Were you ever in the situation where you couldn't afford to run a site anymore?

[Cedric]

As we all know, maintaining a site can involve various costs like hosting, domain, add on's, licenses, maybe SEO tools, content creation, and other additional resources which can add up over time.

While we all start with enthusiasm and optimism, there can be instances where, due to a variety of circumstances, the financial burden of running a site becomes too heavy to bear. Perhaps the revenue generation didn't kick in as expected, or unforeseen expenses cropped up, or personal financial situations changed.

If you've ever found yourself in such a situation, I invite you to share your experiences:

1. How did you deal with the situation? Did you find alternative ways to fund your site, or did you have to make the tough decision to shut it down?
2. What lessons did you learn from this experience? Were there any measures you put in place afterward to avoid a similar situation in the future?
3. What advice would you give to fellow webmasters to avoid reaching such a point? Think: setting a certain budget per month.
4. Are there any affordable resources or services that you would recommend to help manage the financial aspects of running a site?
5. Lastly, how did this experience influence your perspective on webmastering?

This might be a sensitive topic for some, and I appreciate your willingness to share your experiences. I believe we can learn a lot from each other's journeys, and your insights can provide invaluable lessons for us all.

 

[Cory]

I've always used free forum software, so I've never had this issue. The only thing I tend to use the money on my site for is a custom domain.

I tried setting up Google AdWords at one point, but it was a failure.

 

[joelr]

I always knew that my site needed to be self-sustaining for me to keep it.

I'm never going to retire off the few hundred I make off my community every month, but it pays for itself. I think every community owner needs to have a basic monetization strategy to make the community sustainable once you get to a point where it makes sense.

 

[Ravenfreak]

Yes there was a time where I thought I could keep my forum on self hosting. This was when I owned Mighty No. 9 Universe, I had the money when I moved my forum from free hosting to self hosting and was able to keep up with the payments for a little bit. Then I was drowning in debt, and had too many bills to worry about so I had to eventually move my forum from Invision's cloud package to Jcink. I eventually let the forum die, as the game took forever to be released and when it was released it was met with mainly negative reviews.

Now I actually take the time to address my spending habits and take care of what bills I need to pay. I then look for software that fits my budget, and see how much hosting and my domain will cost. I know better to not just go diving into a project that I know I couldn't afford. I'm also 10 years older now than I was when I first opened Mighty No 9 Universe.

My advice, take notes of your budget and obviously don't go out of it! There are some nice free forum scripts that you can install, and Wordpress is free if you're wanting to blog. You don't necessarily have to go down the self hosting route. Self hosting is better though, there's no denying that. You have full control of your own site and you don't have to worry about your host shutting down and even if your host did, you can easily make backups of your forum or website and move to a new host. There are some great hosting services out there that are pretty cheap if you do some research and if you have the knowledge for self hosting.

 

[Tracy]

Personally.. my main site is a hobby that is in conjunction with another hobby... and I'm cognizant that hobbies cost money to participate in.
I have the spare funds to fund "both" aspects of the hobby... so it's not something I worry about any more than someone worries about not being able to go fishing on the weekend, going out to the "club" or anything like that... it's simply a matter of prioritization on where you want to expend your funds.
My other site... I simply wanted to have a place to play around with that wasn't as "important" as my primary site. I seriously doubt it will take off since its such a micro-niche topic and it's "not healthy"... a 'nasty' word in todays society.

 

[Empire]

Lucky to have a hobbyist to make money from his hobby. I would say yes and no, but what would happen first more so than money down the drain is burnout. So many people just can't able to get to where they want or give up or they burn themselves out. I'm able to keep it going but then I did save money by stopping unwanted plugins that I was still paying for.

For seven years I still pay for the same web hosting server and for seven years still used IPS and kept up the payments.

 

[Tracy]

but what would happen first more so than money down the drain is burnout.

Really? I see MANY folks hunting/fishing/other sports being active decades later. The very basic fact is.... one simply has to determine HOW one desires to expend their discretionary funds. That choice will be different for every person. For over a decade, I've spent a segment of mine on VPS's (and at times dedicated servers) and scripts and 3rd party add-ons because it is what I enjoy messing with.

For seven years I still pay for the same web hosting server and for seven years still used IPS and kept up the payments.

And I'm sitting at over a decade of not only playing (and paying) for XF, but IPS and Woltlab.
But I'm STILL way ahead of my brother who spends a crap-ton more on his hunting stuff. He recently dropped $750K on property so he would have somewhere to "hunt" that he wasn't beholden to others for and had adequate land to be a decent hunting location. The real irony... he rarely hunts and has others over to his land to hunt (usually associated vendors in his trade).

 

[Nomad]

I launched my first site in 2015, in less than 6 months, I was already running 3 sites, but at the end of one year, I was running over a dozen websites. Some of my websites were built on domains that got for less than $1, however, when it came to renewing these domains, I was supposed to pay $30-35. Over the years, paying for domain renewals became a financial burden. I tried selling sites and I also started dropping sites that I could not sell.

 

[V0RT3X]

Not me, but it happened to someone whose site I worked for.

It was a forum, but it was mainly videos and pictures that were posted there. In the end, three servers had to be used to keep it running properly (CDN was out of the question).

In addition, it was a genre in which it is very difficult to find advertising partners. In the end, he had no choice but to sell it.

Success has killed the site in the truest sense of the word