"TANSTAAFL - What does that mean? And, by the way, what ever happened to OneWebPlace, The Dojo, Yavapai Open…?"

TANSTAAFL is an age-old business principle. It stands for There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. I don't think I can say it any plainer than that. If you want to eat, you have to pay.

"That's all fine and good, but what does that have to do with Magic?"

So, this morning, I saw the following posted at Yavapai Open:

quote:

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Originally posted at http://www.yavapaiopen.com/
Yavapai Open has struggled along for four years now. The cost of maintaining this site is just too much for us to handle. Eric and I can no longer dedicate our time to the site without something to show for it. This is a hard decision for us... We have thousands of loyal users world wide. Unfortunately it is these users that has caused the downfall of Yavapai Open. With millions of page views a month, traffic costs are just too great. This is the final round for the current staff. We will be accepting offers to sell Yavapai open.com and the magic database. If you are interested, or know of anyone who is please get them to this page. We will be entertaining serious offers only at mgardner@yavapaiopen.com. We hope someone will purchase Yavapai Open.com quickly as we cannot guarantee our current sponsorship. It's been a wild ride these last four years, I hope the next staff will be able to make this site great again.

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Looks like the "free ride" of the Internet is finally over.

"But, I thought the Internet was built on the idea of the free exchange of information," you say.

Well, son, it was. The Internet was started by the military and some schools to freely share information. The cost of the infrastructure (wires/computers etc.) must be carried by someone. If the Internet had stayed small that cost would have been paid by the military and the schools who wanted to participate.

As the Internet grew, more and more individuals and businesses wanted to get on-line. The cost of these connections have been paid for by the businesses and individuals themselves through their monthly connection fees. And this model works for people who want to do research, but what about those who want to share information?

Most people connect to the Internet, for a fee, through their ISP (Internet Service Provider). That is the company that your computer dials up when you want to connect to the Internet. And, most of the ISPs allow you to create your own personal web page as part of the monthly fee you already pay. So, as long as you have a small amount of information to share you can create a site on your own ISP for free (ok, not free, but you were paying for it anyway.)

Lets take a look at Yavapai Open. I don't think anyone would argue that they are the premier site for Magic: The Gathering card images. Images are big. No, I don't mean screen dimensions, I mean the amount of data required to represent the image on your screen. In comparison, the entire text of this article is smaller than a single card at Yavapai Open.

"How does that compare with my 'free' site?" The Internet is actually like a spider's web of one lane roads. Only one piece of information can travel down a road at one time. If two computers want to use the same bit of road at the same time, one of them will wait until the other is through. Generally, you don't notice this delay while you are surfing because even though the roads are narrow, they are very fast. As your site becomes more popular and you start getting hundreds and thousands of hits per day you will start to dominate your ISPs connection to other computers. When this happens, the other users of your ISP will start to notice the slowdown. When the complaints come in, your ISP will shut down your site for being a hog. If you want to keep your site open, you must upgrade your connection to the Internet. Here is where the ISPs get you. This upgrade comes with a hefty price tag. Not only do they charge you for all of the space that you need for your content (graphics, etc.), but they start charging you for each request that comes in from people wanting to see web pages. These charges start small, but they can grow very quickly.

"How can I offset those costs?" There are many traditional ways to offset the costs of running a web site. Many sites run banner ads (like the one at the top of the web page that you are viewing), pop-ups (which are ads that "pop up" in additional windows), or charge membership fees or usage fees.

Other than a link to an on-line store Yavapai Open has no other way to generate income. Can they possibly expect to generate enough income from their on-line sales to justify the cost of their server, image storage, backups, site development, web TRAFFIC?

Not when eBay exists. Because they have very little overhead (in comparison) the people who sell at eBay can sell cards at lower prices. Ouch! How can Yavapai Open hope to compete? Hmmmm. Well, having the images available on the Internet is handy. Perhaps they can charge a small fee for access to those images.

On the left side of their site you can see the following poll:

quote:

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Originally posted at http://www.yavapaiopen.com/
Yavapai Poll
If Yavapai Open were to require paid accounts to access the Card Images within it's Database, what would you be willing to pay?
$0 I wouldn't return: (1446) 92.10%
$10 per year: (76) 4.84%
$15 per year: (14) 0.89%
$20 per year: (11) 0.70%
over $20 per year, it's worth it: (23) 1.46%

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92% of the people that use their site would not even pay $10 per year to do so! They have come to expect this type of service for free.

I use the site and would gladly pay for access to the database. If it were not for their images, my H/W list would look quite bland.

So, now Yavapai Open is up for sale. But, with usage fees the way they are, how can any business take on that site and expect to make money? Is there any hope for a site such as this? How about other sites? What's next? Will the White House close down their web site because no one will pay to read the President's Inaugural Address? Where will it end?

"What is the future of the Internet?"

quote:

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Originally posted at http://www.shareholder.com/ebay/news/20010118-31808.htm
For the year, the Company (eBay) generated consolidated net revenues of $431.4 million, a 92 percent increase over the net revenues of $224.7 million in fiscal 1999. Consolidated net income for the current year was $48.3 million, or $0.17 per share on a diluted basis. The Company's consolidated net income, excluding the effect of certain non-cash charges and stock related expenses was $58.6 million, or $0.21 per diluted share, compared with $18.3 million or $0.07 per diluted share during the fiscal year 1999.

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Apparently, eBay is doing quite well. And we all know that the Internet porn sites do well.

"So, is that it then?" You mean… will the Internet eventually collapse and leave us with nothing but eBay and porn?

The answer to that is up to you.

We need to start thinking "out of the box."

What are your ideas for turning the MOTL site profitable?
(And don't suggest T-Shirt sales! How many of you have actually purchased one?)

I suggest that MOTL create a new type of member: Premier Member

The cost would be $15 per year and the benefits would be as follows:

• "Premier Member" would be listed (in gold) under your name wherever it appears on the site.
• The ability to use the [ img ] UBB code. Posting inappropriate images would result in banning.
• The ability to "up" your post twice per day (non-premier members are limited to once per day).
• No pop-up ads
• Limited to one banner ad per page (non-premier members would see 2 or more)
• Ability to read/post in a "Premier Member Only" discussion board
• Discounts for MOTL merchandise
• Discounted listing fee for the MOTL auction board
  

That last one leads me into my second suggestion: Fee-based MOTL Auction Board

I imagine that this would be similar to eBay (only MUCH cheaper) and designed exclusively for Magic: The Gathering Cards.

Any fee for a premier membership would be quarterly at the most, not yearly, since this would make the individual payments more affordable, and allows for more accurate forecasting of quarterly revenue.

I've been thinking of several benefits that could be given to premier members, though I'm not going to list them here since I don't want to be held to anything that turns out to be a bad or unviable idea later on. Regarding the Auction Board, given its current, rather empty, state, I don't think a listing fee would help it any. However, an overhaul is in the works to integrate it into the discussion forums, which should help it out significantly. If it catches on, then a listing fee may be something to consider, but not now. Also, given that if people are going to pay to list auctions, they're going to use eBay, a general listing fee would be rather unpopular.

2) calculate the number of cards each member
of this site has.

3) from those cards, calculate the uncommons
and commons that you consider "worthless"
and leave in a box or binder and never
look at.

4) how many of those crappy rares do you sell
for $1 each just to be rid of them or hope
that you sell enough of them to actually
be able to buy a card that you want?

In my opinion, the majority of the members of MOTL have many useless or "crappy" (to them) rares that they just use as sweeteners or cannon fodder. Would it not be possible for members to donate these cards for the longevity of the MOTL web site? If you take the crappy rares that you really don't care much for, and sell for $1 each, it would take no time to add up the $25 dollar optional membership fee that was mentioned, and I'm sure it would go above and beyond that. Not only would this help keep the site going, but it would be an excellent way for people to get themselves refs in small trades of $1.00.
There could be a special board established for strictly this matter. It seems like a lot of members love the site and want to keep it going, a lot are even saying they are willing to pay an annual membership fee, this way they wouldn't have to front the cash, donate as much or as little as they like (the more generous could make up for the rest), and you could clean out a lot of cards that you don't use anyways.

I can elaborate on this, but I'm supposed to be working, and I'm sure you can see the "dog I'm walking" with this line of thought.

Jay

__________________
irsih31
Pygmy's build character

Maybe someone needs to take a poll of all of MOTL's members and find out exactly who would be willing to help Leshrac finance the site...

__________________
General Discussion Forum Moderator

My suggestion (lmk if it's totally out of the question) is that we somehow hook up with Wizards and work out a way to make $ that way. They cancelled the Guru program b/c of abuse? Well tthen Wizards can consider MOTL its new Guru program. Think of how many members we have here, and how much promotion Magic alone gets at this site, let alone Pokemo and whatever else Wizards makes.

Would it not be possible for us to advertise Wizards, the Wizards store and whatever else? Maybe through some non-traditional revenue we could persuade them to front some of the cost to maintain MOTL. We dedicate so much time, money, and effort to the product of Wizards of the Coast... maybe it's time they help out their customers...

I'm not sure if ths is even feisable, but I thought it was worth mentioning. I'd personally be willing to pay a small fee though to keep the site going... most true members would too I think

*Oh, and if we worked w/ Wizards we could use the mana symbols and stuff- heh heh heh, that'd be cool.

Well, I hope this helped, I'll be watching what happenes from here...

Wait- no here!

quote:

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Originally posted by BoneShredder:
Maybe someone needs to take a poll of all of MOTL's members and find out exactly who would be willing to help Leshrac finance the site...

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I have a feeling that the poll would end up exactly like the Y.O. poll.

quote:

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Originally posted by Fooath:
I have seen quite a few ppl asking where an affordable place to purchase boxes is. Is there anyway that MOTL could sell other merchandise? Boxes, packs, deck protectors, etc?

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I like this idea, however I think Leshrac needs less labor intensive ways to make money.

quote:

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Originally posted by Eron the Relentless:
My suggestion (lmk if it's totally out of the question) is that we somehow hook up with Wizards and work out a way to make $ that way.

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Now that Wizards has their own message board (including a trade forum) I doubt that they would finance MOTL. However, I did notice that MTGNews is running a pop-up ad for 7th Edition. I guess, anything's possible.

BTW, I found THIS STORY which gives more insight in to the "subscription" issue.

quote:

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Originally posted by BoltBait:

I like this idea, however I think Leshrac needs less labor intensive ways to make money.

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I like this idea to, but couldnt someone else run the MOTL card shop besides Lesh, cause we know that he works on this site long enough, and that would be just more stress for him, so like someone else with a good rep could run it...

Just a thought.

__________________
Stickdeath 4 life!

My Refs
Email: darkdamion@hotmail.com

__________________
Evil-doers! Cower in fright for I am the one, the only...uhh... Psst! Mat! What was that name again?

quote:

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Originally posted at http://www.yavapaiopen.com/for_sale.html
The average bid for the database is about $2000, and the average bid for the whole site with domain is about $5000. Granted the dollar is not the bottom line, We are trying to ensure the Yavapai Open legacy will continue. The highest bid is not always the best bid. We are thinking of the online Magic community during these proceedings. Even if you feel you cannot make a bid for all or part of the site, depending on who gets the site will also depend on weather we go freelance and set up database/shopping cart systems for shops with an internet presence. We are currently refraining from quoting any prices as to not overinflate the value of the site. But remember EVERY serious bid for all or part of the site will be considered.

We have decided to go out with style. Until this administration leaves the reigns of the site, we have decided to do a free-for-all banner sponsorship. To have you banner inserted into our banner rotation for FREE please send us this information:

1) Name of your Site
2) URL of your Site
3) URLs of up to 5 banners
4) Preferred 'ALT' text
5) a contact email address
6) a preferred password to check your stats.
If you feel you know anyone else who would like to take advantage of this opportunity, please forward this message to them.

-Mark Gardner
Founder, Yavapai Open

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Rest In Peace.

When my wife first read my article she said "Why not just split the files up among several 'free' sites?" I explained to her that even though I thought that she had a great idea the administration would be too much.

Apparently Mark (Yavapai Open) read her mind.

quote:

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Originally posted at http://www.yavapaiopen.com/help.html
The only way to keep yavapai open going with the high-resolution images is for other mainstream sites to assist Yavapai Open in controlling it's bandwidth. By breaking up the storage of our images, and hosting them at different sites, we can solve a few problems. Yavapai Open won't have huge data transfer - kepping the site alive for years to come.

The image groups ... are divided into blocks, and the rest are grouped with disk space and popularity. For each 100 images, they require about 4MB of disk space, and approximatly 400MB of transfer. If you are interested in helping Yavapai Open, and have a reliable server space to do so...

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This is just the sort of "out-of-the-box" thinking that I was asking for at the end of my article. I wish them the best. I, for one, do not want to lose this valuable resource.

If you want to help, follow me...

quote:

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Originally posted by reinhart:
lesh, i would happily pay money to help motl but most of the problem is no the money itself, but hte collection. most of the motl ppl don't have credit cards

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KIP_NZ, reinhart:

Leshrac could use PayPal as they are world wide and do not require a credit card to send money. All you need is a checking account to get started. And, I believe that they have options for people that do not even have a checking account.

BTW, I found this quote from the webmaster of MTGNews.com:

quote:

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Originally posted at MTGNews.com:
...I don't get paid. It's a fan site. The revenues from the banners don't even cover the server cost. I have to shell out couple hundred dollars every month to keep it running.

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Looks like DG (webmaster) of MTGNews can not even break even on his site and he runs pop-ups, and various banner ads (1 full size and at least 2 small ones).

__________________
Evil-doers! Cower in fright for I am the one, the only...uhh... Psst! Mat! What was that name again?

Magic Pron sites! lol

well anyway, i dont do enought trading to justify a "premier Member"ship status- but i really like motl, humm...