A Must Read.......Photo.net needs you.

<P>It has been almost exactly six months since our last Photo.net

Patron Drive. It started here on the Leica forum, and we have a great

success. Today, we are still the forum with the most patrons.

 

<P>Unfortunately, soon after the first drive, the momentum slowed

down, and participation is back to normal, around 200 or less a

month. So we are maintaining about 2,300 members at any one time.

Before our drive, there were about 1,400 paid members.

 

<P>Photo.net, our playground, our soap box where you stand and voice

your opinions, be it right or wrong, is still very costly to

maintain. The visitors are increasing everyday, but not the

patronage.

 

<P>So here I ask you to do the same again : Please sign up to become

a member. However, to entice you for your $25.00, I am adding a new

twist to it --- If you sign up (through PayPal so that your icon

would appear immediately) I will match you by giving Photo.net 1.5

times of your contribution. This means if you paid your $25.00 (one

year membership) to Photo.net to become a new member, or renewal you

subscription, I will give to Photo.net $25.00 x 1.5 = $37.50. Of this

$37.50, $25.00 will be my match to your contribution, the other

$$12.50 will be a sign on bonus for you, which means you get 18

months of subscription for $25.00. Such a steal!!

 

<P>Brian will tally the total, and I will pay photo.net accordingly.

But to let us know, it is important that you answer on this post so

that we know you are in, and also for you to see your icon

immediately.

 

<P>This offer will end at midnight 12:00pm Pacific time on the 4th,

Sunday.

 

<P>So, take advantage of this opportunity, or if you want to be

generous as well, you can also put up your match fund. I am sure

everyone will appreciate your effort.

 

<P>Please remember, so far, all the moderators are volunteers,

including and especially Bob Atkins, our own Tony and Josh.

Volunteers don't get paid, not even a Christmas card or present,

except complaints. We should be fair.

 

<P>My offer is good for ALL member on all forums on Photo.net. Spread

the words. It would be nice if we can see the EOS and Nikon forums

participate this time. Go ahead, make me go broke! It will be such a

trip!!!

 

 

<P>To subscribe, sign in, <a href="http://www.photo.net/photonet-

subscriptions">Click Here.</a>

 

<P>Thanking you in advance.

 

<P>Happy New Year !!!

Sandy - just to set the record straight, since earlier this year I do get a small compensation from photo.net since I'm now working on the site as a "semi-full-time" editor. This means I'm typically logged on and working on articles, reviews, editing user contributions and doing minor administration tasks for several hours a day, pretty much every day. Brian does everything there is to do in the gallery section as well as the Tcl and database programming and all the real site admin tasks. I just work in the static content area and the forums.

 

From 1996 through 2002 I was a totally unpaid volunteer though! In 2003 I have had more time to devote to the task since I joined the legions of the "self-unemployed" when my old employer (AT&T/Bell Labs/Lucent/OFS) axed most of the research staff!

 

Thanks for your generous offer. Does it apply only to new subscribers (which would be entirely reasonable) or does it also apply to existing subscribers who renew their subscription? As I said, the former would be entirely reasonable and very generous, I'm just trying to make sure that there is no confusion.

<P>Bob,

<P>I am so glad you are finally getting compensated, never enough for your kind efforts, of course. Appreciate it just the same :-)))

 

<P>This offer applies to everyone , new or renewal. Hope this will ease yours and Brian's burden.

 

<P>Best regards,

 

<P>Sandy

Sandy is a champ. I hope everyone takes him up on this offer.

 

Running photo.net is a big job. Brian and Bob (and Raj behind the scenes) work darn hard to keep the place going. There are a number of us who volunteer as much as we can, but the lion's share of the problems fall to them to deal with.

 

The sooner photo.net is on a positive financial footing, the sooner the issues we all want addressed (especially the dreaded server failures) can be attacked with hardware and software upgrades.

 

Everything takes time and money. I hate to sound like a PBS record, but if you have gotten anything out of the resources here at photo.net, please consider subscribing.

I'm in, Just paid for 1yr through Paypal. Thanks Sandy!

 

Brian

Sandy:<p>

Renewed today! Thanks for the generous offer.<p>

Happy New Year to you!<p>

Arnie

I have a few questions.

 

First, I want to say that I appreciate photo.net. It guided me to learn Photography over the years, and has helped me spend several thousand dollars on photo equipment. Well, maybe this isn't a good thing.

 

Anyway, the questions:

 

1. What happened to Phil Grenspun?

2. Back when I used to use photo.net a few years ago, I had no problems. Zero. Zilch. The database worked flawlessly. Not so anymore. What happened?

3. Where did the money come from before? (Phil, I assume).

4. Do you have data on hits/day? MB/day?

5. Would the site be less exensive if it weren't also a photocritque.net type serve?

 

Thanks

Sandy, I just signed up. Thanks for the generous offer -- photo.net is lucky to have folks like you. I'm one of the (relatively) new moderators over at the photo.net LF forum, and it wouldn't do to have a non-paying moderator :-).

I'm in. Oo-rah!

Mike,<P>

You've got to consider a few things. (Brian or Bob will correct me if I'm wrong on any of this) Yes, photo.net was a lot smoother back in the day when Phil was runing things. But a few years ago it had <b>WAY</b> fewer users. I'll guess something like a couple of hundred thousand fewer. And there was little or no gallery space for uploading images. There were fewer forums, fewer static pages, less of everything. All of that means that the site could easily run on less robust server hardware. But when you look at the site stats that photo.net has today, you wonder how it is able to function at all on the hardware that is hosting it currently.

<P>

If I remember correctly, PN was hosted on the MIT servers in the beginning. Which had the advantage of always having someone in the area to reset things if there was a problem. Not to mention the fact that MIT likely had a fairly robust server setup.

<P>

But times change. Now there is a need for things like software licenses, more server space, more processing power, etc etc. You can't go back home again or put the geinie back in the bottle.

<P>Reading some of your posts, I realized I have not made myself very clear. I am sorry, so here let me try again :

 

<P>Your contribution = $25.00

<BR>My match for Photo.net = $25.00

<BR>My incentive/bonus to you = $12.50

 

<P>Net gain for Photo.net = $62.50

 

<P>Hope I made myself clear this time.

 

<P>Thanks.

Count me in.

1. What happened to Phil Grenspun?

 

Phil is still around, travelling a lot. He's not involved in the day to day running of photo.net but I think he's on the board of directors. He made money from Ars Digita and now he travels, flies a plane and writes (and probably does a lot of other stuff I have no idea about!)

 

2. Back when I used to use photo.net a few years ago, I had no problems. Zero. Zilch. The database worked flawlessly. Not so anymore. What happened?

 

Traffic. Back in the good old days there wasn't a lot, so the servers coped quite well. I don't think there have been any extensive hardware changes since then. There have been some, but as far as I know we're still using the same database boxes.

 

3. Where did the money come from before? (Phil, I assume).

 

In the very early days it was an MIT research project I think, so funding wasn't an issue. Then Phil left MIT and several investors put money into making photo.net independant and even some staff were hired. That effort petered out, Rajeev is still involved but Brian took over running the site.

 

4. Do you have data on hits/day? MB/day?

 

About 10 million hits a day, about 1 million page impressions. I don't know the MB/day but it's huge. Probably in the ballpark of 50GB/day?

 

5. Would the site be less ex(p)ensive if it weren't also a photocritque.net type serve?

 

Yes, but it would generate less revenue. It's a matter of a critical mass of users. If there were no users, there's be no expense, but no income and therefore no way to keep the site running other than out of the pockets of those who ran it. My guess is that although the photo critique section consumes a lot of resources, it also is responsible for the generation of a significant proportion of the revenue.

 

I can't swear that all the above is 100% accurate, but if not, it's probably close to the truth!

Sandy, I just signed up. Thanks for the generous offer! I agree with Brian, photo.net is very lucky to have folks like you. I don't post much unless I realy have something to add that has not been said. I do check in each day to see whats new in most all of the forums. I do not look at the gallerys often, but they are nice. I would like to thank all the moderators and volunteers, especially Bob Atkins as I spend most of my time in the nature forum and have really enjoyed all his articles even if he does shoot with Canon gear!

 

I wish all the members of photo.net a happy new year and a year of great photographs!

I'm in. Thank you for the offer, and thank you Photo.net for being here.

I subscribed too. Thanks Sandy for your generous offer and thanks all Photo.Net

volunteers for all your work. An EOS user :)

Thanks for this generous match! This is *exactly* what I needed to snap me out of that "maybe next month" syndrome! -Spencer

I just found this site yesterday and thanks to Sandy's generous offer I am a New Member today!! Thank you.. I can see this will be a fine place to learn. I'm looking forward to exploring all of the interesting areas and people. Thanks again, Bill

Great offer Sandy. Thanks.

Erik.

Hi, I've just suscribed, I like this site a lot! Tell me, how come it looks like my susciption will end in 1 year, according to my workspace?

 

thanks

I assume the software is just automatically registering $25 subscriptions as being for one year as it always has. I don't know what agreement Brian and Sandy reached, but I assume it will require the extra 6 months to be added manually by Brian at some point in the non-too-distant future.

Thanks for your generosity Sandy. I should have become a subscriber long ago, and your offer finally motivated me - just like you hoped it would.

Thanks very much Sandy for the generous offer - I just signed up.

I just subscribed. Thanks a lot, Sandy. Photo.net has helped me so much over the past couple of months. I can't believe it took me this long to realize such a great site was out there, not to mention actually getting around to subscribing! Take care.

Sandy, where'd you get all your money??

 

As soon as I've got more than $20 on my debit card I'll be tossin some $$ pnets way.

 

Unfortunately I don't know when the money will clear. :(