Suck and Feed die

Undertoad · 06-11-2001, 11:43 AM

Two more sites of national reknown have just gone belly-up, and another (Plastic) is on the ropes.

I used to read Suck back in the day, so I feel a little bit of remorse here. But this is also par for the course, I think. The net still has to figure out how to "monetize" sites like, well, like this one. Banner ads aren't cutting it and nobody can figure out anything much better.

They say that the cost of running Plastic is about $50,000 a month, and... I'm not sure where that comes from. $50,000 will buy you a lot of bandwidth. I pay about $1500 for a leased line AND bandwidth for the T1. I imagine I could run all of those sites for less than $10,000 including my own salary AND all the bandwidth that would be needed, and still have time left over for development. Maybe staffers would be needed to help sell and manage ad space or something - I dunno. Maybe one wouldn't run sites like that without cushy San Francisco offices - I dunno.

The world seems bent on bringing up the bad news about the web, but while the web is definitely in a down cycle right now, what it's really doing is taking a breather for the next round. Part of that includes knocking out the wannabes and purging the oversaturated market of firms trying to build the thing. My business failure is a part of that, unfortunately, but what comes out of it when it's done should be stronger, with a better understanding of what works and what doesn't, a better pricing models, etc.

06-11-2001, 11:43 AM	#1
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	Two more sites of national reknown have just gone belly-up, and another (Plastic) is on the ropes. I used to read Suck back in the day, so I feel a little bit of remorse here. But this is also par for the course, I think. The net still has to figure out how to "monetize" sites like, well, like this one. Banner ads aren't cutting it and nobody can figure out anything much better. They say that the cost of running Plastic is about $50,000 a month, and... I'm not sure where that comes from. $50,000 will buy you a lot of bandwidth. I pay about $1500 for a leased line AND bandwidth for the T1. I imagine I could run all of those sites for less than $10,000 including my own salary AND all the bandwidth that would be needed, and still have time left over for development. Maybe staffers would be needed to help sell and manage ad space or something - I dunno. Maybe one wouldn't run sites like that without cushy San Francisco offices - I dunno. The world seems bent on bringing up the bad news about the web, but while the web is definitely in a down cycle right now, what it's really doing is taking a breather for the next round. Part of that includes knocking out the wannabes and purging the oversaturated market of firms trying to build the thing. My business failure is a part of that, unfortunately, but what comes out of it when it's done should be stronger, with a better understanding of what works and what doesn't, a better pricing models, etc.

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