Terrible Financial Situation... (Please pitch in ideas)

[Sumit Menon]

Hey guys,

Before I start, I am not begging for money, I am just begging for ideas. And the financial situation isn't personal either. No, I'm not unemployed or getting kicked out of our house.

I'm 16 year old and a group of us teens have started a Post2Host forum. I don't wanna be hailed a spammer, so if you really wanna check it out then Google RackFree. It's the first result. But that's not important.

(And before you start puking about it being a Free Hosting Service, let me tell you, we are totally a non-profit organization and are doing this to help the newbies. You might say, a free host will never make you money, well then who cares? Most of our members don't even think of money. They wanna site up and that's all they care about. We are not targeting IMers anyway.)

Let's get back...

We have a VPS that costs us $50.55/month. And we think we can get enough revenues for the next month. But, this month we are a little short on money and are looking for ways to increase the income. Ads and donations are the major source of our income. But, we are looking for other methods for a passive income.

We are a bunch of teens and so we are a little good in coding, script installation etc.

But, the problem is the availability of time of the staff who knows this stuff!

So, could you suggest alternative methods with which we could make some money?

Thank You,
Sumit.

EDIT: I forgot to mention about our plans. It's totally non-profit and all the costs go for server maintenance. Here is the one twist we have:

We have noticed that students in schools do come up with a site but they find it extremely difficult to find a host. So, we have come up with eduSpark scheme, in which we will provide schools with 30-40 GB Reseller accounts, which they can later giveaway to the students, to get their site up and running, during the duration of the course. They can even keep the hosting, after the course, if they intend to become a member of our site. Just wanted to point out and ask you guys what you think about this idea.

[eholmlund]

Originally Posted by Sumit_Menon

let me tell you, we are totally a non-profit organization and are doing this to help the newbies. You might say, a free host will never make you money, well then who cares? Most of our members don't even think of money. They wanna site up and that's all they care about. We are not targeting IMers anyway.)

Really?

I find that hard to believe, but assuming you and your friends really don't care about making money... that's a big part of your problem.

You need to start viewing it and treating it as a for-profit business if you want it to be a profitable venture.

There are plenty of ways to turn it into a business...

-sell upgraded paid hosting packages
-offer site building service (ie. someone pays you to build a site and you host it for free)
-script installation service
-build an opt-in list of all your free clients, and promote relevant products and services to them
-etc.

[Sumit Menon]

Originally Posted by eholmlund

Really?

I find that hard to believe, but assuming you and your friends really don't care about making money... that's a big part of your problem.

You need to start viewing it and treating it as a for-profit business if you want it to be a profitable venture.

There are plenty of ways to turn it into a business...

-sell upgraded paid hosting packages
-offer site building service (ie. someone pays you to build a site and you host it for free)
-script installation service
-build an opt-in list of all your free clients, and promote relevant products and services to them
-etc.

Thanks eholmlund for the reply.

No, I was talking about the members who take the hosting don't care about money.

This is no business venture. All the money we need is for the server costs. We just wanna help people out.

We are trying to sell upgraded hosting, but can't find buyers cuz no one knows about us.
We try to help our members to the max. We even provide free script installation services.
Our client list is full of teenagers, so how would that be profitable?

Thanks, again.
Sumit.

[scott1995]

Hey guys, I think I've suggested this on your forum before:
Give people rackpoints for completing email submits
You only need to give people 10 rackpoints or so per submit, and each one can get you $0.50-$2! Get 20 members to do this... Bam! Your pretty much good for the month

[grumpyb]

Not for Profit does not mean that your services should be completely FREE of charge.

It means that you do not make a bottom line profit Thats a profit after covering you expenses.

This is how most not for profit organisations work for example here in Australia we have community radio and TV stations and I buy advertising from them Its called sponsorship.

First consider making a small charge for the web hosting just to cover the cost or part of it.

Second look for a sponsor who will cover the costs
This might be a local business or a celebrity who would see the benefit to the community in what you are doing.
Write out a mission statement and then go looking for a sponsor Make sure you put your mission statement on your website.

Hope this helps