1. That's my bill for hosting and bandwidth expenses. I obviously need to consider the cost of my time which is not included in that figure. The more money the site generates, the more time I invest in it. So, if it were to generate $150,000 from advertising, I wouldn't shut it off, but I'd start pulling my time out of other projects, and moving it into this community site to add more of the requested features.
2. I want to save for a rainy day. Online communities don't last forever. It would be short sighted to shut off advertising simply because this years expenses are met, and then two years from now I need to close up the site because advertising is falling short. When the site hits a rough patch, I want the savings to either push it through or pivot. Coasting on maintenance costs would be a dangerous road with an abrupt end.
I've heard that line from people raking in several hundred thousand a year, while they still callously heap ads on their audiences.
If you have no target, neither for your site nor for your personal ambition, it seems like the veneer of "I tried to avoid them but couldn't" is really quite thin.
1. That's my bill for hosting and bandwidth expenses. I obviously need to consider the cost of my time which is not included in that figure. The more money the site generates, the more time I invest in it. So, if it were to generate $150,000 from advertising, I wouldn't shut it off, but I'd start pulling my time out of other projects, and moving it into this community site to add more of the requested features.
2. I want to save for a rainy day. Online communities don't last forever. It would be short sighted to shut off advertising simply because this years expenses are met, and then two years from now I need to close up the site because advertising is falling short. When the site hits a rough patch, I want the savings to either push it through or pivot. Coasting on maintenance costs would be a dangerous road with an abrupt end.