RadioReference Blog: The Monthly Bill

[blantonl]

I haven't done a blog post in a while, so I figured I'd pump one out today.

If you've ever wondered what it costs to run this site, here you go!

RadioReference Blog: The monthly bill

Enjoy!

 

[Highpockets]

I haven't done a blog post in a while, so I figured I'd pump one out today.

If you've ever wondered what it costs to run this site, here you go!

RadioReference Blog: The monthly bill

Enjoy!

Interesting, as much as I log on here, I never really gave it a thought what the cost was to operate this site.

I wonder, do you ever ask yourself "Why did I ever get involved in this?" and do you still enjoy it as much as you did when you first started the site back when?

 

[bezking]

That's interesting, but I do want to see what kind of infrastructure and how many "servers" you run - to see the cost savings between traditional hosting and AWS would actually be quite useful for me...

 

[blantonl]

That's interesting, but I do want to see what kind of infrastructure and how many "servers" you run - to see the cost savings between traditional hosting and AWS would actually be quite useful for me...

When you do that - don't forget to include the provisioning flexibility that the cloud offerings provide. I'm waiting for the storm of people that tell us we could do it cheaper, but they don't understand our business nor our traffic patterns

We've looked hard at a hybrid approach between traditional and cloud, but the problem is our infrastructure is so inter-dependent on bandwidth that traversing providers could prove to be a real challenge for us.

 

[blantonl]

I wonder, do you ever ask yourself "Why did I ever get involved in this?" and do you still enjoy it as much as you did when you first started the site back when?

Absolutely I enjoy it! Don't get me wrong, this site is extremely successful and the business is doing fantastic.

The only time I get down is when we have some of the negativity that is common amongst online communities and business as a whole. We probably work through 30+ support requests a day, and a vast majority of them are extremely negative interactions. That can really wear on your soul day after day.

But, I wouldn't trade my job for the world!

 

[fog]

That's a crazy amount of bandwidth -- around 50TB?!

The only time I get down is when we have some of the negativity that is common amongst online communities and business as a whole. We probably work through 30+ support requests a day, and a vast majority of them are extremely negative interactions. That can really wear on your soul day after day.

It's a shame that this is how it always goes; I know the feeling you describe all too well from helping with site support at work.

I've never taken the time to say it before, but this site isn't just helpful: it's an invaluable asset to the community, and you do a remarkably good job of maintaining and improving it. Thanks so much!

 

[northzone]

To go along with this post, I would like to see a statement of your income from the site. At 220,000 members, if half are Premium members at $30 a year that is 110,000 X $30 or $3,110,000 dollars a year. Yes, 3 million a year. If just 1 out of 10 are Premium members (22,000) that is still 660 thousand a year. Am I even close?

If you are going to post financial information it would be nice to have the whole picture.

I will ALWAYS support this site as a Premium member, to me it is worth every penny.

 

[judas12]

To go along with this post, I would like to see a statement of your income from the site. At 220,000 members, if half are Premium members at $30 a year that is 110,000 X $30 or $3,110,000 dollars a year. Yes, 3 million a year. If just 1 out of 10 are Premium members (22,000) that is still 660 thousand a year. Am I even close?

If you are going to post financial information it would be nice to have the whole picture.

I will ALWAYS support this site as a Premium member, to me it is worth every penny.

Wow !!!!!! Its funny how nobody says "Hey, i made 100 grand or 100 million last year" No sirreeee.

Everybody complains about expenses first, nobody complains about making great money... This is a great website and one day i will be a Premium holder

 

[blantonl]

We won't ever post our income since we are a private company and, well, we don't have to. However, I can assure you that the ratio of premium subscribers to members is abisimally small.... It is a very very very small percentage.

 

[madhatter66]

Absolutely I enjoy it! Don't get me wrong, this site is extremely successful and the business is doing fantastic.

The only time I get down is when we have some of the negativity that is common amongst online communities and business as a whole. We probably work through 30+ support requests a day, and a vast majority of them are extremely negative interactions. That can really wear on your soul day after day.

But, I wouldn't trade my job for the world!

Sounds about like working in a 911/Dispatch center... I think we all say about the exact same thing every day...

 

[markbart]

Lindsay,great site I check the forums a lot every day.Thanks again

Mark

 

[mkewman]

I think people forget that RR is, after all, a private company.

Interesting to see the stats. I'm BLOWN AWAY by how much it costs, and I'm happy to support the business.

 

[b7spectra]

Don't take this as one of those negative hits, but is the leasing of the service through Amazon less than having say a T1 or T3 into the house and providing your own server? I like saving money any way possible!

People think that any website is just like a personal one that they have off of their ISP. Even when I ran the ScanAtlanta.com site, it cost me around $20 a month and that was very limited as well!

 

[AK9R]

Don't take this as one of those negative hits, but is the leasing of the service through Amazon less than having say a T1 or T3 into the house and providing your own server?

I'll bounce this one back to Lindsay with a slightly different question.

If RR was to be located at a single site, how much rack space would it take to accomodate the servers (not "server")? Of course, one would also have to factor in the electrical and HVAC requirements to support those servers.

 

[WP4MZR]

Don't take this as one of those negative hits, but is the leasing of the service through Amazon less than having say a T1 or T3 into the house and providing your own server? I like saving money any way possible!

People think that any website is just like a personal one that they have off of their ISP. Even when I ran the ScanAtlanta.com site, it cost me around $20 a month and that was very limited as well!

These days, a T1(1.5mbit/s) is the equivalent of what a dial-up connection was back in 1997. A full T3 @45 mbit/s still would have a hard time during mayor events plus it's cost alone, depending on how far the central office is, can be a lot more than $8,500/month. The best approach for a "home datacenter" is commercial fiber to the home, if you are lucky enough to have fiber close by and the provider wont bill you the cost of building the circuit to you(cough cough cable companies).

 

[blantonl]

Our bandwidth during peak times bursts to well over 100 mbit/s - it's just not feasible from a cost, reliability, and infrastructure perspective to run something of our scale within a residential home.

 

[eorange]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A293 Safari/6531.22.7)

Thanks for sharing.

In terms of growth...does Amazon offer incentives or discounts as you approach a higher tier of capacity?

 

[blantonl]

Yes they do. You should head on over to Amazon site to review their offerings.

Amazon Web Services

 

[Monster75]

wow interesting info... and this is why i became a premium member is to help out with the site anyway i can..... its worth the it... keep up the great work on this site...

 

[MHickman]

Well I just found this place and enjoy it so I'll pay and try it out !