How much have you spent on your site?

and what was it on? and was it worth it?

 

I needed to spend my own money on server costs, vb software, and domain names when we first started the site, but once donations started coming in, I re-cooped those costs and haven't had to spend a cent since. I spend enough time and effort keeping the site up and going without having to actually spend my money also.

 

If hours on it, designing it and making it about perfect count as money, then millions, besides that, $15 for the domain. T.T *Feels bad since most have spent a lot*

I really want to give my users the site they deserve.

 

Well, there's a couple vB licenses (though I generally pick them up used), a vbSEO license, a GARS license, a Living Avatars license, several templates, stock illustrations, hosting... it does add up.

 

As it stands probably 2,500 but I'm about to have a skin /logo made and do some more advertising.

 

Hmmm...

$20 on domain names, $56.95 on a style and branding free, $49.99 for vbAdvanced branding free, and about $100 on hosting so far.

 

Wayne Luke, I noticed you didn't list vB license there; do you get a free one as a perk?

 

I would say about £200... a year.

 

Couple if hundred on the VB license, classifieds section, picture gallery, review section,,,,

I probably spent $500+ in the first 6 months.

The picture gallery was retired due to lack of updates from the developer, the review section retired due to lack of updates, replaced the classifieds section,,,,,,.

But now the forum is self supportive. Nothing comes out of my pocket anymore.

 

I actually paid for each of my four licenses. However the last time I purchased a license was 2004 and the license that I am using for vBCodex was purchased in 2001. In fact it was my very first license of my own. Purchased at Aug 09th '01 02:24am. So I wouldn't include that cost in this site.

I haven't paid for renewals for a few years though. I guess that's our perk. Though I have also been given two project tool licenses (for testing purposes), blog license (for testing purposes) and a branding free license (back when it was $600.00).

 

Not that bad here really, well not now at least anyway. I use WordPress, which as you all know is free. Hosting is not that bad also and paid-up for the year, which cost $70 per year. My domain name has been paid-up for a while now (complete with whois protection until 2017). So I don't have to worry about that for a very long time to come of course.

So all I'm left paying for now is hosting with NameCheap (after I moved away from ASO) last week, which is $70 a year for "Pro Shared Hosting". My aim is to keep cost as low as possible, so it can be offset easily by money made from Adsense, and other forms of advertising I use. Plus a profit!

 

2 vBulletin owned licences, a lot of addon scripts which were pointless most of them and go unused so around £800 for softwares and around £400 hosting roughly + 6 years on the domain name costing £8 a year.

 

For CF, two licences (in 2003). Since then just our domain renewals (about 40 of them) and the server costs (two servers, currently about £180/month). Costs are covered by adsense.

vb.org is financed by Jelsoft.

 

About three years ago, I purchased a car-related forum for around $4,500.00. At the time, I was quite focused on developing an "outstanding" community from something that originally was only "sub-par" - the activity was there, but the content was not. From this, I built an extremely successful "local" car discussion board and it was easily one of my favorite web-based projects and/or acquisitions (still is to this date). After purchasing that, I'd say that I invested another $1,000.00 into the project as a whole (excluding the server expenses). Due to a lack of time, I handed off ownership to a friend of mine and unfortunately, he never followed through with it.

I personally don't believe in purchasing already-existing communities - I did, but now, I prefer to start "fresh" and build upon something new.

The amount invested in my current communities varies.

 

x.x Wow... lol... x.x

 

It had a phenomenal amount of potential and, because of the fact that I wanted it to remain as a "local-only" discussion forum, I kept it somewhat hidden. I eventually could not keep up with it (time-wise) and, as mentioned, handed it over to a friend. After another successful month, he let it go to hell and the domain is now available for purchase again... I believe.

Maybe I'll snatch it up and start fresh. I'm planning on doing something locally for a second time, so why not revive a community that was once bustling with activity?

 

Maybe you should at that! Do you still have the database/design?

 

Unfortunately, I don't - the topic I'd be basing this new community off of would indeed have a similar following (member-wise), and I'm quite sure that a majority of the former members would join again with no hesitation.

 

Keep in mind though, which I'm sure you've already thought about. An auwful lot of new "Car Forums" have been set-up since, do you feel you could still make it work because of that? Not to mention the decline of interest in forums these days with WordPress and the likes around.

Just something to consider in your new plans, it's not as easy now as it was a few years ago to build a new community from fresh.