Animation Source Forums

You've probably all seen the problems that encountered the site these days.
Well, they were mostly due to an hardware problem with the server where the site is hosted on.
Although, there is one major problem : while there are more and more visitors on BS, the trafic becomes more and more important, and BS is using most of the server bandwidth. While my host (Timduru) lets me using it for free, I've decided to pay him for the site.

And, one day or another, I may have to find a host dedicated for the site, and this will probably be very costy.

You'll understand that to maintain the site, I will have to find money. Even though I would do anything to let them stay online, I could probably not pay for a dedicated server for it.

So my question is : what would be the best solution to get some revenues?

Definately PayPal. With a site as popular as this one, I'm positive that people will be more than willing to donate. Many other successful sites use PayPal for revenues, and it works for them. I don't see why we shouldn't use PayPal.

Yes, but the problem I see mostly with donations is that many people here are children, and wouldn't be able to donate. Paypal requires a credit card.

Yeah. That's the only problem. But if it was with a Debit Card, that might work.

True...but along with the children who visit the site, there are also people who are old enough to donate. If we have an estimated guess of how much we would need to donate, that could also help. Guests would be able to donate too, I'm guessing.

Errr, well, I'm not really aware of these things but does a "debit card" exists? Because I don't see any difference.

About how much we need, well that depends. For now, not that much, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to tell you how much it costs to Tim to maintain his server but I said I would be willing to give 15€ / month. (approx. 20$) And I could give this money out of my pocket, but I want to ensure that I get enough money to be prepared if there would be a big increase of the number of visitors.
But if I had to get a dedicated server, it would probably be 10 times this amount.

I think it's called a Debit Card. And for that all you need is a bank account. You don't have to be a certian age or anything. At least, I don't think you do.

Also, I forgot to precise that there was already a donation program on the site, for a moment. It was an Allopass donation program. It didn't really work, but I think it was because most people didn't even find it.
If I had to do something like this again, I would add a link visible in every page.

That sounds like a good idea. Does that include the forums too?

Maybe, yes. But I would still try not to put it everywhere so it doesn't look like ads
I must say that I've tried everything I could do to optimize the bandwidth on the site, but I'm reaching the limit. If there would be twice the number of visitors there are currently, the server could not take it.

lol. Yeah. That might be a good idea.

I think both is good!

I think Google adsense is a good idea.

The site should work fine now, the server has been fully reinstalled. Unless it has problems again, but I surely hope not.


Yes, sure, but I can't spend 150$ a month for it, for now...