As mentioned here:
http://www.comparative-religion.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1518
I've been considering some changes for a while.
The issue is becoming more relevant now as the traffic to the site is really building up - traffic at the start of august was around 1000 uniques per day, but at the end of September it had grown to almost 2000 unique visitors per day.
I've already had to pre-book more bandwidth in October because I'm expecting to need a good 30 GibaBytes. And traffic continues to grow.
That means I'll have to look at putting the site on its own server soon.
I could do it sooner, rather than later - but it makes better financial sense to open up this place to some limited advertising first, and then use that money to pay for a dedicated server here in the UK.
When I do that I'll move everything to a new domain and entirely rebrand the site. I am also looking into the possibility of registering this site as a UK charity, which would plough all its profits into various charities - probably ones tackling poverty around the world.
At that point I will almost certainly build some kind of store here with referrer links to off-site products - books on religion, for example. However, my intention is to explore that as a possible supplmental income on the periphery.
Ultimately, I want this site to remain as it is in spirit - a foundation for interfaith discussion. I do not plan on whoring the place to commercialism.
To preserve the spirit of the place, I'll make advertising either as unobtusive - else as preferable - as possible. That means advertising as small and discrete.
The first option is that I'm talking with the affiliate manager of National Geographic, to see about promoting some National Geographic merchandising on the site. I figure the general explorative liberalism of this site matches the explorative liberalism of National Geographic pretty well, without creating too much of a sense of conflict.
The second avenue is taking on text link advertising - which will be literally links on the left-hand nav to other sites - preferably education based - which users may lick on as required. Not banned - not graphics - just links.
Hopefully this will help provide the income necessary to pay for the site to have its own managed server, as well as pay to register as a charity and then provide additional funding for selected world charities (not yet determined, but I'll open the list for forum member approval).
I'm going to experiment with the advertising options over the next couple of months - if it all works out properly, I'll relaunch this place - rebranded but rebuilt the same - perhaps after Christmas.
Anyway, I just thought I'd make a public post of my current planning, to ensure that everyone is informed of what is actually happening.
Best regards all - peace, love, and harmony -
Brian
http://www.comparative-religion.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1518
I've been considering some changes for a while.
The issue is becoming more relevant now as the traffic to the site is really building up - traffic at the start of august was around 1000 uniques per day, but at the end of September it had grown to almost 2000 unique visitors per day.
I've already had to pre-book more bandwidth in October because I'm expecting to need a good 30 GibaBytes. And traffic continues to grow.
That means I'll have to look at putting the site on its own server soon.
I could do it sooner, rather than later - but it makes better financial sense to open up this place to some limited advertising first, and then use that money to pay for a dedicated server here in the UK.
When I do that I'll move everything to a new domain and entirely rebrand the site. I am also looking into the possibility of registering this site as a UK charity, which would plough all its profits into various charities - probably ones tackling poverty around the world.
At that point I will almost certainly build some kind of store here with referrer links to off-site products - books on religion, for example. However, my intention is to explore that as a possible supplmental income on the periphery.
Ultimately, I want this site to remain as it is in spirit - a foundation for interfaith discussion. I do not plan on whoring the place to commercialism.
To preserve the spirit of the place, I'll make advertising either as unobtusive - else as preferable - as possible. That means advertising as small and discrete.
The first option is that I'm talking with the affiliate manager of National Geographic, to see about promoting some National Geographic merchandising on the site. I figure the general explorative liberalism of this site matches the explorative liberalism of National Geographic pretty well, without creating too much of a sense of conflict.
The second avenue is taking on text link advertising - which will be literally links on the left-hand nav to other sites - preferably education based - which users may lick on as required. Not banned - not graphics - just links.
Hopefully this will help provide the income necessary to pay for the site to have its own managed server, as well as pay to register as a charity and then provide additional funding for selected world charities (not yet determined, but I'll open the list for forum member approval).
I'm going to experiment with the advertising options over the next couple of months - if it all works out properly, I'll relaunch this place - rebranded but rebuilt the same - perhaps after Christmas.
Anyway, I just thought I'd make a public post of my current planning, to ensure that everyone is informed of what is actually happening.
Best regards all - peace, love, and harmony -
Brian
