I was surprised to find a couple of diaries recently that were questioning, again, the use of advertising here and the possible conflicts it raises.
Now I am, like my name, neutral in this issue. Why? Well I am not American, I do not live in the USA and so all the advertising here is irrelevant to me, which is why I block it.
Over at European Tribune I do not block the ads because it is relevant to me.
What I would like to raise though is the contrary argument of why advertising is good for this site.
As you are all well aware this site is big. It is also quite sophisticated in IT terms.
For those of you who were here during the 2004 election cycle you will remember the slowdowns and breakdowns in service due to the increases in traffic and the frequent comments from Markos that he was having to buy and bring online yet another server.
Now I am not an insider, but I can make a good guesstimate at what Markos is having to pay for
- hardware
- co-location hosting
- bandwidth (which is probably the largest operational cost)
- administration and development by ct and others
He also, at his own admission, takes a salary from the site to allow him to pursue his own interests. To Markos this site is a business as well as a platform.
One question was raised, why not make it subscription only?
Well for Markos that sucks as a business model.
Yes there are user identities over 90,000 and the 100,000th user will register any time now.
That does not mean that there are 90,000 active users on this site. Recently, a figure of 2,400 Trusted Users was quoted, and that to me is a better guide as to how many active users there are. If we add in occassional commenters, then we may have 4,000.
I am sure that if this site was subscription only then it would have to be paid for by those 4,000 users, not the 100,000. Going by the subscription rates to switch off the advertising, I would say that those 4,000 would each be paying about $75 per year. Would you?
The only problem with this is that it makes this site exclusive, it excludes those who cannot or will not pay.
When it started it was simply Markos' blog and he paid for it. Then as it grew and grew, he had to turn it into a business and find a revenue stream to pay for it. He chose advertising as the fairest and hopefully secure income source.
This business model has given us, the users, freedoms and privileges that if we had to pay for them
We can, limited by the patience of the community here, write what we like, post what we like and engage in flamefests when we like — for free.
Advertising allows Markos to make this site free for us to use. If you do not want to see the ads and still , pay the subscription. I wonder how many have?
So enjoy the site and remember that without the ads DailyKos would not exist in its current form.