I have (for once!) been busy the last while in the CLUAS backroom and consequently there are some important changes that will be rolled out over the coming while that I want to bring to your attention. This is a long posting but hang in there until the end if you can… I am in the process of migrating the entire CLUAS website to a new web server. This web server has more advanced technology then what we are currently using and it allows (in due course!) for many new things that will improve the quality of the site to its visitors (such as increasing the breadth of content available and the improving the frequency with which the website is updated, these improvements however will not be immediately visible but you can expect some visible improvements in the site’s content by the end of the summer). However there is one important and immediate impact of moving the site to the new state of the art web server and that is cost. The monthly hosting cost I have been paying out of my own pocket for the last six years has gone up. Not hugely from the US$20 a month I was previously paying, but it has nonetheless gone up. What’s more is that there is some software I need to buy for adding new content areas and functionality (as I alluded to above in the previous paragraph). So the global costs of maintaining the CLUAS website are on the rise. With all this in mind I think it is clear that the site has hit a fork in the road: do we continue without receiving any income? Or do we start trying to get some revenue in to cover the growing cost of hosting and maintaining the website? For me the answer is clear: the time has come for the website to bring in some revenue. And I have already taken steps on this front. Cutting to the chase CLUAS will start to earn its first revenues later this week. The revenue will come from two sources: • Google.com’s “AdSense” program (this will be the principle source of revenues) • Amazon.co.uk’s “Associates” affiliate program (this will be a secondary source of revenues) Yes, Google.com last week approved CLUAS for inclusion in its AdSense revenue programme. What this will mean is that (almost) every page on CLUAS will, starting tomorrow June 23, have text ads. You will be relieved to hear that there will be absolutely no pop-ups, no spy-ware, no images, no JPEGS, no GIFs, no Macromedia Flash ads, just simple plain text ads. The ads that will appear will be related to the content on the specific page (e.g. on a review of a Tom Waits gig you can expect a link to a site selling Tom Waits memorabilia or the like) and anytime a visitor chooses to click on one of the ads CLUAS will get a commission from Google. (one exception to this are the ads that will initially appear on the Discussion Board – in some pre-roll out testing I have done the ads Google have provided for the Discussion Board have been of a very low relevancy, however I am working with Google to ensure the relevancy of ads on the Discussion Board improves over time). The text ads will ‘blend in’ with the existing CLUAS look and colour scheme. In testing the ads the last few days I have come to the conclusion that the degree of ‘intrusion’ on the user experience is tolerable, possibly even negligible. I even thought that the ads very often added value to the user experience by presenting some extremely relevant (and interesting) text ads that I myself wanted to click on. The secondary income source is Amazon.co.uk’s “Affiliate” program. Basically this is where a link is provided (for example at the end of an album review) to a product page on Amazon and if a CLUAS visitor clicks on that link and then buys from Amazon the website gets a % of the sale. CLUAS has actually dabbled with this in the past but I am now going to add such a link to all new album reviews (and over time I will retroactively add such a link to all the existing album reviews). I don’t expect this to be as lucrative as the Gogle AdSense income stream but I would like to see over a period of a few months how it performs. The current plans for the money earned are to split it 3 ways: 1. I will take from the revenues my monthly costs for hosting the site and other expenses such as purchasing relevant web server software; 2. A portion (in and around 50 percent?) of what then remains will be reinvested in running on the Google search engine some 'niche' ads (what appear on Google search results pages as “Sponsored links”) that tightly target alternative music fans. This is to bring in new visitors, many of whom will hopefully become regulars around here. 3. The remaining money will be left accumulate over time and used for, let’s call them, “special CLUAS projects”. This could be anything – covering costs / risks of running of some CLUAS gigs, releasing a CLUAS CD, printing professional flyers, whatever. The writing community will come up with ideas for what we should do with any money we accumulate and the very best ideas will be given the chance of some funding. I suspect that some among the writing and visitor communities will be disappointed about this decision to ditch the sacred chalice of maintaining ZERO income and some may even want to bolt for the door in disgust. If so, I’ll respect any such decisions. But I really believe the time has come to be pragmatic and to change course a bit: hosting a quality website will never be a cost-free (or even low-cost) venture and, in addition, CLUAS.com’s website costs are going up. But more importantly if we want to fully realise CLUAS.com’s potential we need to take some bold steps, and anything that eases our future path (such as removing financial restrictions on expanding the site) can, on balance, only have a positive impact for the site and its community in the long term. I am very curious to hear your thoughts on all the above, be they negative or positive. So spill forth. While the decision to set up revenue streams has been taken and I am not going to go back on it, I am very keen to receive your suggestions on how we can make the most of this new direction for the site. Cheers. eoghan