How Does POA Make Money?

Gerhardt said:
If you want to see how bad it can get, visit the lawnsite.com forums. I still venture there occasionally, but holy crap, it's 99% ads. You see a half dozen posts per page, ads and popups everywhere. But it is kid-friendly and will occasionally have some useful information (obviously, whenever I post).
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Just for fun, I went there.

I clicked on a random post.

I counted the ads. On that page there are:

17 ads!

I think...I may have missed some.
 
RussR said:
Just for fun, I went there.

I clicked on a random post.

I counted the ads. On that page there are:

17 ads!

I think...I may have missed some.
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Went there dove into a thread just to see the ads. I was thinking, wow, that is a very clean and sparse website. Scrolled around looking for a hidden ad, as a thread post, or something more obnoxious. Oh right...i have AdBlock on this browser. Try it out, you might like it :) The places I trust to curate their ad partners, I will whitelist. But, the places that will allow any and all ads, including the ones that helpfully open the App store repeatedly, stay blocked.
 
rachelk.tailwinds said:
Oh how interesting. I heard that some of these forums can end up being real cash cows. I also heard that they can become inundated with advertisements and over-involved moderators, so let us all be thankful for POA and the people who run it!
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I am quite thankful to to the people that provide and run POA.

That is why I didn't complain even more than I did, and stomp off in anger when they decided to close the SZ.

But I do admit that I lost a lot of affection (if that is the right word) for POA when they did that.

But I still respect Jesse, Mari and the others.
 
They have dirt and pictures on certain members. When the funds get a bit low, they do a little shakedown.
 
Jay Honeck said:
Why would making a profit be "bad"? Is Jesse going to suddenly flip to the Dark Side, and start harvesting our organs?

As an example, when I visit VAF I often click the ads, especially new ones, to see what's new in the RV world. It's a quick and easy way to see the latest stuff.

The aviation world is so tiny, and so scattered, that it's nearly impossible to keep up any other way.

Heck, if he felt badly about earning money on us, just think of the awesome POA fly-in Jesse could throw with the proceeds!
:)
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Hmmmmm..

That explains where my spare Kidney went....:redface::redface:...........:D
 
Its all monkey business..

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I run another site (actually it's run by a 501(c)(3) corp, but I'm a director and in charge all the website/vbulletin stuff). We had google ads but people griped so much we got rid of them. We have a few banner ads from local (relevant) advertisers but that's it. We run a raffle and a fund drive and that gives us enough for the hosting costs and to do our community outreach efforts.

Much like this site, it was founded by a computer geek who was willing to pay the expenses himself until others volunteered to help out.
 
So, a little history.

POA was founded right before the shutdown of the original A OPA board ("Yellow Board"), which was shut down because of rampant abuse and general nastiness.

A core of dedicated members of that board got together informed The Pilots of America, with the heavy-lifting technically being done by Chuck Haeberle ("Greebo").

When Greebo became weary of the technical aspect (and what a lot of work he did!), Jesse and Jason stepped up to bear the lion's share of the burden of technical administration, and the board has been hosted for years in data center space provided without cost by Jason (I cannot begin to imagine how much it would cost if we were paying for that).

At the time the site was moved to the data center, we had a small fund-raiser to pay for building the computer on which it is running now.

At that time, as well, there were some who are concerned that Chuck might be tempted to monetize the site, something he could easily have done, because he at that time owned the URL; we need not have worried, his character was way above that.

As a result, Pilots of America, a Pennsylvania Not for Profit Corporation, was formed (thank you, Adam Zucker, for doing the work), and the board is owned by the non-profit. There is no paid staff.

We will need to have a fundraiser one of these days, because it is about time to make some changes in how the technical structure works, but I am confident that, when the need arises, there will be no difficulty raising the needed funds.

We also had (still have, if I found the URL) a "storefront" at which embroidered and branded PoA stuff can be bought (old logo), and it theoretically throws off a little money, but it ain't much.

And yes, The Management Council did award itself a 100% increase in pay recently; but two times zero is still zero, now isn't it? :yes:
 
kiddbats said:
Just curious how many moderators are there here?
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Jesse Angell
Mari Muruyama
Adam Zucker
Troy Whistman
Greg Bockelman
Spike Cutler
Jason Wilkinson (Technical)
 
OK, here is an idea that seems to work at another forum I frequent.
And let me preface it by saying I absolutely detest ads of all kinds. If I need something, I know how to google.
What they do is simple: if you are just browsing as an IP, you see their ads. If you are logged in as a (free) member, you don't see any ads.
Makes it really nice for the regulars, the anons may get a small dose while logged out, and the randomly browsing public funds the site.
 
Here is a good read on Vans Air Force...

http://www.vansairforce.net/yearlypledgedrive_value.htm

$25(min donation amt if you want to appear on the "2015 donations list" X 2,241= $56,025. After donating, you too can proudly post in your signature that your dues are paid.

Plus advertisers, which are greater than the above donations.

Doug forks out nearly $8,000/year for the site.

If you post anything not RV related, it gets deleted.

Needless to say, I am rarely on there and so glad I found POA.

If POA management needs a donation in the future, my check is ready to go in the mail.
 
SCCutler said:
Jesse Angell
Mari Muruyama
Adam Zucker
Troy Whistman
Greg Bockelman
Spike Cutler
Jason Wilkinson (Technical)
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Really think I need to get my name added to that list...
I could then see who all is reporting my posts and ban them :goofy:
 
RV10flyer said:
Here is a good read on Vans Air Force...

http://www.vansairforce.net/yearlypledgedrive_value.htm

$25(min donation amt if you want to appear on the "2015 donations list" X 2,241= $56,025. After donating, you too can proudly post in your signature that your dues are paid.

Plus advertisers, which are greater than the above donations.

Doug forks out nearly $8,000/year for the site.

If you post anything not RV related, it gets deleted.

Needless to say, I am rarely on there and so glad I found POA.

If POA management needs a donation in the future, my check is ready to go in the mail.
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Just curious: How does Doug spend $8K?

My website with unlimited bandwidth is ~$150/year. Where's the other $7850 going?

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk
 
Running adsbexchange.com, I make about $1 a day off of the ads.

Hosting costs me around $80/mo since crunching a couple hundred ADS-B feeds to track around 4000 aircraft most of the day chews through a lot of CPU cycles.

Definitely not doing it to get rich!
 
Jay Honeck said:
Just curious: How does Doug spend $8K?

My website with unlimited bandwidth is ~$150/year. Where's the other $7850 going?

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk
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Agreed. No way a single website costs that much these days if done even remotely right.
 
Pfft. We move 1TB or so in/out of just one sever a month. The hardware is cheap. Fiber Internet and redundant systems (power) is a manageable cost. Want someone there to bounce the vm when the monitor software or users complain? Well, how much do you take home each month?

The POA software is really old. I must admit I like BT a little better just because the software is more user friendly. (Not a fan of the share aviation site. Finally dropped it.)

Building web services is a pain. I'll sit on the sidelines and throw potshots like others here. . . .
 
denverpilot said:
Agreed. No way a single website costs that much these days if done even remotely right.
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It depends on the site. A resource (or traffic intensive) site can cost much more (not that I think POA is particularly resource intensive). I bet FlightAware.com costs a lot more than that to run!

Also, Jay's $150 / year "unlimited bandwidth" deal would quickly go away if traffic got crazy enough that his web host took notice. $150 will cover "unlimited bandwidth" for 99.9% of small biz websites. However, if you're that 0.1%, you're going to get a call to discuss your bill... ;)
 
It'd be pretty easy to spend 8k if you were having to pay anyone to do work for you.

I know it doesn't quite make sense Jay - but a cheap "unlimited bandwidth" host isn't exactly that. If you put any significant load on their server or consumed any measurable bandwidth they'd be shutting you down or charging you many times that.

For a living I work on things that you would think of as a "website" that cost millions of dollars per year, require significant infrastructure, and tons of expensive labor. If we could just slap the "website" up on a $150/mo host...well...there'd be a lot of us looking for jobs. I suppose I'd just sign up for the regionals at that point.

PoA has no advertisements because we like it that way. We're fully aware that the website could generate a respectable amount of revenue. I go here to get away from that sort of junk.

We will ask for money soon so we can move the site onto Amazon. The server is old and quite frankly could fail at any moment. In addition to that the free rack space, power, and bandwidth we've had for years will soon no longer be available as that company is moving all of their infrastructure into Amazon as well.
 
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dans2992 said:
It depends on the site. A resource (or traffic intensive) site can cost much more (not that I think POA is particularly resource intensive). I bet FlightAware.com costs a lot more than that to run!

Also, Jay's $150 / year "unlimited bandwidth" deal would quickly go away if traffic got crazy enough that his web host took notice. $150 will cover "unlimited bandwidth" for 99.9% of small biz websites. However, if you're that 0.1%, you're going to get a call to discuss your bill... ;)
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They were discussing VAF, not PoA.

Unless you're pushing audio or worse, video content, no website is "high traffic" these days. And there's Amazon for that. If not for the entire thing.

They say they're not production quality but if you can make good backups and have a backup site plan, Digital Ocean is a screaming deal. I know a number of folks that host things out of there who also monitor their stuff with external monitoring and they've never had any significant downtime ever. One of the sites is geo-referenced data driven on very detailed maps that aren't lightweight, and it's a total yawner to the DO folks.

Even Azure isn't awful pricing. If you're into the Microsoft (meaning "small and limp", by the way -- haha) way of doing things.

We're rapidly moving things to AWS from a traditional hosting facility and it'll knock $12K off of our monthly price for somewhere around 60 machines or so.
 
eman1200 said:
who's "fine" with ads? ads suck!
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Anyone who enjoys "free" stuff shouldn't mind ads....it's what allows much of the "free" stuff to be free. The fact the POA management is willing to fund this out of their own largess is commendable, but it wouldn't bother me at all if they decided to make it self-supporting via a few banner ads.

Heck, there might even be some things advertised that actually interest me.
 
Jay Honeck said:
Just curious: How does Doug spend $8K?

My website with unlimited bandwidth is ~$150/year. Where's the other $7850 going?
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All your UNLIMITED bandwidth means is they don't charge you more based on usage. IT doesn't mean they OFFER your site users unlimited bandwidth. There's a difference in putting up a few pictures of your motel and to a dozen simultaneous users and one supporting (looking at the sidebar... right now over 800 people). Your $150 site would likely sink into a pool of molassas. Believe me, once you hit 100 users in vB the hosting gets challenging. My site is not quite as busy as this one and it still takes a $450/month hosting package to support it to a tolerable response time.

Even my personal website hit bandwidth considerations after some prominent posting of a link to some stuff I had on it. It's really amazing to look at the site analytics some time.


We also pay a few hundred for domain and email support from GoDaddy. I have to kick in a few hundred every other year for SSL certificates for the site. The chat software is licensed seperately as are a few other site addons we use.
 
I hosted with Amazon for a while. I like them a lot, but got more "bang for the buck" out of OVH.com.

What kind of server horsepower and bandwidth do you estimate POA will require?
 
flyingron said:
All your UNLIMITED bandwidth means is they don't charge you more based on usage. IT doesn't mean they OFFER your site users unlimited bandwidth. There's a difference in putting up a few pictures of your motel and to a dozen simultaneous users and one supporting (looking at the sidebar... right now over 800 people). Your $150 site would likely sink into a pool of molassas. Believe me, once you hit 100 users in vB the hosting gets challenging. My site is not quite as busy as this one and it still takes a $450/month hosting package to support it to a tolerable response time.

Even my personal website hit bandwidth considerations after some prominent posting of a link to some stuff I had on it. It's really amazing to look at the site analytics some time.


We also pay a few hundred for domain and email support from GoDaddy. I have to kick in a few hundred every other year for SSL certificates for the site. The chat software is licensed seperately as are a few other site addons we use.
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There must be various plans that Go Daddy offers since they host all three of my websites, Just paid the annual bill.. 167.00..
 
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here's another "us, too" for moving a lot of stuff to AWS ... we still self-host a metric crap mega-ton of stuff internally tho.
 
dans2992 said:
It depends on the site. A resource (or traffic intensive) site can cost much more (not that I think POA is particularly resource intensive). I bet FlightAware.com costs a lot more than that to run!

Also, Jay's $150 / year "unlimited bandwidth" deal would quickly go away if traffic got crazy enough that his web host took notice. $150 will cover "unlimited bandwidth" for 99.9% of small biz websites. However, if you're that 0.1%, you're going to get a call to discuss your bill... ;)
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For years I hosted an aviation video page with 500+ aviation videos, some over an hour long. Bandwidth was significant, much more than VAF or POA.

GoDaddy never squawked. :)
 
I have posted a few times on VAF but once they realize I am a "alternative engine guy" I usually get a PM from I assume Doug and ask to politely GO AWAY...
 
Perhaps the MC can bring SZ back and load it with hundreds of add..... :stirpot: :rolleyes:
 
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