Moonbeam, greetings from Vegas! Not that I am about to gamble the future of PPRuNe down at the Bellagio but you seem to have failed to realise that the costs of administering the adverts is huge. There is a healthy income but I only see 35% of that after all the costs are taken into account and every penny of that goes back into running PPRuNe.
I have yet to find the idel partner that will run everything and pay for a really powerful server. The latest version is costing $750 a month and will probably become obsolete within 6 months. Don't forget the set-up fees every time an upgrade takes place. Add to all that the licence fees for the software and the other 101 incidentals and you would soon find that this is definitely a 'non-profit' organisation.
I am not complaining though. So far I have managed to make ends meet but if anyone is really interested then I would need around GBP100,000 as an initial investment to get PPRuNe ready for the next really big upgrade and then we can discuss revenue potential from advertising and merchandising.
Here is a little project for you... find out how much it would cost to upgrade our server to a really powerful quad processor machine with 1Gb RAM and a couple of fast SCSI drives in a RAID, ooohhh.... lets say 18Gb each and don't forget a quote for 200Gb bandwidth useage a month and then report back here with your best quote. Add to that the cost of employing someone only part time to administer your advertising sales and collection of payments and say... someone to design pages and code them in html and someone to write scripts at some ridiculous rate per hour and add to that the costs of support in other areas and on and on and on...
I await a respectable quote.
Seriously, I apreciate everything that is being discussed in this thread and I think I have a feel by now of what most people expect from PPRuNe but I still need feedback. Yes some of the content is pathetic from time to time but overall I think the balance is in favour of the 'mature majorities' favour. If I didn't get any enjoyment from what I read here then I think it would be time to hand the reins to soeone else who believes they can do a better job.
OK, that's enough from me. Must not waste time while the lights of 'The Strip' beckon.
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Capt PPRuNe
aka Danny Fyne
The Professional Pilots RUmour NEtwork