You may have noticed how slow the site has been in recent months. That is because the site had grown to the point where it was maxing out its internet connection. With much needed financial help from Cindy James we have made some changes which will improve the web sites performance massively. We are now running on a 10mbps fiber optic connection, which is 6.66x faster than our previous connection. We are also working on getting that bumped up to 30mpbs. Over the next few weeks Susan's will be migrated onto a pair of servers purchased with Cindy's help which will be able to handle as much traffic as we can throw at it.
Why didn't I do it sooner? Well, I simply could not have done this on my own. Hosting costs will be rising from $400 per month to nearly $700, and my finances have been at the maxed out point for several years as I have single-handedly financed the operations of Susan's Place since 1996 with out any outside support. I have done this using income from my job, help from my boss, and of course maxing out some really good credit cards. In that time I figure that I have spent roughly $162,000 myself over the last 16 years and that is not counting the roughly $50,000 in hosting expenses my current boss has contributed to the operation of the site, and we eventually need to get some of that back. The figure includes my time, hardware, software, server maintenance costs, and bandwidth. That price will continue to go up some as we make these much needed changes.
In the last year this site has served 1,826,279 Visits from 993,940 Visitors accounting for 11,629,347 page views. Since I started keeping stats using Google analytics in November 2006, we had 6,813,864 visits from 3,689,398 visitors accounting for 45,176,104 page views. Between 1996 until now I have had several hundred people spontaneously contact me to tell me how this web site has saved their lives, so we are doing good works; and I want to continue to do so.
I have thought long and hard how to spread the costs of providing lifesaving peer support for the Transgender Community, here is what I have come up with.
First off everything that is freely available to you today on this web site, will remain free with one exception.
We are going to allow people who wish to help with the monthly costs to do so by establishing a monthly subscription option for $4.95 per month for those who want to help support the site. I much prefer this option over adding advertising. I am working on a way to make it so the subscription can be handled as a reoccurring donation to a non-transgender foundation, so if you need to explain it to a spouse or whatever about the charge. I am hoping for 2,000 to subscribe. This will bring in $9,990 per month. After covering operating costs, I want to pay for a new professional design for the site from the ground up, and hopefully be able to pay some of the world renown gender professionals to come here to provide some guidance and services to members and supporters. Anything over 2,000 subscribers would be simply amazing. After that we will continue to invest a major portion of the profits back into providing more and more services for members and supporters. I don't expect this to happen in a year, if it does that would be awesome but I am patient. In the mean time I will keep paying the costs until the site is able to support its self.
After that I will receive a paycheck to help recoup some of my expenditures. I also need to reimburse my boss for his costs in supporting the site over the years as well.
Staff may also eventually receive a small stipend, starting with administrators and as we are able to the moderators and other staff. Don't plan on that any time soon however.
The private Just for us forums are going to become subscriber only. We may also offer
username@members.susans.org email addresses to subscribers. If enough revenue is generated we will be looking at adding a slew of other members only benefits such as moderated chats with experts and personalities of interest to the transgender community, informative articles, tips, tutorials etc.
Another advantage of this will be that I will be able to dedicated more time to Susan's Place.
I hope that many of you will choose to help do your part. Thanks for you time, support, and attention. Your feedback is welcome.
