"we spend $0 on promotion, relying entirely on word-of-mouth, and close to $0 on distribution because bandwidth costs and space are so inexpensive."
Yeah, right.
3 dedicated servers with 12 terabytes of data transfer are "inexpensive" for us all.
- or rather -
Rocketboom costs "close to $0" in that "I don't have to make money cause I live off my trust fund"-kind-of-a-way.
It drives me nuts that Andrew perpetually insists that he makes the show for free or close-to-free. It's cheaper than ABC World News Tonight -- for sure! That's what should be celebrated, not this idea that any kid in the barrio should be able to make Rocketboom with their bus money (if they even have 85 cents for the Vía bus). I'm working four jobs to pay the rent, and while I'd like to work on my videoblog show all day every day, 3 to 4 hours a week is the most I ever get -- not 5 x 8-10-hour days, working with a collaborator I've hired. Promotion is $0?? Again, only to someone who doesn't understand that _all_ time is money when you freelance, and that top-tier contacts from elite schools and an Manhattan address are not free.
Oh, and maybe someone can explain to Andrew the difference between hits and individual viewers. 150,000 hits does not equate to 150,000 people.
just my rant of the day... I'll shut-up and go back to grading, so I can hopefully write up some bids before I crash, and get up tomorrow to go teach again... and maybe one of these days I'll have half a day to work on my films.
jen
Here is the quote from Andrew:
>>>To provide a reference point for the conversation, Rocketboom
currently uses 1 dedicated 100mbs server on Dreamhost to handle the
database and webpages alone and 2 dedicated 100mbs servers on Datagram
to host the videos and the images, for a total of a 300mbit/sec pipe
size. The 2 datagram servers are mirror images (they both hold the
same video and image files) and every single request for a video or
image is alternated like a switch back and forth to each of the two
servers. Our audience number is about 150,000/day of steady flow and
every video now gets over 250,000 downloads (mostly reaching that
number over the course of a few days). Last month we used 12 terabytes
of data transfer on the two Datagram servers and not more than a
Terrabyte on the Dreamhost server (mostly html and xml pages). <<<
