- Joined
- Jun 17, 2000
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I saw a couple of comments in another thread and I think I need to clear some things up.
This site is completely independent and aside from the content that I don't write and our terrific group of mods, the rest is run by me as it pertains to a cost and functional standpoint. I originally had a site back in 1997 called "Ian's Patriots Homepage", and I started this place back in late 2000 and it went live in early 2001 after another site (Rivals.com) spotted my cheesy Patriots page and asked me to maintain their Patriots section, only to later fold after they apparently blew through millions of dollars (they were bought out later and came back as a college sports site). After that experience, I didn't want to have the rug pulled out from underneath me again, so I put this place together. A friend of mine had some message board software and a server (I knew nothing about handling my own back then) so he agreed to host the site and I was able to keep those of us who were on here together.
As it grew and started experiencing issues, I decided to take the plunge and move us over to our own server, which was expensive but after we lost all of our posts from 2005 and previous, I was bummed about that and I wanted full control over our future moving forward since we had an awesome group of people here and it sucked losing all those posts.
Since then I've really worked hard to upgrade this place and keep making it better, although I know we've had some bumps along the way and a lot of it has been frustrating. I know this place looks "professional" (or so people have said, which is appreciated
) but it's seriously just me doing all the site-work. There's no corporate backing, and aside from what ad revenue that does come in, I don't receive any help from anyone except the people who have kicked in here. Gannett launched an affiliate network years ago where they contacted me and offered to put us on their ad network (which was supposed to boost things but never really did) along with providing us an account for licensed photos with US Presswire (now USA Today Images), which allowed me to do a little more design-wise since we could legally use photos. So that's all there is in terms of the USA TODAY logo at the bottom, for anyone who ever wondered
But this definitely isn't an endeavor that makes much money and the site costs $600 a month to host with a fully managed dual-server configuration, which is what I have us on. When we first changed over to that after I first started experiencing issues on our old configuration, that was when I started offering the ability for people to donate. The goal has been to at least make it self-sustaining because I can't afford to pour money into it like I did for a long time, so when I finally relented and allowed people to kick in donations, it's definitely helped. Those of you who have been here for a long time and remember this know that I was really, really hesitant to do it because I wasn't comfortable accepting people's money.
As I stated in another thread, the ProShop doesn't pay us. The deal I managed to make with them was/is a trade where in exchange for having their links at the top of the board, they agreed to ship a T-shirt package to people who donated to the site. I came up with this idea because I wasn't comfortable with people just sending money without being able to give them something in return, and figured this was the best way to do it. The deal went stagnant for a while over the last year and a half, but I recently worked on making sure we could do it again and have been trying to set up a better way to manage your addresses for people that do as well as coming up with a way to improve keeping track of it.
Other than that, I don't receive anything from them whether you buy anything or not. But I'm sure if they start feeling like they're not recouping anything, I'm guessing that might be an issue. I will tell you that one of the things I was told was that the league gets less money when the item is purchased directly from the team vs through another licensed supplier, as they apparently have to pay higher licensing fees. That's obviously why I'm sure the Patriots have their own ProShop where other teams power their site through another company.
But anyway, that's the story. Aside from my relationship with my contact at the ProShop, that's about the extent of that in terms of our relationship with the team. And as for the NFL, they've sent me quite a few FedEx envelopes over the years regarding various ridiculous issues that I won't get into, so I'm not a fan of them to begin with and this last year-plus certainly hasn't changed my mind there.
Honestly, this place is a lot of fun to be a part of and to run, and it will be here as long as people want it to be. I've made countless friends with so many of you, which has made all the frustrating nights and situations that we've dealt with worth it. It also gives me something to take my mind off of all the things from the day-to-day part of life, so I'm sure like many people here, it's definitely a nice distraction from things.
On another note, I've been spending a ton of time this offseason working on some new features for this year that should be fun and will include some cool contests, and there will be a more condensed layout coming that will reduce the ads and address some of the spacing people have frustrated people. I'm really focused on trying to improve the user experience, so hopefully it will be something for people to look forward to.
So thank you to everyone. Otherwise, "I'm just trying to keep getting better one day at a time, one week at a time. That's what I try to do, that's what I've always tried to do"
This site is completely independent and aside from the content that I don't write and our terrific group of mods, the rest is run by me as it pertains to a cost and functional standpoint. I originally had a site back in 1997 called "Ian's Patriots Homepage", and I started this place back in late 2000 and it went live in early 2001 after another site (Rivals.com) spotted my cheesy Patriots page and asked me to maintain their Patriots section, only to later fold after they apparently blew through millions of dollars (they were bought out later and came back as a college sports site). After that experience, I didn't want to have the rug pulled out from underneath me again, so I put this place together. A friend of mine had some message board software and a server (I knew nothing about handling my own back then) so he agreed to host the site and I was able to keep those of us who were on here together.
As it grew and started experiencing issues, I decided to take the plunge and move us over to our own server, which was expensive but after we lost all of our posts from 2005 and previous, I was bummed about that and I wanted full control over our future moving forward since we had an awesome group of people here and it sucked losing all those posts.
Since then I've really worked hard to upgrade this place and keep making it better, although I know we've had some bumps along the way and a lot of it has been frustrating. I know this place looks "professional" (or so people have said, which is appreciated
) but it's seriously just me doing all the site-work. There's no corporate backing, and aside from what ad revenue that does come in, I don't receive any help from anyone except the people who have kicked in here. Gannett launched an affiliate network years ago where they contacted me and offered to put us on their ad network (which was supposed to boost things but never really did) along with providing us an account for licensed photos with US Presswire (now USA Today Images), which allowed me to do a little more design-wise since we could legally use photos. So that's all there is in terms of the USA TODAY logo at the bottom, for anyone who ever wondered But this definitely isn't an endeavor that makes much money and the site costs $600 a month to host with a fully managed dual-server configuration, which is what I have us on. When we first changed over to that after I first started experiencing issues on our old configuration, that was when I started offering the ability for people to donate. The goal has been to at least make it self-sustaining because I can't afford to pour money into it like I did for a long time, so when I finally relented and allowed people to kick in donations, it's definitely helped. Those of you who have been here for a long time and remember this know that I was really, really hesitant to do it because I wasn't comfortable accepting people's money.
As I stated in another thread, the ProShop doesn't pay us. The deal I managed to make with them was/is a trade where in exchange for having their links at the top of the board, they agreed to ship a T-shirt package to people who donated to the site. I came up with this idea because I wasn't comfortable with people just sending money without being able to give them something in return, and figured this was the best way to do it. The deal went stagnant for a while over the last year and a half, but I recently worked on making sure we could do it again and have been trying to set up a better way to manage your addresses for people that do as well as coming up with a way to improve keeping track of it.
Other than that, I don't receive anything from them whether you buy anything or not. But I'm sure if they start feeling like they're not recouping anything, I'm guessing that might be an issue. I will tell you that one of the things I was told was that the league gets less money when the item is purchased directly from the team vs through another licensed supplier, as they apparently have to pay higher licensing fees. That's obviously why I'm sure the Patriots have their own ProShop where other teams power their site through another company.
But anyway, that's the story. Aside from my relationship with my contact at the ProShop, that's about the extent of that in terms of our relationship with the team. And as for the NFL, they've sent me quite a few FedEx envelopes over the years regarding various ridiculous issues that I won't get into, so I'm not a fan of them to begin with and this last year-plus certainly hasn't changed my mind there.
Honestly, this place is a lot of fun to be a part of and to run, and it will be here as long as people want it to be. I've made countless friends with so many of you, which has made all the frustrating nights and situations that we've dealt with worth it. It also gives me something to take my mind off of all the things from the day-to-day part of life, so I'm sure like many people here, it's definitely a nice distraction from things.
On another note, I've been spending a ton of time this offseason working on some new features for this year that should be fun and will include some cool contests, and there will be a more condensed layout coming that will reduce the ads and address some of the spacing people have frustrated people. I'm really focused on trying to improve the user experience, so hopefully it will be something for people to look forward to.
So thank you to everyone. Otherwise, "I'm just trying to keep getting better one day at a time, one week at a time. That's what I try to do, that's what I've always tried to do"
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