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Index of Subjects Hi all! On Sun, 11 Oct 1998, Peter Morgan wrote: > >me to the belief that if we tried to up the cost for these to $400/annum > >at least 4 of these would certainly opt out or move out (sports group; > >student newspaper; research project & prof group). Finding $400 one-time > >was a big enough shtick for them let alone $400 per annum. > > And/or they do not see a value in paying $400 annually. Where would these > folks go? No one else that I know of offers VDN's for free. They would have > to pay an annual/monthly fee for anything but a very small, advertising > laden geocities site. $400/year represents a better value considering what > we bundle with it. Here's the thing: this issue of how much 'value' something has can be 'evaluated 'along various axes, however, one needs to bear in mind the following For a business IP (for which we have a separate category of memberships & structures) one can, for instance, say that if something (like a VDN) brings in more revenue then its cost (however one gauges that) then it is profitable and worthwhile maintaining. One can, of course evaluate this against various criteria, not just strict $ coming, however, the principle remains the same. In the case of non-profit IPs, most of the ones we have on the CCN have no real revenue-generation capacity. The Picaro - a student newspaper; Heart-Health Nova Scotia - a research project to improve the heart health of Nova Scotians; SCETTNS - a professional society of engineers; Canadian Ski-Patrol - a non profit. These IPs, while enjoying the convince of a VDN and its easy identification, etc., will not see any revenue boost as a result of it (to be able to cover annual operating costs of $400) since the role of these organizations is not in any direct way to generate revenues. As to where they would/could go, they might either drop the VDN or go elsewhere. The commercial sector is not the only option for such groups. I keep drawing attention to Ednet and (for instance) Dalhousie University where at least several of these IPs could go. What they could arrange or negotiate there I won't speculate on but we've seen this happen before. > At some point in the future it would be nice to be well off and say: "Hey, > IP, the best thing going is your own domain and we offer this for free." > For now we need sustainable revenue. I agree we need sustainable revenue: I disagree that annual $400 fees for VDNs for our *non-profit* IP sector would profit either the CCN or the IPs. 1) I don't think this fee reflects the (primarily) one-time costs associated with creating a VDN. 2) I think this level of cost would discourage and/or drive away potential candidates for such a service, thus leaving us with less revenue, rather than more. 3) A sustainable fee level for this sector is (in my view) much closer to a $400 start-up cost and a $100 annual fee. > >VDN's. They've all put a VDN on a distant back burner since they feel the > >_current_ (one time) price tag is still too steep for them. > > I guess I gotta say that that is too bad, but we simply can't give away our > resources (time/energy) > > >Aside from the fact that I believe the proposed price tier doesn't reflect > >the (primarily) one-time set up costs, in any immediately foreseeable > > My experience as a consumer of these sorts of things is that sure, a few > keystrokes, a bit of email and poof, like magic I have a domain. However, > there are a whole series of ongoing issues. Mail account setup/deletion. > Questions about web space, directories, cgi-bin, etc etc etc. To say > nothing of the overhead to support all this: telephone lines, office staff. > (Since a VDN is not also paying an individual fee we are providing a phone > line which costs us every month -- $3/month in the case of the 20:1 PPP > ratio.) And then hardware and software upgrades ... Yikes. There is no doubt that there are significant time/effort/hardware/services costs associated with IP's. I need to point out that the great majority of those have been borne by CCN volunteers: postmaster, user-help, ip-help; ip-training, user-training, postmaster, editors, CCN IP Committee, mailing-list administration, etc. As volunteer contributions, none of these have cost the CCN anything. Now perhaps we should consider costing these out and charging accordingly. I'm far from certain that out volunteer base is going to be as keen to provide on-going free support to a substantial revenue generation operation. We can't ask people to be employee's for free. In other words, if we start charging big bucks for services, those IPs are going to expect a level of support which is unreasonable to expect unpaid volunteers to supply. We can, of course, cost these out and start providing remuneration for service, but in this case we're discussing a whole other kettle of fish. N.B. PPP service does represent a whole new hardware/software/service/support issue. It is discreet from the issue of VDNs and I don't see why we can't charge an identifiable and wholly market-positioned fee for it. > >future I can't envision VDN fees (of the kind proposed) from the > >non-profit IP sector forming any substantive revenue source for the CCN. > > 50 IP's times $400 = $20,000/year But this is complete pie-in-the-sky. We can make up whatever number we like but this bears no relation to our IP base. We currently have 1 non-profit IP ready to pay a $400 annual fee for a VDN and I'll eat my proverbial hat if we could get even 5 additional ones in the near future, let alone 50. ;-> > >C) How about CSuite? I recall our business plan/forecasts the projected we > >could make/build a substantial revenue for this in terms of technical > >support and development once there was a sufficiently large installed base > >of the technology. I think we have a real winner on our hands with this > >technology. Where are we in terms of moving this technology? > > CSuite is dead in the water, to put it bluntly. I agree -- Great > Technology. Currently CSuite is a Cooperative Inc. There is not sufficient > energy/technical expertise to move it forward. the most optimistic biz plan > would see it as a cash sink for a year, in any case. Gosh, it was only 14 months ago that we officially launched CSuite with all that Industry Canada funding. I don't know anything about the energy/technical issues involved, but I do know that it won't sell itself. I would think that some seed funding for marketing would be a good investment here ... > But no one else offers what we do: a community of users, extremely > low-cost, services to both high end and low end users, etc. This may be true, however: 1) Someone out there offers just about all the individual components we do; and 2) Consumers are not always that discerning. ;->