Subject:
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Brickshelf and the AFOL community
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.general
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Date:
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Mon, 16 Jul 2007 00:24:36 GMT
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For those of you who don't know me, I've been in the AFOL community for a long
time. I'm also one of the largest hosters of LEGO clubs and other LEGO-related
sites. Most of these sites are donated to help the clubs have an internet
presence, Some of the sites have been nice enough to put a link back to my site,
but this is not always the case. I've been doing this for years as a service to
the community, with a small hope of picking up some paid business from this
donation. While a few people have done so, the vast majority of these donated
sites have never generated a single lead for paid business. I've also advertised
at BrickFest, in BrickJournal, and a number of other places, none of which have
generated any business for me, either. I say this not to complain, but to show a
pattern in this community that Brickshelf probably ran into.
I'm not sure why brickshelf was never switched to a subscription-based service,
but that's really up to Kevin. However, giving away bandwidth, storage, and
hosting with no guaranteed source of revenue is not something I personally want
to get into. If you're Google, you're making money on giving away free e-mail by
indexing e-mail and showing well-targeted ads to your visitors. The various
photo (flickr, etc) sites allow a limited amount of usage before they start
charging, but they can do a fairly good conversion (free -> paid) because people
get hooked on the service and don't want to leave.
There are some fairly large expenses involved in running a large site like
brickshelf, and the numbers I'm quoting are based on my own experiences as a web
host. The bandwidth that brickshelf.com is using is massive. The site has done a
number of things, such as doing good thumbnails, etc. to cut down the data
transfer, but even then, here are some numbers for you to ponder:
- The going rate for bandwidth in commercial data centers varies, but I've
gotten quotes for single 45 Mbps lines for around $2200/month.
- Data center space is based on the amount of equipment you have, measured in
"U" units. A typical server is anywhere from 1U - 4U in size. If you do a search
for colocation rates, you'll find rates anywhere from $50-$100/U and up.
- If you have enough servers to fill an entire cabinet, you're looking at
anywhere from $750+ for cabinet rental in a typical data center.
- You also have maintenance contracts on hardware, security subscriptions for
firewalls, and so on.
For those of you saying that the site had ads (and I do remember the uproar when
they appeared), ads only work if people click on them. Given the fact that the
bulk of the content was pictures, it would be hard to get well-targeted ads on
the pages. Poorly targeted ads = poor clickthrough rates = less money.
Kevin has been providing this site for free for years, for no thanks or much
money. I'm hoping he was at least breaking even, but I am not privy to those
details. As far as I know, Kevin was never made into a Lego Ambassador, even
though his site helped promote the community. Most people probably don't even
know who he is... he's just another AFOL who came up with a great site to help
people share their creations. Kevin deserves our thanks for providing a place to
look at people's creations. If he's decided to take it down, then we need to say
thanks, and move on. A warning might have been nice, but you have no idea what
the circumstances were that caused the shutdown. Let's give him the benefit of
the doubt, but remember some of the things I've mentioned.
As to you ungrateful people who have the nerve to complain about the site not
being available, and especially to the people who insulted the site, how much
did you pay for the service? Did you ever even send a thank-you for
brickshelf.com? Did you ever donate a penny to help the site stay up? Did you
ever think about how much it was costing to put it up? Did you even click on an
ad once in a while? My guess is that your answers to all these questions are a
resounding NO.
That sort of attitude makes me absolutely sick. It really disturbs me that I'm
donating space to help promote clubs that contain people like you. Your posts
are an insult to the community that you claim to belong to. If I were him and
was reading some of the posts that were up, the pictures you may have posted
would be deleted as fast as I could make them go away. Someone is paying for
every single "free" service and software package you use. If you're not doing
something (paying, etc.) to contribute, you're a parasite.
That's my 2 (or 20) cents on the matter... thanks for listening.
Eric Smith
President, Northstar Computer Systems
www.northcomp.com
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Message has 3 Replies:
 | | Re: Brickshelf and the AFOL community
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| As someone who operates a blog (brickpile.com) about LEGO I agree that there is very little revenue from ads. The problem with ads in a LEGO-related site is that there are only so many times people can click on links to legoshop.com and there just (...) (17 years ago, 16-Jul-07, to lugnet.general)
| | | Re: Brickshelf and the AFOL community
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| (...) Thanks for the information, Eric. It's hard for most people (including myself) to get a grasp on just what resources are needed to run such a site. With respect to targeted ads, Kevin was using Google Adsense, and I believe (from seeing (...) (17 years ago, 16-Jul-07, to lugnet.general)
| | | Re: Brickshelf and the AFOL community
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| I would like to thank Kevin. Brickshelf has meant alot to me since the nineties as a resource for ideas. I look at brickshelf on a daily basis for inspiration. I'm just not that creative and learned alot about techniques. Lugnet and brickshelf are (...) (17 years ago, 16-Jul-07, to lugnet.general)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Problems with Brickshelf?
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| Just been to Brickshelf and it reports Brickshelf has discontinued operation. We apologize for any inconvenience. Maj still seems to be up Tim (17 years ago, 14-Jul-07, to lugnet.general) !!
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