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Offtopic, but: About the Major hockey site, what is it? I'm a fan of NHL games. I generally craft my franchise teams of all former Gopher and UMD players. Many can be found in the minor rosters that the newer games now include. I grew up with and even played (sat the bench) on teams with many of them. (Adam Hauser, Gino Guyer, Andy Sertich, Adam Johnson, Beau Geisler, Josh Miskovich, Marco Peluso)

Offtopic, but: About the Major hockey site, what is it? I'm a fan of NHL games. I generally craft my franchise teams of all former Gopher and UMD players. Many can be found in the minor rosters that the newer games now include. I grew up with and even played (sat the bench) on teams with many of them. (Adam Hauser, Gino Guyer, Andy Sertich, Adam Johnson, Beau Geisler, Josh Miskovich, Marco Peluso)

Offtopic, but: About the Major hockey site, what is it? I'm a fan of NHL games. I generally craft my franchise teams of all former Gopher and UMD players. Many can be found in the minor rosters that the newer games now include. I grew up with and even played (sat the bench) on teams with many of them. (Adam Hauser, Gino Guyer, Andy Sertich, Adam Johnson, Beau Geisler, Josh Miskovich, Marco Peluso)

Actually, Hell froze over in 1995. Proof:

1. The Devilswon the Stanley Cup.

2. Satan began playing in the National Hockey League. (For the Edmonton Oilers, no less, which shows just how cold Hell was that year.)

3. The Beatles reunited, even including the late John Lennon.

What happened today is quite different. According to reliable news sources, a new species of winged pigs has been sighted in the skies all round the world.

Do please keep your cliche calendar up to date!

The Leafs won the cup in the season spanning 1966-67, the year that the only had 6 teams. The expansion came in 1967-68 and that year the Leafs neither made it to the playoffs nor did they ever win again.

The Leafs won the cup in the season spanning 1966-67, the year that the only had 6 teams. The expansion came in 1967-68 and that year the Leafs neither made it to the playoffs nor did they ever win again.

The Leafs won the cup in the season spanning 1966-67, the year that the only had 6 teams. The expansion came in 1967-68 and that year the Leafs neither made it to the playoffs nor did they ever win again.

Nah, it was hockey player Mike Peluso.

I disagree with you 100%.

Most useful sites don't fit into your "low-cost dissemination and support" model of the internet, because while internet costs are still lower than printed media, those costs still exist. Do you think that Slashdot is running on one of those "$7.77/month account" servers? If I had to guess, I'd say that this site is probably running at least $1000-5000 per month just to host, due to its very high traffic.

Although Slashdot probably has few other direct costs, why should the site owners pony up $12-60k/year just so you and I can can air our opinions? Why should anyone risk $5k/month with the goal trying to cover their costs, but nothing more? Investment demands returns, and if you don't think so, then will you please loan me $5k this month for my bills, I promise I'll try really hard to pay you back exactly $5k in 90 days. Not such a good deal, is it?

The dot-com craze brought a lot of great ideas to the public. Although some of them were crap designed to just sell you things, a lot of information brought to the internet during that era was very useful. Many pure content sites are now gone, and others are dying each day. I strongly believe that the amount of free information on the internet is at least 50% of what it was in 2000, and possibly more like 10%.

Don't believe me? Search for a few "informational" type queries on Google. I just searched for "Lawnmower Recommendation". Here are the top 10 links I got back:

1) paid link to Walmart's Lawnmower department.

2) A review of a book called "Lawnmower Blues".

3) A British site that reviews products. They reviewed a couple of mowers which I probably can't get in the US.

4) Epinions.com reviews of lawnmowers. This is something useful.

5) The minutes of Peterborough NH's meeting to discuss the town's purchase of a lawnmower.

6) The minutes of Torrance CA's meeting to discuss the town's purchase of a lawnmower.

7) The minutes of Marquette MI's meeting to discuss the town's purchase of a lawnmower.

8) A site discussing the liability of lawnmower manufacturers.

9) The minutes of San Juan CA's meeting to discuss the town's purchase of a lawnmower.

10) A site that rated the beer "Lawnmower Ale".

See my point? The internet is already devolving into crap, because there is no money available to pay for content sites. In time, the two pertinent sites from my search will probably go bankrupt, leaving 0 pertinent sites from a fairly common query.

Is this what the internet is about? Is this what you want to see?

Take a look at the sites you have visited this week. How many of them have 0 advertising? Put your money where your mouth is, and don't visit those sites anymore. See what life would be like without them. Now try and tell me that those sites don't deserve to make money from advertising.

And finally, while we're whipping things out here, why not post the site that you're contributing to the internet. Here's mine

Wow, did you ever miss out on a free marketing opportunity. If you have a web site that is unique among the billions of web sites out there, I would have liked to learn more about it. It's a shame that you didn't put a URL in your post.

You're right, I should have mentioned it. The site is The Internet Hockey Database. There really is no other site like it, the closest being Eurohockey.net, which is a European wannabee. There isn't even such a resource in print (because a printed version wouldn't have the same impact as an online, continuously updated database)

I agree that excessive popups are a nusiance, and I frequently argue to my ad networks that they should not be permitting sites to bomb people with pops. It's a losing battle though, because having some restraint means leaving money on the table, and most people don't want to do that. I do, however, leave money on the table -- you will get a maximum of 2 popunders on my site until you view either my message forum (which puts a higher load on the server) or you view more than 200 pages -- then you get a third.

When people say "don't sell the popunders, instead sell the regular banners", that's ignoring the fact that you can only sell what people want to buy. Advertisers are interested in popunders right now, because they know they can't be ignored. People have to see them (unless they block them) to close them. Users can be trained to ignore regular banners, so the advertisers feel that regular banners are just wasted money.

The unfortunate problem is that the internet, unlike any other medium, allows you to either block or ignore the advertising in a way that is tangible to the advertiser. If you choose to fast-forward over the TV commercial, the advertiser doesn't know about it, and the show doesn't lose revenue because of it. The advertiser assumes that you saw the ad. Not so with blocking software -- that means that the site doesn't get credit for you, so you consume resources but circumvent the site's source of revenue.

The main problem is that by its definition, advertising is intrusive. You need to hear it or see it. The intrusiveness is probably only going to get worse, which is sad, because if people responded to the unobtrusive advertising things would have been OK.

The other factor is that as a site becomes more popular, it costs more to operate -- technically speaking. You can't serve a million users a day from your old 486. You need a fat pipe and a fast machine. Those don't come cheap.

As far as I can tell, there are only a few options left: pay-per-view sites, very intrusive advertising (like sitting through a commercial), sites that are merely shills for the products that they sell, perhaps a scheme that has ISPs pay the sites when their visitors visit them (which means you pay more to your ISPs). Other than those ideas, I haven't heard anything that is even remotely close to working.

The sad thing is that if I had $0.05 per visitor per month for my site, I could make it so much better because I could work at it full time. I had almost 200,000 uniques [IP based, so it's probably a bit lower] last month, at $0.05 that would be $10,000. Not a bad piece of change. Yet I only made about $1000 before expenses [I get some product commissions and sell my own advertising, which is why the numbers are higher than my previously-quoted $470]. When my expenses are factored in, I basically break even, or maybe make $1-2K per year. That's not much for the 20-30 hours a week I put into it, and isn't much return for the risks that I have (namely my $450/month fixed repeating costs plus my public liability exposure).

If there could be a way to compensate a site for just $0.05 per unique per month, I think that it could work; people usually don't visit more than 100 sites a month, which would be just $5 more. Yet that $0.05 per site would go a long way towards supporting the content-based sites.

And amazingly, I only make $0.006 per unique from advertising including popunders, and only $0.001 per unique from regular banners.

For example, can a web site that publishes the official daily average temperature in Tucson have a clause that says "by using this site you agree not to use any of the data herein for any purpose"?

Can an online book have a clause that says "No part of this book may be used in any way, including reviews of the work"?

Both of these events are legal under copyright law, but can a contract make these actions in violation of the contract?

Ralph
http://www.hockeydb.com