Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Posted

Testing using Adsense at the moment. 
the forum is currently costing me IRO £250/mth to run now and the last payment from eBay ads was £77 so as you can see it’s making a significant dent in my back pocket

you might ask why £250 when you can get cheap hosting accounts anywhere. Tried that last month. Disaster (you may have noticed performance issues and outages for a day or two).  Moved back to a cloud system. Currently we are at 50gig of user uploaded data  (images and such), this is backed up on Amazon cloud and Digital Ocean Cloud for failover and I have to pay for an 80 GB NVME SSD storage plan to get the performance we need.  and as well as that the system sends almost 50,000 email notifications per month - for this I have to use a separate transactional email service.  Bandwidth is not too bad as I use a lot of caching. 

but it all adds up unfortunately. 

I can’t afford to keep paying this every month. 

adsense has been a little encouraging. The past two days it made £4.50. So if that and eBay ads pan out then I will be able to comfortably continue with the project. 

I am also looking at making a theme for moderators and paying members where ads will not be served. Hopefully have this done in the next couple of days

  • Thanks 7
Posted
6 hours ago, Klassiker said:

I was wondering about the ads, which have been much more noticeable the last few days. Now I understand the reason. Many thanks Mark.

Me too. Makes sense now.  

Posted
2 hours ago, LittleWatchShop said:

I will look in to this...a worthy cause, for sure!

Will you advise biden to lift sanctions so I too can join the patrons.🤠

  • Like 2
  • 1 month later...
Posted

@Mark Just chipping in here - I'm a software engineer in my day job and I've worked on a few projects that touched billions of users.

To be fair, 250 doesn't seem too bad (but it obviously depends what you get out of it). It's hard to know without knowing the actual traffic patterns and usage, but here are a few suggestions that come from the top of my mind:

It would probably make sense to limit the upload size of media to this forum (especially videos) -> most can probably be uploaded to youtube and shared here via a link. This way you'd defer the storage cost to youtube for the small sacrifice of ergonomics (I'll let you judge if that's appropriate and something you'd consider)

Similarly with images, once they get uploaded to the forum, I would recommend trying to compress them somehow (using lossless compression could still save you ~20% of the original photo without sacrificing any quality). A common practice is to assign images a unique name based on their content and cache it for a very long time.

Regarding the email provider -> I would quickly compare the pricing, see if anything has changed since the last time it was setup. Most software as a service products have massive margins and often times just asking for a discount could be enough (or if you are comfortable commiting to a 1-2 year deal or something is always something that will make the sales folks very happy and make them offer that discount)

Last but not least, I would actually check how many of the 50k emails are being replied/opened. If majority of them are idle or inactive accounts, I would probably proceed and maybe send everyone an email with and honest email with a fair question of asking them if they still use their account and if they want to unsubscribe 🤷🏼‍♂️

As a quick question, regarding the 80GB SSD, is that because of the database size or is that separated? If that is so, it may make sense to clean/vacuum some database tables that have accumulated over time (session tables for example) and reclaim some disk space.
 

  • Thanks 1
Posted

I made sure to bump up a tier in my patreon subscription. Sorry to see that current algorithms and subs don't create conversions that scale long term. 

Maybe a little extra might help you develop things how you see fit. If a handful of us do the same hopefully it will ease your expense column a bit 

  • 4 months later...
Posted (edited)

Hello Mark. I'm completely new to you, your site, and a complete novice as well. Not enrolled yet.

I like the content of your site and the friendliness of the members.

I ran a site of my own for many years and installed Adsense.

Members, be aware that Mark receives and income from the 'clicking' of the adverts. Be very careful about causing Mark a problem. Don't click every advert each time you visit. If there is something that may interest you, by all means 'click'. 

Adsense keep a record of 'Clicks'. Some of my members tried to help and give me more income. They 'clicked' every advert, every time a visit. Asdsense stopped my 'click' income for 3 month.

When it came back on, members did 'click' each visit, but limited 'clicks' allowed the income to grow.

Let's help Mark. 

I know the cost of running a site.

Regards to all

Keep well. keep safe

 

Ross

 

Edited by rossjackson01
grammar
  • Like 2
  • 5 months later...
Posted
On 5/31/2021 at 5:56 AM, oldhippy said:

don't see ads as I use adblock plus for all my websites I use. 

if you don't see the advertisement does the advertisement company know that? If Mark has gone to all the trouble to try to get advertisement to keep the message board afloat does blocking the advertisements caused a problem?

  • Confused 1
Posted

Usually ads work by clicks. If you see the ad and don't click I'd imagine it's the same as if you don't see the ad and don't click. I'm seeing ads and not clicking.

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Topics

  • Posts

    • it would be nice to have the exact model of the watch the or a picture so we can see exactly what you're talking about. this is because the definition of Swiss watch could be a variety of things and it be helpful if we could see exactly the watch your dealing with then in professional watch repair at least some professionals they do pre-cleaned watches. In other words the hands and dial come off and the entire movement assembled goes through a cleaning machine sometimes I think a shorter bath perhaps so everything is nice and clean for disassembly makes it easier to look for problems. Then other professionals don't like pre-cleaning because it basically obliterates the scene of the crime. Especially when dealing with vintage watches where you're looking for metal filings and problems that may visually go away with cleaning. Then usually super sticky lubrication isn't really a problem for disassembly and typically shouldn't be a problem on a pallet fork bridge because there shouldn't be any lubrication on the bridge at all as you typically do not oil the pallet fork pivots.  
    • A few things you should find out before you can mske a decision of what to do. As Richard said, what is the crown and all of the crown components made of . Then also the stem .  The crown looks to have a steel washer that retains a gasket. So be careful with what chemicals you use to dissolve any stem adhesives or the use of heat. You might swell or melt the gasket unless you are prepared to change that also . The steel washer maybe reactive to alum. Something I've just used to dissolve a broken screw from a plate. First drilled out the centre of the screw with a 0.5mm carbide . Dipped only the section that held the broken screw in Rustins rust remover. This is 40 % phosphoric acid. 3 days and the screw remains were completely dissolved, no trace of steel in the brass threads. A black puddle left in the solution.
    • I suppose this will add to the confusion I have a roller jewel assortment. It lists out American pocket watches for Elgin 18 size and even 16 size it's a 50. But not all the various companies used 50-50 does seem to be common one company had a 51 and the smallest is 43. American parts are always interesting? Francis Elgin for mainsprings will tell you the thickness of the spring other companies will not even though the spring for the same number could come in a variety of thicknesses. But if we actually had the model number of your watch we would find it probably makes a reference that the roller jewel came in different dimensions. So overlook the parts book we find that? So it appears to be 18 and 16 size would be the same sort of the arson different catalog numbers and as I said we don't have your Mongol know which Log number were supposed to be using. Variety of materials garnered her sapphire single or double but zero mention about diameters. Then in a section of rollers in this case rollers with jewels we do get this down in the notes section Roller specifications but of course zero reference to the jewel size. I was really hoping the roller jewel assortment would give us sizes it doesn't really. But it does show a picture of how one particular roller jewel gauge is used  
    • Seems to still do it through my mobile data, I use an android phone almost exclusively, but I'll double check it. Thanks mark Strange, I'll try my laptop that utilities edge. I've been on site half hour since I got home, it hasn't done it yet. Thanks John
    • At work, I'm on MS Edge, not through chose, on my phone, chrome, no issues with either. 
×
×
  • Create New...