Ops-Normal.org

50p a year isn't going to be worth the faff of collecting it.

I suggest Alison should create a PayPal account in the name of ExPrune (or some such) that we can use to throw currency as the mood takes us.

Registration fees, and hosting fees, and miscellaneous bits and bobs all cost a bit. This site's gone well above critical mass now, and the percentage of those who know about aviation is high, so credibility in the outside world is likely to increase.

This thread should be in the "members only" area, methinks.

Sorry Keef postings crossed.

Agree on both your points.

Regarding Ad's, (and I've said this to Alison elsewhere)... Ad's can be fatal to a forum depending upon it's content. If the forum becomes successful then the forum becomes a revenue stream for the Admin. Once the Admin get's used to this revenue stream, (and it can get easy to get used to an extra few grand a month), then they become beholden to the advertisers. Once that happens then, should any conversation become controversial, some interest group can apply pressure to major advertisers and thus on the forum Admin. You've experienced this for yourselves at the other place - posts or threads get deleted, users disciplined or banned, topics become taboo and before long the forum has changed and usually not for the better.

If the forum becomes really successful then people want to buy it for the revenue stream. Offers are sometimes huge - think retirement - and all but impossible to turn down. If the site is sold it almost immediately changes. Professional Mods that have zero knowledge or interest in the content are common. It doesn't take long for the "leaders" to become disillusioned and find greener pastures and the remaining membership slides downhill quite quickly once that happens.

Sites whose content is specific such as the Ford F-150 forums or Reef Aquarium forums generally don't suffer because the content isn't really something that is controversial and if topics like that are started the Admin can, quite rightly, claim it's "off topic" and close/delete the thread thus protecting the content and the revenue stream. PProone however isn't content specific. It's a community of people with various interests and conversational needs/wishes. Such forums discuss a variety of subjects some of which are not benign. It's far more difficult to call "off topic" when there is really no clear direction for the content.

Much better to make the site a subscription site if Alison wishes to make this an expenditure neutral venture than to enter the evil world of ads...

not only the 25 Squid a year, but domain costs as well as inevitable 'other' costs

don't forget the pizza deliveries and compensation for the busdrivers who are waiting outside, in vain and desperate?

Right now I am enjoying what I am doing. Given that I will be 72 in a few months time, my grey cells are having the kind of work out that they haven't had in years, and it is truly brilliant. Loving every minute of it.

Must have spent a good eight hours today migrating the site to the new domain name - pproone.org to ppruned.org. Like most servers running virtual sites these days the domain name directly relates to the directory structure holding the site and the database name, which are all referenced in some way by the 2,300 php and css program modules involved. Why so long? In order for the process to be easily achieved when I have to do it with the live site it must run smoothly with no hiccups, and that takes practise.

Tomorrow I start the migration to the new server, which should be just as much thought provoking. If it gets to the point where it gets to be boring in six months or so, then I might look for some contribution to the costs incurred. But at present if anything I should be paying you people for providing me with this much entertainment.

You see, this is the delight of "prooners" (shortly to be "ppruners" ); one is always discovering new areas of expertise /contacts/experience among the members.

and it's not useless stuff either. I've been thinking about an aquarium for my next house - now I have a brain to pick.

We've been around, haven't we?

Fox

I think a good cross section here from all aspects of aviation and non aviators / ground pounders.

Oh come on everyone?! I'm sure Alison can afford AUS $100 to cover the next few months. On the other hand, if I was 72 and in her position, I might be tempted to offer those of you who are interested enough in the future of PPROONE the opportunity to become a share-holder. I understand Danny got just under US$1 million out of Internet Brands. And I'd offer you upto 49% (divisible) of PPROONE for say AUS $100,000 right now. That'll pay for a new ute whilst I'm still around and able to drive one...

Pinal:

You can't afford us...

Pipal Pani wrote:, if I was 72 and in her position,...

hm. If YOU were 72 and...

Cheers for all the work put into this site!

(but where did JB go?)

but where did JB go?)

Nowhere! It's still there.

I understand Danny got just under US$1 million out of Internet Brands.


Are you sure?? I heard around 30 - 40,000 USD.
Pprune.org is worth $118,389 USD today.

You're kidding. IB's worth over $1 billion. It's got around 100 niche interest sites plus other stuff. Depending on whether one guesses at the ad revenues for a vertical site, or a multiplier of active registered users, say one tenth active, $20 multiplier, then I'd guess pprune is worth somewhere between $2MM and $15MM.

If Pprune was a money generating site (other than advertising) such as selling airline tix, hotel reservations, car rentals, etc, then yes, it would be worth more. But it's only means of revenue is advertising. No way it is worth 2 mil from advertising alone.

I guess we need to agree to differ. KKR tends to go for big buyouts or small ones with big growth potential; IB gets maybe 100 million uniques/month across its sites so it's reasonable to guess that pprune has 1 million uniques. If you simply value a site by the annual value of a UU on an ad-based site, then you get a valuation of somewhere between $1 MM and $19 MM, depending on whether you think the site acts like Twitter or Google. If you think its members act like an automotive site, the valuation is around $6 MM. . So whichever metric one uses, and they all have major pitfalls, I don't see a valuation below $1 MM.

Something else you might want to try, if you have accounts on any of the major ad arbitrage sites, would be to look at the ads on pprune, and bid against them for placement. After a week or two, you'd have enough data to work out vaguely how much ad revenue flows through pprune.

Pinky the pilot wrote:

but where did JB go?)

Nowhere! It's still there.

Very odd, I clicked the Board Index link above the forum and briefly spotted Jet blast and another forum. Once the page had loaded up completely they were gone though.

Edit: My fault. The Social section had collapsed and turned almost invisible. I spotted it now when I compared a screenshot of the initially loaded page.

The Social section had collapsed and turned almost invisible.

That's what happens when you ban everyone that uses it...

LOL

Keef wrote:50p a year isn't going to be worth the faff of collecting it.

I suggest Alison should create a PayPal account in the name of ExPrune (or some such) that we can use to throw currency as the mood takes us.

Registration fees, and hosting fees, and miscellaneous bits and bobs all cost a bit. This site's gone well above critical mass now, and the percentage of those who know about aviation is high, so credibility in the outside world is likely to increase.

This thread should be in the "members only" area, methinks.

Excellent idea. I don't think that anyone here will have a problem with $5-$10 (not Zimbabwe) and those that do, fine. Nobody has to know.