I have been pushing hard with DotWeekly since I started writing again to make it all work but I have questioned if I should continue since I started back up. Websites are not free to run, they take a large portion of your time to do it right and there are costs in general to help me do what I do.
DotWeekly is not making money, it’s costing me money. You have to spend money to make money and that is what I have been doing. DotWeekly drastically needed a new theme and I was well aware of this. The last theme didn’t support mobile devices and that was a problem. So I spent some money and purchased a new professional, responsive theme, did most of the work installing it myself and paid for a little help as well. Big improvement!
DotWeekly’s stats show a 70/30 split desktop/mobile, so that was a wise move to upgrade the theme as I expect it to continue to grow for mobile / tablet traffic.
The content on DotWeekly lately has been some of its best since I launched the site in 2008, which is great for me and you the reader!
One current big problem for me and you the reader, is DotWeekly drastically needs new hosting. I currently use shared HostGator and I was advised yesterday they are not the same hosting provider they use to be. I really noticed it yesterday with a little higher amount of traffic flowing in. Server response times alone were edging towards 4 seconds. DotWeekly’s load times were averaging some 7-15 seconds. Totally unacceptable! Most sites load in about a second, some even faster.
I thought the new theme would help a little with speed, but it appears it has not. I did several tweaks the past couple of day (lacking knowledge on how though) and it doesn’t appear any helped. I tried switching to W3 Total Cache from Super Cache and it crashed several features on the new theme (the biggest is the moving sidebar). I optimized the DB. I added Smush.it for future image optimization. I attempted to fix the “Progressive JPEG’s” issue several speed test sites suggested but I do not have the knowledge to fix it. Google keeps telling me to fix Render-Blocking scripts (mainly those little social images/features in the upper right but a couple smaller other things) but I am unsure how to fix it. I know using a CDN will help this, more on that later.
The problem for me? Managed VPS hosting is not cheap, but that is what DotWeekly needs. Nearly 5 x’s the cost I am currently paying. Since DotWeekly is currently struggling to keep the doors open, adding a bill that is 5x’s the cost makes me scratch my head even more. Is it worth it, do I risk it and dig that much deeper into my pocket? I can afford this month’s hosting but can I afford next months! Add in the stress of moving sites, resetting up emails etc (I do not do good with stress and I have many health problems because of it).
I spent many hours yesterday looking into a managed VPS hosting package. Liquid Web, GoDaddy, BlueHost, DreamHost, RamNode and several more. DigitalOcean.com and more have some less expensive options, but none are “managed” and I really do not know what I’m doing with hosting, let alone moving DotWeekly etc. On average, managed VPS hosting is about $50 a month. GoDaddy’s basic is about $24 a month BUT I have heard they are lacking some speed, which is something I need. Although GoDaddy has improved hosting drastically from the past, I think they still struggle with speed issues (from what I read).
Reading hosting reviews online is frustrating. Most are heavily weighed based on affiliate $$ so it is hard to tell what is a good service. Good reviews, bad reviews is really like you read no reviews! Again, frustrating! I heard good things about LiquidWeb but then I read countless newer reviews of bad things.
CDN is the way to go and also something I think DotWeekly needs. A.) for security and B.) for speed (all based on what I have read). MaxCDN for an example is $9 for the low end package and I think would be enough for DotWeekly, but that just adds another cost and what if I need the next step up? That is $40 a month.
Current Needs:
- Managed VPS hosting package $50/mo
- CDN $10/$40 mo
- Tweaks (assistance in something I’m not sure how to do) $ ?
DotWeekly needs paying advertisers! I know this and I do have a couple lined up, but it is very hard for me to pull the trigger and allow them on the site if I’m unsure if I’m going to continue with the site. The advertisers will help pay the bills for the site and hopefully more, but then there is ME. I like to get paid, as I’m sure you do! I work 12-16 hour days and actually LOSE money with the site costs! Most of the time I break even, but I have been trying to run DotWeekly for almost 4 months now off my savings account.
At least $600 a year in VPS hosting. CDN is another $108-$480. Add in things that I use and the fees keep stacking up. So I’m really, really unsure what to do and I wanted to see if my readers have suggestions. I really love writing on DotWeekly and I would love to continue but I need some help, suggestions etc!
Thank you,
Jamie
Hi there…
Why don´t yuo use a FREE BLOG tool like Blogger or WordPress ???
Cheers.
Given that DW is already an established brand in the domain community, you could use guest posting as a viable solution to make the site grow. I’m sure there are new bloggers out there who would like to join the team. And even finding already known people shouldn’t be too difficult. It’s very time-consuming to manage a blog when you’re the only one producing content for it but it’s way easier when there’s a team behind it.
Honestly, your site loads up fine on my end, I don’t see the “drastic issue” your referring to. Besides, you won’t lose any readers because it takes a few extra seconds to load lol. I think you should secure the cash flow before you decide on any more upgrades. You already have great content, and provide info no one else on the feed does. So why not invest your time into monetizing the site and post pone the articles for a bit. The content you have now already speaks for itself.
Well, hopefully the speed is much better! DotWeekly is now on new hosting that is the same cost as I was paying before but hopefully a much better solution. Only time will tell, so I will see. Same fee I was paying before but lets hope better performance. Working on the cash flow as well!
Save DotWeekly!
I’d be happy to do a consult via skype gratis.
I have experience in crafting performance WP platforms on value hosting. I also have a good list of hosts from years of research on this stuff.
I’m on my phone… will recomment or email when I’m at a real keyboard 😉
Aloha, Max
It is tough to make money blogging – particularly in the domain space. Most who blog in the domain space make money via domain sales or websites. If you like research, brokering domains – connecting end users buying certain types of domains with domain investors who have the right inventory could be a means of monetizing your time. Alternatively you could promote certain domain auctions for a small fee.
If the site is making no money than either:
1. You stop spending time on the site and sell it.
or
2. You increase your time spent working on the site to increase traffic further (assuming your lack of revenue is a traffic issue).
or
3. Your monetization techniques need work.
I think having a blog solely about domain names is not very profitable for many. The few guys who probably make a decent amount post a few times daily (to appease their paying advertisers) and a lot of those posts you can tell are being posted for the sake of being posted.
Personally I think the domain blog niche does not have a lot of good CPA monetization opportunities outside of GoDaddy, so you’d need to sell ad spots. And I doubt any of the domain bloggers make anything close to the top bloggers in niches like Tech, fashion, affiliate marketing, etc…
If you are not making money then stop doing it and sell it I mean you have Alexa rank of around 110,000 and you cant make money when with that rank you should clear $3,000 to $4,000 a month. so sell up to someone wo can monetize the site properly.
See if you have team up with another blogger and split revenue and cost. Just like how Domain Shane and Accidental Domainer did.
Also a good theme for blogs are themes from Studio Press powered by their Genesis Framework
Thank you everybody for all the suggestions and tips! I read every one and will consider all as well! I have switched hosting, so there may be a few hiccups with dns propagating but hopefully those are the only hiccups and should last any more than today. I have a couple new advertisers coming in, so that will help! I will be adding a few more pages to DotWeekly so people are more aware of the services I offer and I’m sure a few more thing!
Hi, For what it is worth, I enjoy being a customer of Fluidhosting. Here is the comparison of shared hosting features:
http://fluidhosting.com/comparison.php
The value pack is $12.5/month, or $125.00 annually, which gives you two months free! It doesn’t come with a dedicated IP address. Scroll to the bottom, and you see it is $2.00/month extra, or $24.00/year. If you need one, the cheapest would be to go with value, and add the dedicated IP address later. One needs dedicated IP address to point a bunch of domains to one IP address, to put robots text on it to prevent crawlers OR if you plan to do business on your website and need SSL cert. But, there are so many inexpensive services which handle check out for you these days – can’t see you needing that!
You get 10 subdomains and 10 aliases, so you could have ten websites up and running! That is what I do. One sql database suffices, since you can rename the table, and put all the wordpress sites on 1 database. That is what I do. If you decide to go that way, and have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer by email. But Fluid has wonderful live chat support!
I don’t know what CDN is. Please be wary, that traditional CDN doesn’t apply to mobile. Mobile is its own beast, and what works for desktop, doesn’t apply to mobile. The Google page speed insights I just ran on DotWeekly gives it a score of 62 for mobile, and higher for desktop.
That’s not that bad! Did you ever check, theDomains? Or, MorganLinton? Eeesh!
Or DomainInvesting, or Domaining, for that matter? Domaining, the mobile site is faster than the desktop!
What is managed VPS? Is that, Virtual Private Server? Can’t see you needing it.
What happened to Fusible? Did he get into legal trouble?
I’m pretty sure Fusible is serving his country in the military and is currently overseas.
I hope you can put your detective mind into good use and earn a good income. Your site is unique, I must say.
Jamie, go for self-managed hosting, DigitalOcean.com is great.
Your website’s global rank is 109,415 and 1GB of RAM is more than sufficient sufficient to handle it extremely smoothly. I ran a global rank 35000 site on it for 2 years without any issues.
What you need to do it setup Reverse Proxy (which means your website runs on some 8080 port and there is a caching engine NGINX/VARNISH at port 80 to actually serve pages).
GoWebnames.com and all my 150+ names (like BeautiTreatments.com) are handled by a Digital Ocean VPS.
If you wish, I can set it up for you absolutely free with your own email server and CDN, all at your VPS. You can have this VPS backed up automatically by DigitalOcean. CDN just needs to be a different subdomain, like, cdn.dotweekly.com
Site loads allright over here in Europe. Have you thought about a newsletter?
Hopefully you will be able to continue.
Don’t let this site and your good work go.
Don’t quit even if that means doing posts less frequently and doing other things full time or part-time.
The domain space is an illiquid marketplace until a buyer shows.
It’s small in comparison to other marketplaces on the planet.
Focus on bringing in advertisers even if it’s only 1 or 2 at first.
Keep your monthly costs lean & with software that you are comfortable working with that doesn’t cause stress.
Offer consulting services to end users or those who work with end users as well via an added tab above as well.
You do very good research.
Hi Jamie, keep up the good work with this great blog – let’s continue to explore how to make it an income animal.
With quality content, surely there’re sponsors interested in advertising here.