A friend, who I’ll let go nameless unless he wishes to identify himself, was having a spirited debate with me about Internet advertising. He remarked that it seemed to him site owners would prefer getting more hits over having fewer hits with advertising. It is an interesting idea, but I would suggest that it is an idea that is actually the same as the one that led to the Dot Com bubble and bust.

But, first, as I told him, the key principle for viewing ads — from a Christian standpoint — is that we are told the laborer is worth his wages (Luke 10.7, 1 Tim. 5.17-18). So fundamentally, for Christians, before we debate whether or not refusing to view ads is doing favors for the business owner, we ought to stop right here. Full stop, move along, there is nothing more to see here. It is only a legalistic, “find the loophole” view of things that allows us to say, “ads, oh, I didn’t know that was a payment — surely I am not obligated to pay for services rendered to me!” The clear Christian principle is to pay for that which we receive. To deny a clear request for payment while enjoying the service rendered is simply wrong. And so, I try to practice this principle: if I find a site where I would need to remove the inline ads to be able to make use of it (because there are too many, or too many objectionable ones, etc.) I quit using the site. I’ve done so before, and will do so again.

That said, how is the business argument for overlooking people removing ads? Does it work? No. The flawed thinking here is based on the concept of “more eyeballs are better than profit.” Many early e-tailers worked on this principle selling products for massive losses purely to get more users. That could only work until they ran out of cash, then their companies died painful deaths.

The first rule of economics is simple: one produces a product up to but no farther than when marginal revenue equals marginal cost. If producing one more widget (or receiving one more visitor) means taking even the slightest loss, it doesn’t make good sense to do so. If I can receive 2,000 visitors and make a profit, it is in no way better to get 10,000 and take a loss under normal circumstances. You are not doing Digg a favor by using their services if you never view their ads. They are better off without you, unless you happen to be Rush Limbaugh or Oprah and your endorsement is worth millions. Otherwise, do your favorite site on which you block ads a favor: quit using it.

No doubt, writers like to be read and will write sometimes for no cost simply for the thrill of having readers. Bloggers do this most certainly — though in large part my interest has more to do with interacting with my blogging friends. My own writings generally are not income generators, at least of any significance. But, on the other hand, most folks don’t want to pay to be read. There are exceptions, for example, maybe I want you to read my site to sell my book, or my radio program, or what have you — but generally the question would be why would I pay you to read my work? Would I pay you to eat my culinary creation? Drive my car? Live in my house?

Yes, you as the reader pay for your Internet, but nearly every provider you deal with is paying more than you are. They are paying for redundant connections, power generators, backup storage, professional IT staffers and of course developers and writers of the services you enjoy — far more than the little $14.95 a month you pay for Internet access. And, remember: you are the one that wants to use Digg or MySpace (incidentally, I use the former little and the latter not at all), so it only makes sense that you are the one to foot the bill. That is how capitalism is suppose to work: the one who wants something pays for it. Put bluntly, if it costs you a little or a lot is your problem, not the provider’s.

And so, as always, I present my challenge to those who wish to do the morally right thing but despise ads. Quit viewing sites with ads. Typically people making such an argument say the Internet was better before ads. Fine, maybe it was; let’s find out by having you only use ad-free sites. Don’t forget, that means no Google. Have fun. If you like it that way, keep at it and everyone is happy. If you do not, well, then, can you really complain about the ads?

Here’s something I posted to the mailing lists OFB hosts:

Hi everyone,
I’m usually hesitant to advertise any of my services on the mailing lists I host (I do not want it to seem like I am hosting them to sell stuff), but I did do a little pitch in 2004 and I hope no one minds if I do the exact same thing in 2008. Here’s what the deal is. As some of you know, I do web hosting almost solely as a courtesy to my web design clients — I do not advertise on the web, etc. However, I am looking to upgrade my server and to make it cost effective, I would like to sell a few more accounts. As I did last time, what I would like to do is offer accounts that are larger than my normal plans but with a major caveat. I explained it thusly in 2004:

The real catch would be that it wouldn’t really be supported. I have a vested interest in keeping it up (OfB and my web design clients would be on it), but unfortunately I can’t provide 24×7 support. I would help if something went wrong with the server, but I’d rather promise no support and provide something than promise support and be unable to. If something happened like your site was completely down, then I’d get it working. Hopefully that makes sense.

Now, just to be clear, the server is watched 24×7, I just am not personally around to provide support 24×7. On the upside, you’re otherwise getting what I like to call an over engineered account. Your account is backed up off site every week, with five backups kept in the off site archive (rotated). Moreover, I never oversell servers: no one wants to be the last person to show up on an airplane when it is overbooked and most everyone showed up, and likewise it is not fair to web hosting customers to oversell the server. I will be moving less than 25 clients on to the server to start, and expect to keep the amount of users under 50 in the future — far less than the hundreds that go on a typical web server. In addition, the server is in a fully redundant data center with multiple tier 1 connections offering a total throughput of more than 120Gb/s. Over the current server’s run, we have achieved significantly better than 99.999% reliability.

This deal will only will happen if I get at least five people to take the offer (e.g. enough to make the server upgrade happen). The account costs $10/month paid annually.

You get everything my $10 Pine Account offers:
- 20,000 MB transfers
- 4 MySQL databases
- 10 subdomains or parked domains
- 2 FTP accounts
- CPanel and Fantastico

But, instead of my normal 300 MB of disk space, this account will come with 1 gig of space. Also, instead of 40 POP/IMAP accounts, you would get unlimited (whatever you can fit in your disk space). While you may not resell parts of that space, you may resell entire accounts if you wish and then provide tech support to your clients. If you are interested in being a reseller, I’ll provide a reseller control panel for working with your accounts.

The standard web hosting fine print (AUP/TOS): http://www.serverforest.com/aup-tos.html

Let me know if you are interested. Also, if this plan doesn’t meet your needs, let me know what would.

Thanks for bearing with my little sales pitch. For your amusement, my previous self-serving promotion from 2004 is included down below.

-Tim

The server will be, like the old one, an Red Hat Enterprise Linux server (great for its stability and security). It will also feature at least a Xeon 3040 for its CPU.

100 Megs of space
5 GB of transfers
cPanel Control Panel
Unlimited e-mail addresses within that 100 meg block
SSH Access
FTP Access
1 MySQL DB
Several domains and several subdomains (how many do you need?)

Interested? Let me know.

Have something you've been itching to say and been wanting someplace beyond your blog to say it? I'm itching to publish it. Open for Business is looking for article contributions on a wide variety of subjects -- current events, politics, religion, philosophy, culture, book reviews, and even fiction -- and your piece could be featured on its pages. I would love to publish pieces from some of my esteemed blog neighbors, either as a one-off type thing or, should anyone be interested, a continuing contributor basis.

Unfortunately, right now Open for Business is not able to provide payment for contributions, but we will link to your site in the bio at the bottom of your piece, so it provides you with some exposure (and bragging rights). OFB, in case any of my readers are not familiar with it, has been in online publication since 2001; featured on Slashdot numerous times and even once linked to from the Washington Post's web site, it has at times attracted over one million hits per month, and on a regular month attracts tens of thousands of visitors reading new articles and returning to the archive of content.

As it says on the site:

Open for Business accepts commentaries and other works on technology, current events, politics, philosophy, business and other relevant matters for publication. Commentaries should be 600-800 words in length, other works vary but should generally be kept to less than 1500 words. If you think you would like to contribute, contact OFB's editor, Timothy R. Butler.

C'mon, give it a try.

With the start of seminary, I’ve fallen pitifully behind on Open for Business. My big problem is that it is a small operation: there are only four writers on the masthead. While Ed carries a lot of the load of keeping fresh content on the site, I really need (and want) to keep posting my voice on OFB’s esteemed pages as well.

The problem is that I seem to have a case of writers blo. Not writers block, but writers blo. Now, you might ask, “what in the world is writers blo?” So, let me tell you: it is hitting the equivalent of writers block about half way through each article. I have a whole bunch of stubs of articles, where I get a really good idea, but seem to lose momentum and cannot seem to come up with the supporting themes to make the piece work. As I write this, I have two partial articles sitting on my desk, yearning to be finished. One of them hopefully will be done for a Monday publication. But, right now it sits there, just taunting me.

Hey, maybe I should have written an article on writer’s blo!

Two years ago this month, I purchased an invoicing system for my company. The idea was that it would automatically bill my clients monthly, quarterly, etc. and then I could just sit back and collect the money. Well, not really: I still have to provide service, after all!

Unfortunately, I found that just like my previous invoicing system, the new one was hardly the ideal of automation. WHMAP, as it is known, ties into my hosting control panel nicely, but it didn’t ever send out the bills automatically. It would generate them and then they would sit there until I went in and manually selected each one and told it to send. So much for efficiency.

So, a few months ago I decided to get a new system. I tried out a couple, researched even more (including some I passed up when I bought WHMAP), and decided on ClientExec. I really like CE's better tie in with PayPal (even without using subscriptions, the process can remain totally self service for the client: the client logs in, clicks "pay now" and it processes the payment and marks the invoice paid); moreover, the new system attaches the invoice to the e-mail it sends to the client rather than sending a message that tells my clients to login to read their new invoice. I also like that CE has a built in helpdesk system so that I can provide my clients with support and billing in one convenient location.

So what's odd? Tonight I went out to the mailbox and had a payment from a client. The invoice was enclosed with the payment. Guess what? The invoice wasn't from CE. WHMAP finally remembered to send an invoice!

Mike came pretty close on guessing about the mystery image, so I’ll give him the 20 asisaid points. Here’s the real thing:

The new logo is part of the unveiling of the third major "release" of Open for Business. In its first iteration, which I launched five years ago this day (October 5), it was intended to focus on linking to useful articles on migrating to Open Source software. Eventually, the plan was to include some white papers on migration projects and so on. Within a few months, however, OfB, as it came to be known, seemed to naturally flow into a site with some original commentary and news pieces outside of the narrow realm of Open Source migration, so in late April of 2002, I announced a "new OfB."

This new OfB focused primarily on original content, shoving non-original works off to the side somewhat. This was probably a smart move: there were so many sites that linked to interesting articles, another site that did just that would never have had the draw that OfB did during its height. This height was heightened with the partnership with the defunct LinuxandMain, along with KernelTrap, DesktopLinux and LinuxDevices to form LinuxDailyNews, a loose affiliate network that helped bring the stature of our small, independent sites up a bit in the world of Internet.com and OSDN. That launched on July 4, 2002, ushering in "wIndependence Day."

2002 was also the year that OfB broke its first major story. In late July, I caught wind of some really stupid dealings of Red Hat toward KDE with regards to an upcoming LinuxWorld expo and wrote a piece that dealt with the issues. It quickly spiraled much larger than I expected and, within hours, Red Hat would offer KDE several RHL systems to use to demo KDE 2.x at the upcoming expo. Many other major articles and interviews appeared, especially with the excellent contributions of my two partners in crime and brothers in Christ, Eduardo and Ed.

With the help of those same two, and a new more general mission to comment on anything interesting about life, the universe and everything, OFB returns after taking its first hiatus for the last six months. The new OFB sports an all new look and an update of its long time ball logo. It also is powered by my SAFARI CMS; the old site ran on a modified version of PHP-Nuke, and I regretted picking that CMS for almost the entire time the old site was up.

Today's launch is only the beginning, so I hope you'll make a habit of visiting OFB and enjoying the exciting new content that will be appearing there in the upcoming days and weeks.

On October 5th, the mystery object will no longer be a mystery.

This has been a long time coming… but it isn’t quite here yet. What is it?

Twenty asisaid points are waiting for those who guess correctly.

Update (2006.10.01): I've fixed a problem that kept my mystery image from showing up in some scenarios.

I’ve purposely tried to keep my company’s hosting business small: I’m the only person around to interact with customers (even though there are technicians at my datacenter who monitor the server and occasionally work on it), but I’ve tinkered with the idea of offering reseller accounts. Primarily, I envision offering 1 GB to 5 GB of storage space that the individual reseller would be free to divvy up as he or she pleased. You could give away accounts, charge whatever price you liked, etc.

Imagine some theoretical plans, such as:

• 1 GB of space/30 GB of transfers.
• 2 GB of space/60 GB of transfers.
• 3 GB of space/90 GB of transfers.

Plus the following standard features: weekly off server backups, Web Host Manager access so that the reseller can create custom hosting plans to subdivide the space and manage those plans, CPanel access for each sub account, etc. Essentially, this would be very much like a VPS, except that it wouldn’t have its own root; because of the way WHM is setup, you would get access to many of the tools I have access to however.

What if I left the transfers as noted above, but doubled the disk space on each of those accounts? Then how much would it be worth?

Any thoughts on what such a service might be worth? Anyone actually interested in such a service (no pressure, just curious if I’m thinking about marketing something no one would want). I’d probably want to sell no more than five of these types of accounts, because one of my primary goals is to insure that the server is not oversold (most hosts sell more service than they can provide, based on the fact that almost no one fully utilizes their account; however, I’m not interested in doing that).

Thanks for letting me pick your collective brains.

Note: This is one of the very rare occasions that I’m attempting to sell something via my blog. I apologize in advance for targeting y’all with this — feel free to ignore it if you’d like.

If you can’t beat ‘em on price, don’t pretend to, right?

I've had a Dotster reseller account for some years now. What that means is that I can resell domains via Dotster and receive a cut of the sale. I never bothered to promote it because my wholesale price was higher than a lot of other registrars' retail prices. Well, I still pay more than a limited number of registrars, but the price has gotten low enough that I can resell domain services for $9.95/year (versus $14.95 if you buy direct from Dotster). For my hosting clients, I usually provide full service registration (e.g. I handle all of the stuff with the registrar for them), so I've stuck with $15/year in the past. But, I've always contemplated doing something else with my domain reseller account.

Now, personally I prefer Dotster to some of the ultra-cheap places (like 1&1) simply because its management interface works better for me (which is important to me, because I own or manage nearly 50 domains). If for the same reason or some other reason, you'd like to register a name with Dotster, give me a holler and I'll give you beta access to the ServerForest domain registration service. You get the same administration tools (in fact, everything is still handled by Dotster, it just has my branding on it), but you pay only $9.95/year for new registrations of most TLD's and $7.95 for the first year of a domain transfer for most TLD's.