On Fri, 10 Feb 1995 Jueneman(_at_)gte(_dot_)com wrote:
Seriously, though, how much do you feel would be a reasonable amount for a
user
to pay per year for a nominal directory listing (maybe a 1000-2000 bytes or
so,
but no MPEG home movies available for downloading -- the dating services will
have to pay extra). Would $20 per year sound reasonable? (Less than the annual
fee on most credit cards.) SOMEBODY has to cover the administrative costs,
even
if it is run as a charity.
I couldn't guess as to what a reasonable fee would be. $20 is certainly
OK. I probably wouldn't pay it for idealogical reasons, but it certainly
isn't outside the range of my pocket if I did register with a for-pay
server.
It isn't really good to make guesses as to costs. You really need to do a
budget: work out how much the equipment (computer, hard drive space) will
cost to store and maintain the directory, work out how many requests per
hour you think you'll get (this determines the IP link speed you need),
work out how many people you think you'll get registered, and work out how
many employees you need to run the thing. Don't ask me for sample numbers
though. I wouldn't know. :-)
Cheers,
Rhys.
--
Rhys Weatherley, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.
E-mail: rhys(_at_)fit(_dot_)qut(_dot_)edu(_dot_)au "net.maturity is knowing
when NOT to followup"