow full members the use of the flash pre-loader.
At the moment I have a few sites going on and I'd like to sponsor them like $1-$2 each BUT just as an additional money spinning feature I'd like to be able to elect not to have them appear in the 'sponsored YTMND' bit. Just to avoid a 'view whore' backlash. There is enough talent on here to make some really fly shirts, not just NEDM in joke stuff but things for 'normal' people. There needs to be a t-shirt comp or something. Also I'd happily pay to be a member and NOT have ads.
Dude do donations. MMPORG free servers make a killing off donations so I'm sure this site would to. Make a donation page with different incentives. Like for $100 bucks have your site on the front page in LARGE CAPITAL LETTERS for a week. Then go down by days and money. I guarantee people will do it.
shirts are the key to success, guys. if anyone whos anyone buys a ytmnd shirt, max should be able to cut the cost of running ytmnd for one month in half. and then you will have happy ytmnd members. and you gotta do paid/gold memberships or something. you shouldnt make ytmnd pay-only, but certainly this would help. best of luck to you, max.
I really think the free accounts should be how the accounts are now. No limits, no deletions. The premium accounts can have more features (More profile info? Different color username when you comment? Have a "My YTMND" page exclusively for premium users that includes lists and updates of fads and stuff?). All I'm saying is not to take stuff away from the basic account, just add more stuff to the premium account to encourage people to pay.