First off let's start with a big hearty thank you all everyone that comes to this site. So thanks everyone, even the tasty aliens! The site had a great month in April, 36,138 visits, and 79,288 pages viewed.
This site is about ready to out grow it's available hosting. Perhaps very soon. I had that in mind, from the beginning of getting the current hosting package a little over a year ago, so I host most multi media content off site. That's the secondary hosting account elsewhere. They do not have the same kind of control panel, or reliability, so pushing all the site stuff over to them is not a good option either.
The main host for this site, hosting matters, while reliable will not be cost effective if I need to upgrade the account very far. This site does currently get enough, from the adsense ads you see on the site to cover the current hosting fees, and could even cover a SMALL upgrade of service. It certainly can not afford a server of it's own at this point, as I would love for it to have. The most viable option at this time would be to get a vps account with a reliable host. The stands for Virtual Private Server, which usually gets you decent storage space, sometimes plenty of bandwidth depending on the plan you get. It also ensures that you get a certain portion of the resources available on the machine it's location on. Meaning more reliability under ideal circumstances, than the type of account we are using now. While usually being cheaper than a dedicated server.
I looked it up, and the site can keep the current account it has and pay $1.50 for every extra GB of bandwidth it uses per month. That will end up being too expensive. The account can be upgraded to double current bandwidth, and pay 3.3X a month more. That's a 60GB per month account. That might hold for a little while longer, yet it may not be that long. That comes to just over 83 cents per GB for that extra 30GB. I know discussing this may seem ridicules, but there are some serious decisions to for me to consider here.
I'm 30 years old, with a whole lot of years ahead of me to live. I've recently been doing this site full time, or more. I'm now in a position to make some important contacts regarding the subject matter this site offers. Yet the site is basically only producing enough money to pay for it's hosting. At the moment I have no other source of income. I have to survive, so if go completely broke, which is a very real possibility, there is no site anymore. Unless I were to sell it to who knows, and they turn it into who know, probably something that charges the people who come here, or something even less desirable. I have no plans to go that route.
It's very likely that even though the site is ready to really take off, and gain some really great content directly from the field so to speak. That I will have to just push this site to the back burner and probably neglect it, so that I can survive. That's the option that I hate, but a realistic one.
So that's why I've been typing away at this long, possibly boring, non alien probing post.
So I'm reaching out to everyone here. Please give me some options here.
So I'll add some points below that I've come up with, feel free to expand on them.
1. The site seems to be reaching about 1000 people a day
2. I have no problem with adding additional blogs to this domain for related content, and more authors.
3. Adsense in it's current form on the site, will not be good enough for this site to grow into what it has the potential of.
4. I'm located in Roswell, New Mexico right now, so I'd be glad to meet here locally with anyone. Please contact me of course before just stopping in, or I might be a little paranoid about who in the world you are, and who sent you.
5. I do have a tripod, and digital video camera, so we could do some interviews, and on site investigations, which is why I got them in the first place. I've invested a fair amount of money and a lot of time into this site, I really believe in it's potential.
6. I have everything except the actual t-shirts to start printing custom shirts for the site. I have some fun slogans, and ideas for the shirts. I also have myself and another individual to do artwork for them. So I'm considering trading custom shirts for donations to the site. They would get a cool shirt in their size, and the site would be helped out at the same time.
7. I would like you encourage you all, to keep telling people about this place. You've done a great job so far, and I really appreciate it. Any experiences your willing to share, are greatly welcome as well, and you don't even have to tell me your name. My email. Video and pictures are welcome also.
This post is plenty long, now. So let's get things wrapped up. I have a contact I'm going to talk to, if all goes well, we might have mountains more of information. I'm going to keep looking for and talking to people about getting this site some better hosting, so we can have mountains of information. I don't want this site to die, and I don't think you do either. I'm going to pursue viable options to keep us up and running and growing.
I want you to know that you are appreciated, and your input is also welcomed. So thank you everyone and have a great afternoon.