Slashdot and its other sites probably have about 288 million page views per month. If they have an average of 1.5 ads per page, that makes 500 million ad views.
Their rate card charges between $10 and $20 CPM (per 1000 views) for ads. Lets say that they get an average of $10 CPM for ads booked directly with the site for just half that traffic. Let's say that they sell the remainder of the traffic to a network for $1 CPM.
This means that they generate $2.37 MILLION per month for the OSTG sites. That is $28.5 MILLION per year!
You will need to find almost 3 million people as generous as you to shell out $10 per year in order for slashdot to break even.
Advertising is why sites like slashdot can afford to deliver content for free. If ad blockers become the norm, advertisers will just move their marketing budget to another medium outside of the internet, and sites like slashdot will not be able to exist.
This method is used to obtain competitive pricing all the time. For example, if Half Life 2 is going on sale at the beginning of the month, and Joe Retailer wants to know how much his competitors are going to charge:
Just print off the UPC code onto a sticker, and go into a competitor (like Walmart) a week before it goes on sale. Put the sticker onto another game, and ask the cashier for a price check. The scanner computer already has the pricing information in it, so the price that they are going to charge shows up on the register!
The article says that over 4 time more people have EVER clicked on an ad. Because FireFox is reletively new, this is far from an apples-to-apples comparison.
If there are successful companies that rely on your Open Source Software (OSS) application, you can have a pretty good idea that it is successful (read: in the critical path of people's time and money).
To that point, many companies have based their entire business models upon open source software. This is a concept that has been around for quite a while (e.g. RedHat), but the evolution of this model is still in its infancy.
Open Source Business Models are changing the software world.
Example: IBM has been incredibly successful leveraging Linux, J2EE, Eclipse, and many other OSS Applications and Protocols, leaving them free to provide Support, Consulting, and Customisation (read: gigantic profit margins, something that Microsoft does not compete with)
Example: MySQL can compete with Oracle because developers from around the world both support and develop MySQL, leaving the company to provide Support and Consulting (ask NASA or Yahoo if MySQL is prime-time)
These companies, along with many others, are enjoying the success of leaving the burdon of the development, testing, documentation, etc., to others, while concentrating on other, higher value tasks. As new Open Source Business Models come to market, it will be harder for a company to develop proprietary software.
I own a small media and marketing technology company which has two employees. The competitors in my market space have well over 100 developers working on proprietary solutions. I can compete with these companies because I provide solutions that are quicker to market, bug-free, and scalable - thanks to Horizontal Applications like Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Vertical Applications like Open Source Survey Software, Data Warehouse Software, Pattern Matching Software, and others. My margins are greater than 30% while my competitors are losing money.
In the future, we will no longer pay for software, and only pay companies for higher added value solutions (including support, consulting, customisation, integration, project management, ASP services, etc.).
CNN uses Akamai as a CDN (Content Delivery Network), to put all large static files (e.g. Images, Video) at the 'edge' of the network (e.g. distributed to over 10,000 servers worldwide). Even with this technology, CNN's site still failed miserably when it counted (9-10am on 9/11/01). Why would they pay tens of thousands of $$$ per month for this service when it still cannot handle the load?
Slashdot Mirror
Per Slashdot's page on advertising:
Slashdot and its other sites probably have about 288 million page views per month. If they have an average of 1.5 ads per page, that makes 500 million ad views.
Their rate card charges between $10 and $20 CPM (per 1000 views) for ads. Lets say that they get an average of $10 CPM for ads booked directly with the site for just half that traffic. Let's say that they sell the remainder of the traffic to a network for $1 CPM.
This means that they generate $2.37 MILLION per month for the OSTG sites. That is $28.5 MILLION per year!
You will need to find almost 3 million people as generous as you to shell out $10 per year in order for slashdot to break even.
Advertising is why sites like slashdot can afford to deliver content for free. If ad blockers become the norm, advertisers will just move their marketing budget to another medium outside of the internet, and sites like slashdot will not be able to exist.
This method is used to obtain competitive pricing all the time. For example, if Half Life 2 is going on sale at the beginning of the month, and Joe Retailer wants to know how much his competitors are going to charge:
Just print off the UPC code onto a sticker, and go into a competitor (like Walmart) a week before it goes on sale. Put the sticker onto another game, and ask the cashier for a price check. The scanner computer already has the pricing information in it, so the price that they are going to charge shows up on the register!
The article says that over 4 time more people have EVER clicked on an ad. Because FireFox is reletively new, this is far from an apples-to-apples comparison.
What about sending SMS messages (like you can in ICQ)???
Gaim also has logging facilities - it is also churning out releases every few weeks...
If there are successful companies that rely on your Open Source Software (OSS) application, you can have a pretty good idea that it is successful (read: in the critical path of people's time and money).
To that point, many companies have based their entire business models upon open source software. This is a concept that has been around for quite a while (e.g. RedHat), but the evolution of this model is still in its infancy.
Open Source Business Models are changing the software world.
Example: IBM has been incredibly successful leveraging Linux, J2EE, Eclipse, and many other OSS Applications and Protocols, leaving them free to provide Support, Consulting, and Customisation (read: gigantic profit margins, something that Microsoft does not compete with)
Example: MySQL can compete with Oracle because developers from around the world both support and develop MySQL, leaving the company to provide Support and Consulting (ask NASA or Yahoo if MySQL is prime-time)
These companies, along with many others, are enjoying the success of leaving the burdon of the development, testing, documentation, etc., to others, while concentrating on other, higher value tasks. As new Open Source Business Models come to market, it will be harder for a company to develop proprietary software.
I own a small media and marketing technology company which has two employees. The competitors in my market space have well over 100 developers working on proprietary solutions. I can compete with these companies because I provide solutions that are quicker to market, bug-free, and scalable - thanks to Horizontal Applications like Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Vertical Applications like Open Source Survey Software, Data Warehouse Software, Pattern Matching Software, and others. My margins are greater than 30% while my competitors are losing money.
In the future, we will no longer pay for software, and only pay companies for higher added value solutions (including support, consulting, customisation, integration, project management, ASP services, etc.).
CNN uses Akamai as a CDN (Content Delivery Network), to put all large static files (e.g. Images, Video) at the 'edge' of the network (e.g. distributed to over 10,000 servers worldwide). Even with this technology, CNN's site still failed miserably when it counted (9-10am on 9/11/01). Why would they pay tens of thousands of $$$ per month for this service when it still cannot handle the load?