Where To in 2022?

[marie25]

I just want to say how much I appreciate PSR Tutorial and would be more than willing to pay for membership in order to keep it going.

Marie

[mikf]

Completely unrealistic to think you could hire people to do this work, there isn't nearly enough revenue potential. Work it out - if 200 people paid $10 that isn't even enough to cover basic server costs never mind pay anyone. Supporting these kind of websites is a voluntary thing, a labor of love.  Just like Eileen says, as in  any hobby, you put time and money in, you don't expect anything out.
Mike

[TiasDad]

A huge thank you to Joe & Roger for everything they do and also to the moderators and members who contribute in the many ways that they do.
I would gladly pay a subscription or make regular donations to keep this forum going as I have received so much in advice, resources and friendships..

I find one of the main strengths that this forum has over Facebook is honest, unbiased opinion and reviews, delivered in a fair and uncompromising manner. Not only about the hardware but also playing techniques and education in general.

Long may it continue.

[mcbrown]

Thank you Joe and Roger and others assisting for the continuation of this very valuable forum. I go on the forum almost every day when I'm able to as I enjoy reading the posts and picking up some gems of wisdom to use my Genos and also some music theory. I hope the forum continues for many years to come and I would gladly pay a subscription if that becomes necessary to keep the forum going.

Much appreciation.

Murray

[janamdo]

Completely unrealistic to think you could hire people to do this work, there isn't nearly enough revenue potential. Work it out - if 200 people paid $10 that isn't even enough to cover basic server costs never mind pay anyone. Supporting these kind of websites is a voluntary thing, a labor of love.  Just like Eileen says, as in  any hobby, you put time and money in, you don't expect anything out.
Mike

If you know something about website building, then "Dreamweaver"  could be a good assistant to deal with all the things on this website.
For example adding a menu entrie(s) and  content and some more elementairy stuff ,and more this can be done easily with Dreamweaver.
Well Joe said 3000 USD /year  it costs him , so  a 2000 USD income for him should be very welcome for him.
Indeed a labour of love
Note: if there are some  people among us on this site , who are in a position where money plays no role ? 

[Flipje001]

Well JOE , a really big thanks for all the great work you doing to this website, its really one of the best websites , i ever used ,and learn so much of it.
I would also make a contribution each year to stay the website on air.   hope's this will go further.

Many many thanks to you and also to other members to share the knowledge and materials on this site.

Best Regards from Belgium.  and fine 2022 to all the members.   

[Rich Z]

Well, I am glad to see this forum will remain.  I don't come here every day, and honestly I don't find all that many threads of interest. But for those that are of interest, and to have the newbie questions I ask answered, well, this site is just WELL worth having around.  I can't think of any other place I would consider going to when I want to have a question about my Genos answered by knowledgeable and experienced people.

FYI, I run several message boards myself. Nothing at all even close to being related to the content here. I have also run a site that did poorly a long while back, but I was able to sell it for more than it was reasonably worth. I doubt that will ever happen again. Only one I currently run about of four message board sites is doing all that well, with over 160,000 registered members.  But it has been around for 20 years, and that detail is important.  With the explosion of popularity (infestation?) of facebook, things took a dramatic nosedive across the board.  A LOT of forum sites went kaput as a result. Many, many others I frequent sometimes are just hanging on by a thin thread. One in particular (a Corvette related site) was just massive), but is just a shadow of itself now. I believe the combination of facebook (and other so-called "social media" style sites) along with the smart phone revolution in personal communications overwhelmed the older style forum/message board style sites. Many sites got drained of participation like just punching a hole in a bucket. BTW, is this site compatible with smart phone technology? If not, it is behind the eightball and that really should be changed. Seems like most people have abandoned their desktop and laptop PCs and really only access the internet via their cell phones any longer.  Me, being a dinosaur, just refuse to do that.  I am a touch typist, and can't stand those little keypads on phones, nor can I stand the eyestrain of trying to view the internet on those little cell phone screens. But I still had to make my sites compatible for people who were not dinosaurs like me.

I also have a dedicated server that comes with full management, so I can leave all the server details to the server guys. I just decided I didn't want to have to deal with those kind of details day in and day out. I have been through a lot of server resellers over the years, and the guys I have now have been just great to work with.  I have a really good vBulletin programmer that is indispensable to me. I have to use an older version of vBulletin because of all the custom mods done to the message board software, but my programmer is nothing less than an expert with this stuff. I used to do programming myself in my younger days, but it is a talent that quickly fades when those brain muscles are not exercised frequently. Programming is not all that hard, but it is extremely tedious, and quite honestly my memory just isn't that good to where I can remember all the syntax details needed for such efforts. My programmer gets a percentage of the Google Adsense revenue so he is basically on retainer for whenever I need him.  Works well for both of us that way.

As for membership contributions, well, the flame will burn hot if you ask for it, but won't burn for long.  People come and go in message board systems.  If you don't have a constant supply of new members, the site will slowly be dying on the vine.  Of the 160,000 registered members on my main website, there are only currently 16,500 ACTIVE members. Which has been dropping steadily for a while now.  Used to be I would get 50 new registrations per day.  Now it is only about 15 or so per day.  It is like filling a bucket with water that has a hole in the bottom.  Unless the amount of water being added is more than the leak, eventually the bucket will just be wet on the bottom, without enough to bother keeping the bucket around.

Out of those 16,500 active members, I have 240 contributing members of various levels.  I also have paid banner and text based advertising that members pay for.  And on top of that I have third party advertising via Google Adsense and InfoLinks.  Together they all help to keep my site(s) running in the black and honestly provide enough income to supplement my retirement income to make it worthwhile spending my time battling the constant barrage of spammer registrations and other headaches that are inherent in this sort of effort.  Yeah, it is fun and it feels worthwhile running a member based message board system, but sooner or later you start thinking about what your time is worth.  Especially when you see membership participation dying on the vine, you start to wonder why even bother with it?  If your members don't appreciate it enough to participate, then why exactly should you care enough to keep it running?  Been there and done that myself with the other sites I run that are basically dead.  But the main site pays the bills for my server, and it really doesn't cost me much beyond the domain name leasing for the dead sites, so I keep them around.  Of course there are other hidden benefits of running a forum based business in the form of business deductions you can take.  So, don't underestimate the value of this!

Honestly, in your shoes, I would seriously look into third party advertising services.  Google Adsense is based on actual clicks of the ads to generate revenue, and InfoLinks is based on just raw views of the ads they provide. They seem to compliment each other well  Of course the more traffic you have, the better the revenue will be, but heck if you could just earn $10 per day with that advertising, you would be operating in the black here.  Anything more than that would just be gravy. Are such ads a minor pain in the butt for viewers? Sure.  But if presented with the choice of either putting up with the ads or the site goes kaput, I think most will gladly put up with the ads.

Every message board is different, and attracts a different type of clientele. The primary criteria you need to consider is "what does your site offer that people want, and is there anything unique about it that makes it stand above every other similar competing site?"  Everyone has a limited amount of time to spend on the internet.  Facebook and text messaging on the cell phone with the constant barrage of notices of new messages, sucks up a lot of time from a lot of people. This will be extremely difficult to overcome.  Maybe not even possible to do so.  You have good intentions with starting up and running this site.  But perhaps thinking about making this where it is helping YOU financially is justified for your long term satisfaction for what you are doing. Seems the older I get, the more I consider my time as being EXTREMELY valuable to me. After all, having an income can be considered as just another measure of just how valuable people believe in what you are doing for them. It is NOT dirty to make money off of your efforts.  Matter of fact, many years ago someone said something to me that had a huge impact on my life.  He said "Rich, figure out something that you really like to do, and are going to do it anyway, and make a business out of it."  IMHO, that advice was just pure gold to me.

Anyway, just my opinions.  I read this thread a couple of days ago, but have been waiting for a rainy day to spend the time to put in my two cents.  If you need any opinion based advice from me, ask away.  I sure as heck don't know everything about this stuff, but I have tried every method I could think of to make my sites as successful as possible and still stay within the specs of ME being happy with what I was doing with the site and for the people they are targeted to attract.  If you want to have a private conversation, then that is OK with me.  Just don't expect, or even hope, that I will have all the correct answers, or even most of them.  At the very least you will get what you paid for from my suggestions. 

[Rich Z]

Odd... Why can't I set this thread to send me notifications of replies?   

[Gunnar Jonny]

Odd... Why can't I set this thread to send me notifications of replies?   

There is an option in your profile settings 'Notifications'. Maybe something can be done there?

[Toril S]

I joined this forum and soon found out that it must be the best forum and website in the world, not only because of the content, but also because it is so orderly! Everything is easy to find, and no disturbing ads are in the way. There are many fine forums out there, but I give up almost instantly because they are so tricky to navigate for me. I am visually impaired, so logic and order is very important. Here everything is placed neatly into cathegories, the text is easy to read, no dark themes with brown letters on black, no popping up ads that you don't know how to put away so you can see the text. Please don't bring in third party ads! My dream is that the forum can remain as it is indefinitely, but I understand the immense workload and the intervention of Father Time. He is not a friend of this forum, but unfortunately we have to count him in!

[Rich Z]

I joined this forum and soon found out that it must be the best forum and website in the world, not only because of the content, but also because it is so orderly! Everything is easy to find, and no disturbing ads are in the way. There are many fine forums out there, but I give up almost instantly because they are so tricky to navigate for me. I am visually impaired, so logic and order is very important. Here everything is placed neatly into cathegories, the text is easy to read, no dark themes with brown letters on black, no popping up ads that you don't know how to put away so you can see the text. Please don't bring in third party ads! My dream is that the forum can remain as it is indefinitely, but I understand the immense workload and the intervention of Father Time. He is not a friend of this forum, but unfortunately we have to count him in!

Yep, I don't like ads on websites much neither.  But I understand why they are there.  Quite honestly, don't you think it might be best to consider what might be best for the guys working hard to keep this site here for you, instead of solely what you think is best for you? Isn't some minor inconvenience worth it to allow running this site to be worth it to them in a more substantive measure? IMHO.  I think I have a pretty good handle on what is required to run websites.  Personally I don't think it fair of anyone to continually ask the people doing so to continue doing so forever, FOR FREE.

And for the record, the ads could always be set to exclude being viewed by contributing members if that route is decided to be explored as well.

But again, this is only a suggestion related to what I found after 20 years was needed to make things "work" (relatively speaking) for my sites. 

One thing I have found over the years is that it is almost as rare as finding unicorn feathers for everyone to agree on ANY change made to a website. Many people are severely resistant to change, no matter what it is, or why it needs to happen. That seems to almost be a law of the internet, in my experience.

[Joe W]

We may not have resolved all the issues for the coming year, but the main question is resolved -- we are going forward for another year.  The web site will stay, the forum will stay.  I do, in fact, use DreamWeaver to maintain the main PSR Tutorial web site.  The forum is based on Simple Machines software and it is managed by Roger and the other moderators.  Because we generate revenue by offering a variety of resource collections, I have not added outside advertisers to the web site or to the forum.  The work done by myself and the moderators is a labor of love rather than a job.

In the last week or two, I have been working to update the PSR Performers section of the PSR Tutorial.  I have moved many Performer pages from the "Current" to the "archived" section.  If a performer has not added any new songs in the past two and a half years, they are moved to the archived section.  I have done a number of things to standardize those pages and minimize any maintenance.  With no new songs being added, they are static pages not requiring upkeep.  If an "archived" performer sends in additional songs, the page can be moved once more to the Current section. 

Reviewing past performers, I was reminded of many old friends.  Some had contributed to the web site over several years.  And, of course, some are, unfortunately, no longer with us.  I have indicated that on pages where I knew a performer had passed away.  If anyone sees archived performers who are deceased, please let me know.  I am inclined to keep those pages up as our tribute to these past performers.

Performer songs are on the performer pages and they allow performers to share their music.  However, if anyone is interested in a particular song, it is not easy to find it on those performer pages.   But there is the alphabetical list of MP3 songs.  My new current project is to make sure that alphabetical list is still there and all the links are correct, particularly since I revised main folder names.

In the previous archived section, performers only had at most 20 songs that remained on their page.  In transferring these new performers, I kept ALL of their songs on their pages.  I'm considering the next step to be adding more MP3s that were earlier retired to the archive performer pages.  That will expand the number of MP3s available in the alphabetical listings.

We have closed off this topic so I will launch a new one on the PSR Performer changes to solicit some feedback and suggestions about how to update and maintain that section.