Posted on 10/05/2005 11:11:28 PM PDT by John Robinson
Money is often the center-point or at least the lead-pipe of any good controversy. This is perfectly illustrated in the battle of (or against) Free Republic. A number of the site's detractors have repeatedly "demonstrated" that Free Republic is bilking thousands from little old ladies in a Jimmy Bakker-esque scam. I will offer a counterpoint for thought.
In this article I will attempt to justify some of that cost. Some? Despite popular conception, I am only an ancillary participant in the internal operations of the site, and therefore I simply do not know where every dollar is spent. However, I can tell you where and why exactly $6,700 is spent every month.
My father is Jim Robinson. I do contract work for him/Free Republic via my company cobbled together to support such activities. I do not speak for my father nor for Free Republic (LLC or .com) nor for any participant of the site.
The question on seemingly everybody's mind. How much does it cost to run Free Republic? It's just a dumb website, right? Anybody can host their dumb ol' website for thirty bucks, so why are they asking for $22,000 (give or take) every freakin' month? Sniff Test!!
The site is huge, hosts nearly 1.5 million articles, more than 30 million comments, and easily does two to three million page views daily. Infrastructure of this scale "do(es) not grow on trees" as Skinner, admin of DemocraticUnderground.com--the antithesis of FreeRepublic.com, points out.
First I will touch on the scale of computing resources required to run a large database-driven dynamic website. Dynamic, every page view runs database queries and Perl-language software. With two to three million page views per day, custom-tailored to the preferences of the reader, we require two database servers and three web servers to drive the site and afford headroom when traffic spikes (Katrina, election cycles, 9/11--we do our best to keep the site running during these peak loads.) An additional front-end machine serves static content (some images and html pages.) We also host a secure server for credit card donations on a separate machine. Finally, an additional machine is left to toil on administrative tasks. That's 2 + 3 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 8 machines. Hardware is not free. Fortunately, for the most part it is a one-time expense addressed in the budget as a $300 line item (see Equip, Maintenance and Repairs) and an occassional higher quartery fundraising goal for special purchases.
This delivers the discussion to the next point of scale I need to make. Network resources. To be honest, I don't know how many gigabytes of data we push out each day. It's not an important figure. We've contracted with Verio for co-location and bandwidth, and we measure megabits per second. The site sustains in excess of 10 Mbps throughout most of the day. For that, and a full cabinet to store our equipment, Verio charges exactly $2,700 monthly. Down from $7,000/mo for a similar UUNET setup in 2001. It is important to note that this is a guaranteed 10 Mbps of throughput--reserved for us, to deliver Internet content. Many web hosts will advertise 100 Mbps service for some low-low price. They may not be telling you, or not upfront about, the fact that their bandwidth is shared by thousands of clients. You will see only a fraction of that, there is no guarantee you will be able to handle sudden traffic bursts effectively. Anyway, the point I'm making here is that it doesn't matter if you're allocated a googol of gigabytes by your web host if you're only able to push out a trickle due to burdened connectivity.
The last subject I will touch upon is a matter of human resources. If the previously enumerated resources are sometimes overlooked, the HR issue is almost always overlooked. If it sounds like whining, well, I apologize in advance, the subject affects me directly.
It takes time to manage servers, to patch systems and troubleshoot issues. Free Republic, LLC owns eight machines, I oversee those, plus three other machines that assist Free Republic in some form. My day-to-day activities include: keeping abreast of the latest public security exploits and determining if they affect operations, and occassionally patching systems of said defects, monitoring network and server health, analyzing odd-ball traffic (sometimes indicates security threat), toubleshooting performance issues, keeping up with news from the distros and software we leverage, planning upgrade paths, and exploring software that will aid in these goals.
I program. I write and maintain software that is used directly and indirectly by the site. From the very visible forum software to the invisible mechanics lurking below. From the website's moderator tools to the low-level sysadmin tools. Features, big and small and mis-. I take care of it all. Including a years-in-the-making revisioning of the software. All the while, my #1 goal is to minimize interruption of ongoing operations. (Oh! How I wish to be able to take the site down for a week and refactor the database schema!) And, while I'm not much of a website designer, I do design and write the HTML, and attempt to architect the information in the best manner possible (at least the revisioning will.)
Also, I--well, my better part, Tami--deals with contract negotiations for bandwidth, credit card processing (a web of external entities in itself), obtaining and maintaining our secure certificate, domain names, hardware purchases, etc. She's an ever-present influence in the behind-the-scenes matters, from discussions of FR direction and focus, to how she dislikes a thin dashed gray line on some new page I've designed. Her input is manifold and not to be discounted.
She and I are Robinson-DeFehr Consulting, and we're consuming $4,000 every month of the $22,000 to be raised.
Now, I do not slave over the site every day for 16+ hours 7 days a week 365.24 days a year. Sometimes I do little at all. At other times, I burn the midnight oil either because I feel inspired or because I'm fighting a fire or simply because that's the only opportuntity I have to impact the site with a server-intensive task. I figure I owe 30 hours a week, I aim for that and anything else I do is simply because I enjoy what I do. $48,000/year is justified: I pay my own income taxes, including the employer's side of FICA, I pay my own health benefits, I purchase my own resources (computers I personally use, books, lots of books), my business must carry liability insurance and we pay the "LLC" tax. Subtract those costs of doing business and it works out to a fair and comparable salary.
In sum, that's six-thousand seven hundred accounted and justified dollars alleged to be somewhere between $30 to a "generous" $600 by some of the site's detractors. They smoke crack.
This article serves merely as a demonstration of "hidden costs." The site does not accept commercial advertising, its sole revenue stream is through reader donations. Large sites have the same costs, if not more (we try to do things on the cheap.) These sites often rely upon commercial advertising to offset the costs of operation. Advertising is a big business, and successful sites are good earners, able to offset operations costs and turn a profit. In one form or another it's all advertising. Free Republic's advertising is simply more explicit: we need $X for Y period of service. Few see a banner ad as representing tens of thousands of dollars every month.
Consider other non-obvious costs and $22,000 is not a far out figure.
The article was originally published on my Wikipedia Talk page. I linked to the page history for the above posted version. A more current (or commented or defaced) version may appear at a later period in time. In fact, I expect it to be heavily criticized simply for the subject matter. So please be sure to check out the head revision as well.
This is not a fundraising thread. I was inspired to write this article based on a criticism aired on DU (as linked above.) I'm posting it here because it is a valid concern and may be of interest to our readers.
Bookmarking
You have nothing to explain.
Don't let the enemies of FR put you on the defensive.
Nobody is twisting anyone's arm to contribute, it's purely voluntary.
FR is very effective in countering liberal propaganda with the website and activism. That is what really bothers those who would like it to fold. And those will always find something to criticize and attack.
Already posted here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1497498/posts
(J/K - thanks for the info, but you don't owe anyone an explanation!)
I know I would prefer to patronize a FReeper's business, if at all possible, and I'm sure FR could use the $.
Just my opinion/question.
Free Republic Ping.
Do not worry about the Wikipedia thing. If you search for Rush Limbaugh on there, one of the linked articles is entitled "Fascism: An Exegesis".
This is the best place of its kind on the net, bar none.
I got a recommendation, how about having the control links at the top float down as you scroll down, rather than stay at the top? It would make life easier.
John, those trolling threads were nothing but amusing looks at how stupid some people are.
They fail to take into account all your costs and the time involved for a job that can find you missing out of a family function at a moment's notice because the site has crashed.
In fact, I'm amazed that a site that gets this much traffic can run for so little. That alone is the credit to the frugality of the operators of the site.
Okay, I'm done brown nosing now...good job, and don't worry about having to justify yourselves. Your results speak for themselves.
John, you are being paid too little. My son handles work like yours and tells me about the kinds of problems encountered.
Free Republic is a superb site. I use it every day, many times per day.
My thanks to you and your father, for the work you do - I am proud to be an automatic donator to FreeRepublic. After all, there is nothing sadder than a wet, cold, hungry Viking Kitty...
Support Free Republic! PING
FRee Republic=Priceless
I've never understood this argument. What's wrong with making money. Or to paraphrase Don Barzini -- certainly, you can present a bill for your services. After all, we are not Communists.
(I always wanted to write a dear John letter -- you're the first in my life to get one.)
You do not owe me or anyone else an explanation regarding why you are raising money to run FreeRepublic.com. As for the DUmmies, well sir, they are and always will be:
"They smoke crack", LOL. Ya think? :-)
Don't know much about bandwidth, costs, etc.
*Do* know y'all are doing a mighty fine job here.
Thank you all, and keep up the good work.
[salutes]
Thanks. It sounds entirely justifiable and honest.
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