Milking advertising cow

[planesmaker]

Just read RAAus newsletter, very surprised to see members market rates have jumped over 150%. And no free online. $55 for each online or magazine or $88 for both for 1 month????What else can members expect?

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

More cost cutting and costs for services reflective of what it costs to deliver those services......We are currently operating in a total revenue doesn't equal total cost environment which is of course unsustainable..... In the case of our web server download bandwidth usage is mostly related to the members market.

 

Andy

 

 

[terryc]

I like to remind the board that 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing.

 

 

[rhysmcc]

The market is generally the only part of the website that gets any updates, no wonder it gets most of the bandwidth. It does seem a bit rich to charge members additionally to use an online service.

 

I would like to hear more about what reviews have been done in regards to the cost of the magazine and moving it online with maybe an option to subscribe to the hard copy (at a price). What savings could be made here and how much could be past on to lower membership fees as a trade off.

 

Could additional "supplier advertising" be added to the marketplace to pay for the extra bandwidth?

 

 

[ave8rr]

Maybe Ian Baker (owner of this site) would like to give us some ideas of costs for a server to do what RAAus is running.

 

Mike

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

look if you feel strongly that what has happening is wrong then use the link in this weeks RAAus email that points to the surveymonkey questionnaire to put your thoughts forward. The greatest problem we have as an organization is that in general we are apathetic and if only 2 people respond then it will always be the case that if people don't like the small number of answers they will discount them as statistically irrelevant. Again have your say and get your mates to have their say!

 

P.S whether 50% of something or 100% of nothing becomes irrelevant if the result is deficit or deficit!

 

So...with that said, what would you guys propose as the way to deal with insufficient revenue vs costs?????

 

P.P.S Im not on the board yet...If you want the board to know something then send them an email or ring them up or write to the CEO...Please do something!

 

 

[bexrbetter]

look if you feel strongly that what has happening is wrong then 。。

.... get off your ass and run for a seat.

 

 

[nickduncs84]

Maybe Ian Baker (owner of this site) would like to give us some ideas of costs for a server to do what RAAus is running.Mike

The answer would be not a lot, at least it shouldn't be a lot. Looks like they are running with rackspace which is kind of like putting jet fuel in your lawnmower. A managed rackspace server with 30gb of storage and 500gb of bandwidth may well cost over $1,500 a month, but running sites like the Ra Aus site is not really what rackspace is for. It makes sense for companies that have to scale up quickly (ie start up Web companies) and companies that require other things like content delivery networks and version control. For sites like the Ra Aus site, you could easily get a managed vps with weekly backups for $200 or so a month. Obviously I don't know the actual details of what Ra Aus is paying and the bandwidth they need, but a penny saved is a penny earned and it may make more sense to move to a more suitable hosting company than jack up the advertising fees.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

I only pay $5-10 a month for a vps. RAA website is nothing special

 

 

[Admin]

This site runs on its own completely dedicated server. It is at the high end of hosting with 16 gig of ram, twin Intel SSD hard disks (the fastest you can get and these are Solid State Drives which are electronic compared to mechanical drives) and they are set in a Raid for fall over protection, a standard SATA hard disk for backup, an i7 16 core processor, 5 IP addresses and 100 mb pipe and 10 terabyte of traffic (we only use about 120 gig of traffic which would be at a guess about 5 times that of the RAUS site). This is an extreme overkill for standard Web hosting but it is high performance and based in LA. It also has a 64bit OS plus complete WHM and cPanel license for server management.

 

For this I pay around $230 to $250 a month depending on the USD.

 

When I did a speed test on the RAAus site and compared it to this site which is completely database driven with huge amount of code and scripts this site was much much faster

 

 

[Admin]

Oh, I can offer them free hosting, server management and complete "real" Web site design and development if they like...I said FREE on the server as there is plenty of space on it and I think I know a thing or two about creating a great Web site for them...but that is another story however that will help save costs so let's see if they are real about saving costs or not

 

 

[rhysmcc]

That's a great idea Ian, maybe one of the new board members can bring this up at the board meeting, a review of the website and hosting costs and research some alternatives. I don't know who has designed the current RAA website but it's a shambles, so hard to find information with "news items" not posted under subject matter, without a direct link you generally can't find what you need. Be great to have a members only forum as well to debate and discuss RAA policy as they come up for board consideration, another form of board/member communication.

 

 

[Admin]

The developer of the current RAAus website is the same developer of OzRunways...and they declined my offer to do it for them for FREE (well for $1 with 100% discount if paid in 7 days so it was a commercial agreement giving them the right to dictate what they wanted but still for FREE).

 

But I say again, it would be absolutely disastrous for RAAus to have a forum as they will be compelled to respond to comments, they can't deny a member from posting, they wouldn't be able to moderate a single thing, board members would be in the spotlight and as we have seen here it would be a turkey shoot destroying any credibility a board member has. They would benefit immensely by working with Recreational Flying (here) to get opinions on anything they need to and more...the same as the working relationship this site had with Lee Ungermann in the early days of this site and worked extremely well for RAAus. We have been here for over 10 years and will be for the next 10 years

 

 

[rhysmcc]

I don't see why having a members forum could be so bad, you can still moderate and have all the same rules as here. I'm not suggesting to move away from here Ian, I more meant for example limit the RAA forum to members only so those who aren't members can't get involved in discussions on what the association should do.

 

Nothing wrong with compelling board members to respond either, they are after all meant to represent our interests.

 

 

[Admin]

It was also done once before with an email list by RAAus but was shut down due to the legal implications...we have a safer forums here where RAAus can't be implicated but can still be used to benefit them...if they so choose