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I have been having money problems related to Canadaka.net for some time and have just been ignoring it as its gotten worse. But something has to be done.

For several years now ad revenue CKA generates has been plummeting, there are several reasons why.

- Banner advertising industry wide generates far less than it used too.
- CKA traffic has been decreased a lot from several years ago.
- People are using other methods to get news and have discussions online, primarily social media and apps.
- I have not put much development time into improving and adding to CKA. I am going to be doing some major cleanup and fixes this winter.


The current major problem is CKA is generating $0 revenue. Some of you might have noticed there have not been ads running on the site since August. My Google Adsense account for canadaka.net was banned again for inappropriate adult content on the site. I have been trying for months to appeal and get it re-activated, but they won't tell me specificity what is the problem, so i just keep deleting more stuff. But it might be that after 8+ years they just decided a site with the word "ass" in its name is banned.

Even before August the site was already generating less from Google ads than the server costs. Now I'm 3 server-hosting invoices behind and own $2220!

CKA isn't the only site I host on my servers, but most the other sites don't get much traffic and generate very little revenue. It also uses most of the server resources.
I've also closed down a couple of sites like http://www.bloggingcanadians.ca. In order to try and generate some more revenue i've added ads to http://politwitter.ca/ for the first time.

I used to have a bunch of web hosting clients as well, but i've slowly been dropping those, as Its not worth the time or money. So I only have a couple sites I host for friends, charging a very small $2 a month.

I used to make a bunch of revenue from t-shirt sales as well, to help pay for server costs, but mostly I wanted to pay myself a bit, it (was) part of my living. Now the t-shirt sales don't even pay for server costs, they have dropped drastically. I think its combo of wearing printed t-shirts has fallen out of fashion a bit, saturation of the market and increased competition.

CKA also used to get a couple hundred dollars in donations a year, this has completely stopped. I don't think I've gotten any donations for CKA in 2012 or 2013. I don't expect people do donate, the ads should pay for the site. But it was a nice cushion to have. I was also banned from PayPal several years ago, so it stopped any recuring donations people had. I have a new donation page using STRIPEcredit card processing here http://www.trevormay.ca/donate/

CKA used to also make money for paid text-links at the very bottom of the homepage, people paid to increase their search engine rankings. But Google has really put an end to this practice and that market has dried up.

=====================================

Several years ago I switched hosts, I was paying over $400 in server costs. The new host is much cheaper, at $247. But I am currently looking if I can find any cheaper solutions in the Vancouver area for server colocation. If anyone has any suggestions or contacts, please let me know!. I'm even considering moving the servers to Seattle, there are some cheaper options in below $200 there.

This is the requirements:
- Two Dell Poweredge 1U servers.
- I will need 4 IPs.
- monthly bandwidth usage is between 500GB - 800GB.


I've also been slowly trying to transition out of running so many websites, running servers and doing web hosting. I've been doing this stuff for 14 years and its time to move on a bit. I'm not and will never close down Canadaka.net but it needs to at least pay for itself.

I'm open to any suggestions or comments.

   

2013

Monthly Server costs: $247 x 12 = $2,964
Domains: 4 x $16 = $64

Base Cost: $3,028

------------------------------------------

Google Adsense (CKA): $1,171
Google Adsense (Other sites): $339
Donations: $0
Web Hosting: $122
Text Ads: $595 (now dropped to $0 monthly)

Total revenue: $2,227

2013 Loss: $801

   

A bit of good news! Just RIGHT NOW got an email from Google, ad serving has been re-enabled for the site! So at least it will start generating something again! But even if it were never banned, at the rate it was going in August, I would still be in the red around $400. And next year I won't have that $500 from text-ads to rely on, so will have to make that up somehow.

   

Done. Sorry, I couldn't do that earlier.

   

And, 'ass' is a dictionary word. They shouldn't ban you for it. (Prudes!)

   

I'd be willing to sponsor the US Politics forum...

us-politics-f18/

...with a regular donation/billing of US$50 per month. No idea how to get this started so let me know what to do next and we'll go from there.

   

Thank you for this very generous offer, I was not expecting anything like that. I was just more ranting and seeing if anyone knew of any good cheaper colo hosts.

I will look into this.



Thanks so much!!

   

Also FYI, the CKA Hottie of the Day and a few other threads were moved to the "Babes" forum. This forum is now private, you have to be logged in to view it. Ads also don't show in this forum.

Likewise a few other sections of the website are only visible to registered users and ads are disabled in their pages.

I've also updated the public Forum rules regarding adult content, to better comply with Google guidlines.
rules.php#general

   

Cool. That all makes sense.

   

Do you have a private Paypal account I can send money to Trev? I have some funds there from writing that I can send your way to help out.

   

Nope, me and me wife are banned from PayPal for life, no appeals, total bullshit.

My account was suddenly banned because this site had a link to a site that contained porn, no warning, no chance to fix or appeal. And then a couple days later my Wife's paypal, that she used for her business was banned and also my gaming clan =CKA= was also banned. I guess because they all shared the same billing address. Total crap, you could say we are not big fans of PayPal. If you search the internet there are SOOO many stories like this and worse.

We had switched to Authorize.net for my wifes business, but its pricy wit a $25 a month fee. But This summer i found out about STRIPE, which is an awesome simple credit card processer, with no monthly fees. So I can only accept credit cards, not PayPal.

Its been a huge hassel, many ad-networks, clients and stuff I want to personally buy on the internet only accept PayPal. And in Canada there is no good alternative.

   

^^ That's why it took me so long to throw cash your way. I hate PayPal too. If that's the only method of payment to a company, then we can't do business.

   

yeah, I closed my PayPal account. They were starting to creep me out.

   

Yes, please get some kind of preauthorized billing. I'm sure a lot of us could afford $5 or $10 a month even. Relying on us to click on the donate button isn't working.

I'll go click on it.

   

Ditto, I figure I've been on here for long enough that I owe my dues.

I do miss having so many people on here. What happened to the good old days eh?

   

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