User:Barrabas

TL;DR:

• Barrabas has set aside $10,000 to run SoylentNews for the first year.
• Startup costs are less than $1,000
• Legal and business costs are expected to be less than $1000
• Bandwidth fees are estimated at $300/mo. or less

Please E-mail me if you find a mistake: John (at) SoylentNews (dot) com.

Summary of finances

• Barrabas has set aside $10,000 to run the project for the first year.
• Startup costs are less than $1,000
• Legal and business costs are expected to be less than $1000
• Bandwidth fees are estimated at $300/mo. or less

Startup expenses

Expenses incurred leading up to the initial rollout on Feb. 17:

	Item	Cost
(1)	AltSlashdot.org	16.05
(2)	AltSlashdot.net	16.58
(2)	AltSlashdot.com	15.50
(3)	Virtual phone #	14.83
(4)	BlueHost hosting	178.20
(5)	SoylentNews.org	16.05
(2)	SoylentNews.net	16.58
(2)	SoylentNews.com	15.50
(6)	Pimsleur Spanish I	120.00
(6)	Pimsleur Spanish II	120.00
(6)	Pimsleur Spanish II	120.00
(7)	Sony MP3 player	74.99
(7)	USPS Shipping	6.15
	Total	730.43

Notes:

1. The original name for the project was "AltSlashdot".
2. The project uses the ".org" top level domain. It's important to also get ".com" and ".net" to prevent squatters from creating lookalike sites that can confuse readers and dilute out brand.
3. I got a virtual phone number (for $4.99/mo) to keep my personal line private. Mostly this was for account activation.
4. The project was originally hosted by BlueHost, and bumped up two tiers as we exceeded their capacity. We have since migrated to linodes.
5. The project was renamed "SoylentNews", as the original name "AltSlashdot" was thought to be legally dangerous.
6. Personal gift to NCommander (who is studying Spanish) for getting SlashCode running
7. I shipped NCommander a "burner" (ie - inexpensive) MP3 player to use

Ongoing expenses

Additional ongoing expenses, as of Mar 1:

	Item	Cost
(1,2)	Linode 1024	220.74
(1,2)	Linode 1024	220.74
(1,2)	Linode 1024	220.74
(3)	Linode backup	61.32
(4)	Linode backup	6.42
(4)	Linode backup	6.42
(5)	Linode backup	110.00
(6)	SoylentNews.jp	90.00
(6,7)	SoylentNews.cn	35.00
	Total	971.38

Notes:

1. The project migrated from BlueHost to linodes
2. Linode 1024 for 12 months (10% discount)
3. Monthly backups for 12 months (10% discount)
4. One month of backups
5. Monthly backup charges converted to 12 month single charge (10% discount)
6. For future use.
7. Failed to complete due to Chinese registrations restrictions :-(

Estimated future costs

Note: These estimates are based on background information from the appendix.

Assuming we don't hire anyone, our biggest ongoing expense will be for bandwidth.

From the 2007 article above, Slashdot was using 16.74 TB of transfer, which would cost $160/mo at today's rates.

Using GoogleTrends as a guide and estimating by eye, Slashdot at present uses 1.7 TB of transfer, which would cost $20/mo. at today's rates.

Also using GoogleTrends, Slashdot at its peak used 32 TB of transfer, which would cost $320/mo at today's rates.

NCommander has extrapolated our data usage and estimates that we are serving 5 million pageviews per month, which will use approximately 1/3 of our monthly linode bandwidth allocation. This is consistent with Slashdot's current usage estimates from the data given in the appendix.

From these estimates, it seems likely that SoylentNews will require less than $300/mo. for bandwidth in the first year.

These estimates are preliminary, and will be updated as we get more usage information.

Other estimated expenses

• $1000 in business costs, mostly incorporation fees.

Appendix: Background information

To inform this discussion, note [Slashdot's 2007 statistics], summarized:

• 5.5 million user visits per month.
• 7,000 comments are added every day.
• Over 9 million pages views daily.
• Over 21 million comments.
• Average monthly bandwidth usage is around 40-50 mbit/sec.

Also, the [Google Trends] page for Slashdot:

<img width="85%" src="http://wiki.soylentnews.org/wiki/images/GoogleTrendSlashdot.png" />

An estimate of [Slashdot's current usage]:

<img width="85%" src="http://wiki.soylentnews.org/wiki/images/SlashdotPageviews.png" />

Finally, [This pricing scheme] is the basis for calculating bandwidth costs:

<img width="85%" src="http://wiki.soylentnews.org/wiki/images/LinodePlans.png" />