I’m fairly new and don’t 100% understand it yet, but instances are run on servers that require money. Are we heading towards seeing ads or subscriptions to raise funds instead of relying on donations to cover overhead?
Especially with the influx of new users. Hardware upgrades are needed.
I’m going to tell you a secret…. Yes.
All those things could happen. Some people could run a site that has ads. Some people could run a site that charges a membership. Some sites could have a Patreon membership. Some sites could do subscriptions….
And some sites could be completely free.
The funny thing is, because of the federation, no one will be harmed. Let’s say I startup a site and all I do is pass through the cost of the site to each user. No profit, just what it costs to maintain the server is shared among the members.
Is that unreasonable?
There already are sites with Patreons set up for them, right? Not that you get anything out of being a member (i think). Having a Patreon (or similar) available seems like a good way to support an instance to me.
Agreed. But I wouldn’t say you get nothing out of being a member on Patreon. I run lemmy.ninja. If I had a paying customer (Patreon) ask for something, and I had a non paying user ask for something…
Who do you suppose gets my time first? Now, it may be that I have to tell the paying customer that what they are asking for is only possible if code is changed. In that case I can put a request in on their behalf. However if it is a thing I CAN do, then my time goes to them first, right?
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I wonder how much that comes out to per user. Im sure its not negligable, but I have a hard time believing a few hundred text posts and images actually take $8/mo (lookin at twitter) to store on a server.
Yeah, that’s not how the math works. Cost of server + cost of maintaining = X. Divide X by the number of users. Example, my time is worth $60 an hour. I spend two hours a week working on the server ($120). I spend $30 a month on the server rental. $150. I have 20 users. $150/20 is $7.50…
Hmmm interesting points. Those numbers do look pretty steep for a server with only 20 users, but I can see how there’s more too it than just the costs of a server. Im sure its also harder if you have a server that ends up hosting big communities but has few users.
I was curious about Beehaw after hearing about them defederating and looked to see what was over there and what their content looked like. They have a stickied post at the very top that goes over the numbers if you’re curious what they’re saying it costs to run that instance. I feel like numbers could be totally variable based on a number of factors but that might give you a good idea. A smaller instance might be less and a larger one with the best hardware might be more but they’re probably all playing in the same general ballpark.
Yeah you could easily run a 20n user instance on a $3 or $5 server. (Hell, even a “free trial” host if you don’t care about the amount of extra time that would require!)