Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I am currently using a virtual private server and shared hosting to host my sites. From what I see, the monthly income from Adsense is able to offset my monthly web hosting fees which is actually good, because I haven't put Adsense in more than 20 web sites I am running yet.
However, I dreaded the day when traffic to my sites would increase tremendously (which it will - judging by my stats) that I have to upgrade to a dedicated server soon which could cost around US$150 to US$300 per month. If this happened and I am not making more than US$300 per month it means I have to close down most of my dynamic sites (i.e forums, cms, etc) in order to cut cost.
So big earners out there, are using a dedicated server? I am sure most of you do but anyway I would still like to find out. If you do, how many dedicated server?
Is there anyone here who are using a dedicated server but not making enough profit?
Or is there anyone here who are so fortunate that they are earning in thousands or close to a thousand per month just by using a shared hosting?
Thank you for your input.
Why would you need a dedicated server? Is bandwidth, disk space, server load or something else the problem?
In my opinion, if you want to like... surive another traffic upsurge. You first need to optimize the program (if you write them yourself) or to upgrade the package (if you are buying it from some companies like vBulletin).
Mostly it's the bad PHP/ASP programs and inefficent mySQL queries that kill server performance. In my cuz case, it's all the dynamic image manipulation. He should have cached all the results, avoiding repeating the script for the same result. I'm not an expert, but I have seen enough common problems to give this conclusion.
If you only serve static pages with simple graphics, then i heard 10 million people can come in a day and your server should still survive.
Not ideal but these sites were hobby sites, untill adsense made it easy to stick ads on. Cant move now since most have loads of inbound links, good search positioning, and 5 and 6 page rank!
And I am mean!
40GB is a helluvalot. If you are using anywhere near that on one site you must have a shedload of visitors or a load of ignorant bots.
IMO Virtual is the way to go if you have 10 or 15 sites. OTOH if you are running a huge network it might be an idea to go the dedicated route.
My 2p
Ska
I will be paying about 240 dollars a month for an AMD dual core, 2 GB ram, 1 terabyte of bandwidth, Windows 2003 Server and 30 domains. BTW, my sites are database intensive/processor intensive resource hogs, I don't think everyone needs this much power.
I also plan on expanding my site offerings and building a couple of mini-sites. I am growing my profits each year, so I see the move to a dedicated server as a natural progression. 2006 is the start of my third year in affiliate marketing and adsense.
Furthermore, nowadays it is hard to find site hosted on free servers that is ranked well in major search engines.
Your ROI must be very high since it is free.
I don't want anyone elses site on "my" boxes. Plus I like to be able to root in and change or install software as and when I like without having memory or hard disk etc restrictions (which you get on VPS's).
Total cost for all three : about $325/month. Hosting is cheap these days.
For me, it's a no-brainer, but that's the way that I like to work. It offers me complete control and all of my sites are lightening fast. Especially in todays broadband internet, speed is important.
TJ
No need for a dedicated server.
No problem with response times on a shared server. (Alexa rates my site as "fast," with an average load time of 1.5 seconds.)
I'm making about 1,800 a month and am on a shared server.
Great to hear that! Very inspiring! I am just hoping that Yahoo! would allow international webmasters to join their YPN this year so that it won't be that risky to rely only on Adsense. When Yahoo! took over Overture, I cried because they took away my only source of income i.e. Overture search box. Other affiliate programs like CJ and Linkshare are not working for me and traffic to my sites is not big enough to join certain affiliate programs.
One days earnings pay for them, definately a wise investment for anyone looking to expand, no-one wants to see a 'Server Too Busy' message ;)
One days earnings pay for them, definately a wise investment for anyone looking to expand, no-one wants to see a 'Server Too Busy' message ;)
I've never seen a "server too busy" message in 3-1/2 years with my current hosting service, and I have a shared server. OTOH, I don't have 1.2 million page views a day, either, and I probably never will. (I'd be delighted to reach 100,000 PVs per day, which is almost certainly far more than the traffic of any editorial site in my niche). So I have plenty of room for expansion on a shared server.
Obviously, different sites have different needs, but a site that mostly uses HTML "flat files" can exist quite comfortably on a shared server--assuming that the hosting service is professional and reliable, which is important with a dedicated server, too.
I've never seen a "server too busy" message in 3-1/2 years with my current hosting service, and I have a shared server.
Based on your username I think I have visited your site before. Your site is purely HTML and I assume you are paying $9.95 or $17.95 per month for your hosting which means a very high ROI for you if you are earning more than a thousand per month. Your Alexa's ranking of 39,000 plus and various listings in Yahoo and ODP are awesome. Probably that could be one of the reasons why your PR at Google is 6.
When I was running only one site on a shared hosting, my site is almost purely HTML. One of my sites is using a CGI script that could bring down the shared server if there are a few people executing the script simultaneously.
But now with many sites to run (and also due to the nature of the sites e.g. forum), I am thinking of using CMS for the next 4 sites I am developing in order to churn out the sites faster (which will stress my server further if I am receiving higher traffic). Using CMS has its advantages and disadvantages. Actually I prefer to develop static site like yours instead of using CMS.
Based on your username I think I have visited your site before. Your site is purely HTML and I assume you are paying $9.95 or $17.95 per month for your hosting...
$29.95. I went with an industrial-strength hosting service. (I can't believe how cheap that sounds--I used to spend more than $100 at Kinko's to print the newsletter for my kids' figure-skating club, with postage on top of that!)
When I was running only one site on a shared hosting, my site is almost purely HTML. One of my sites is using a CGI script that could bring down the shared server if there are a few people executing the script simultaneously.
I think that's why you need a good hosting service if you have a shared server. (I know someone who uses the same service I do; she once messed up a script, and the hosting service shut her site down almost instantly when it began sucking up CPU cycles like a Dyson vacuum cleaner.)
But now with many sites to run (and also due to the nature of the sites e.g. forum), I am thinking of using CMS for the next 4 sites I am developing in order to churn out the sites faster (which will stress my server further if I am receiving higher traffic). Using CMS has its advantages and disadvantages. Actually I prefer to develop static site like yours instead of using CMS.
For me, researching and creating the content is the time-consuming part. Publishing it is easy. A CMS might be nice if I worked on remote computers or had contributors, but at this point it seems like overkill for the kind of work that I do. Plus, I do pretty well in the search engines, and I'd be afraid of messing up a good thing.
Extra capacity and ability to have full control are a big plus. On the downside, I now have to make sure the server stays up - while with shared hosting the provider
would take care of that.
Like EV ..mostly static html pages
I wouldn't even think of trying to do that with any significant amount of dynamic content.
I pay $2.99 monthly to host them all on a shared server. (Used to have problems, but the host moved me to a new server and things have been 99.9% up for the last 12 months)
7.5-9.0 Million page views/mo
server costs: $119/mo
Many sites on the server
Main traffic draw is a busy forum
hosts about 50 sites
Nine sites distributed amonb three web hosts and six shared servers.
I'm fed up with security issues an logrolling, clogged up servers and backup services. It feels really good to buy all these services and still be on a budget.
Our AS revenue just started to consistantly break 1k per month recently. One of the things we're considering is adding video to certain portions of the site so we may make the move to dedicated servers soon. I think if your site is making money, you have to re-invest eventually. Consider it normal growing pains of expansion.
My reason for moving had more to do with desktop search programs (i.e., Copernic) eating up my resources with automated searches. (BTW - I still have not figured out how to block Copernic. Seems not to respond to robots.txt.) Also, programming is not my strength so I'm sure the hacks I've done to my open source CMS are also causing problems. Before I moved I tried hard to reduce resource usage but was not very successful.
But the way I look at it, the extra I'm spending on the dedicated server is probably cheaper than hiring a coder to review and fix the problems I've created. Also, with a dedicated server you could always sell space on the server to other in order to recoup some cost.
