Need investment advice for web-startup

[irishguru]

Hi,

I recently created a site I believe will be a good money maker.

http://questionlounge.com

However I need money to be able to afford a sever capable of running the script that powers the site.

What advice can you give me on getting an investor for my startup?

 

[DesignerNick]

It looks like a script scraping various sources?

Why not just get your own hosting and keep anything it makes from adverts?

 

[irishguru]

It looks like a script scraping various sources?

Why not just get your own hosting and keep anything it makes from adverts?

It needs a lot of system resources and I can't afford the more expensive necessary server option.

 

What sort of investment areyou thinking of? (Amount, type)

Presumably a server costs a few grand? If so, I would suggests friends & family (and fools, if you can find them)

 

[oldeagleeye]

I can't see the site making much of a profit. You might just as well Wiki or Yahoo. More than enough to put any investor off. Suggest you concertrate on building advertising revenue.

You might also want to get your numbers right first however Irish otherwise it looks like your scamming and quite frankly I personally find them hard to believe anyway. I quote.

Total questions this year ( I presume that means this pasy rear and not 2011 and the 3 weeks of it we are into)
63,542
Total questions past 30 days
82,958 ( 20% more in 1 month that a whole year. ???)

To get advertisers buddy your going to have to prove your traffic stats.

 

[akirk]

And site doesn't open either

Alasdair

 

[irishguru]

I can't see the site making much of a profit. You might just as well Wiki or Yahoo. More than enough to put any investor off. Suggest you concertrate on building advertising revenue.

You might also want to get your numbers right first however Irish otherwise it looks like your scamming and quite frankly I personally find them hard to believe anyway. I quote.

Total questions this year ( I presume that means this pasy rear and not 2011 and the 3 weeks of it we are into)
63,542
Total questions past 30 days
82,958 ( 20% more in 1 month that a whole year. ???)

To get advertisers buddy your going to have to prove your traffic stats.

There's going to be more past 30 days because this year is only 25 days in and the site was down for a while this year so the numbers are smaller.

To the other guy about the site not loading, that's the issue, it doesn't load because it needs a better server that can run the script and load the site without difficulty.

It's only new on the web too and I do think it has potential, just not right off the bat but it will get there as it grows and finds more positions in the SERPS.

Just now the issue is affording a $115 per month hosting bill.

 

[DesignerNick]

The thing is, why wouldn't I just install that script and let it run and get the hosting myself?

To have a web project you are going to need to invest in a VPS / Dedicated server.

 

[irishguru]

The thing is, why wouldn't I just install that script and let it run and get the hosting myself?

To have a web project you are going to need to invest in a VPS / Dedicated server.

Yes I know, that's what I have asked about "getting an investor to help me pay for the server". Something which I cannot afford, so in the mean time while I can't afford it I would like to have support but don't know where to go to ask for it.

 

[Graemem]

I've just looked at the site (It took an age to load though). All your doing is pulling questions off of other sites? Firstly, are you allowed to do that? Secondly, what are your visitor numbers? Do you really need a dedicated server? If you just need the root access and ability to install what you need then why not try a VPS? Much cheaper and you can just upgrade it until you get to a dedicated server.

Unless your doing something to the articles once they get to your site that would make your site pop up in front of yahoo answers in search engines, I don't think it's going to work. Does it? I'd be interested to see what visitor numbers are already, I don't think the 101,000 questions is much to go on. I built a similar website that pulled news articles in a similar way, but after a while i realised it was pointless. Though by then I had amassed a database of about 500,000 articles. That didn't matter though as no one came to the site to see them.

I don't even know how you would market it to be honest, getting the money to run a server for a year isn't too hard, but I think the money to pull in visitors to read your questions would be a bit harder. They can't even ask a question on the website?

Maybe I'm just sceptical, but I did try something quite similar and quickly realised it wouldn't work.

 

[irishguru]

Hey YellowDuckSale

I have already tested the traffic potential and as the site grows there's at least a potential 3-900k or more visitors per month.

I am basing this on researching a similar site that is pulling in over 2 million visitors per month.

About the VPS, I already am on a VPS server but the issue is that I need to go to a server that is out of my budget range.

However I just got some freelance writing work that I hope is consistent so I can then upgrade to a better server and afford to pay it.

 

[akirk]

To the other guy about the site not loading, that's the issue, it doesn't load because it needs a better server that can run the script and load the site without difficulty.

really?

or is it the way it is coded?

the only reasons you will have a slow loading web page are:
a) too many people on the site for the server
b) a badly coded web page

are you getting that many visitors, or is the page actually pulling stuff in live as it is loaded? If the latter - the issue is in the coding, not the server...

usually a website of the type you mention where it is monetised against numbers of visitors tends not to have too much of the former issue as by the time they hit too many visitors they have sufficiently monetised to pay the upgraded server hosting - the server costs you are quoting are cheap, and if you are getting the visitors needed to slow the server down, you should be able to monetise sufficiently to pay for it.

my suspicion is that you don't have that number of visitors - which suggests that the web page is pulling the information in live as loaded - which is incredibly inefficient... and your solution is better coding, not a more expensive server...

that server cost is low - we pay more for our servers once you include backup / firewalls / etc. - so - if you are planning on getting a lot of visitors you will need to spend a lot more - data (putting aside the legality of pinching information from others) should be stored locally on clustered or cloud servers as speed of serving the data is critical...

so, the approach you are taking is not investable.
additionally it sounds as though you are collecting information which is others' IP, not yours - if you don't own the IP there is nothing to invest in - if you are using IP from others without their permission (and I am not sure why they would share it) then you risk losing everything...

so ultimately this is a very non-investable prospect.

Alasdair

 

[irishguru]

Hi Alsidair,

It's the script I have created that causes the server to need a better server in order for the site to run properly.

I do understand your other points, however it is fully legit as per all TOS I have come across.

I will just have to do my best to try and ensure that I get enough money to upgrade my server to something more powerful.

Thanks for your input.

 

[akirk]

Hi Alsidair,

It's the script I have created that causes the server to need a better server in order for the site to run properly.

I do understand your other points, however it is fully legit as per all TOS I have come across.

I will just have to do my best to try and ensure that I get enough money to upgrade my server to something more powerful.

Thanks for your input.

Sorry - this doesn't sound right.

Scripts should not be running as I load the page - they should be running behind the scenes populating your own data store - therefore the coding is not right...

from what you say, I assume that I am right in saying that you are scraping info from other sites as I load the page? If so, this is the wrong approach... do it offline and feed me the info quickly then you do not need another server.

Alasdair

 

[Graemem]

Sorry - this doesn't sound right.

Scripts should not be running as I load the page - they should be running behind the scenes populating your own data store - therefore the coding is not right...

from what you say, I assume that I am right in saying that you are scraping info from other sites as I load the page? If so, this is the wrong approach... do it offline and feed me the info quickly then you do not need another server.

Alasdair

That's what I wondered. You could have the best server possible but if you are running the scrapper every time a user visits then it's not going to make a difference. What if you get those 3-4 thousands users a month? No wonder your server costs would be high.

You can use things like cron jobs to schedule the scrapper to run at certain intervals, the user won't see any lag unless they come while it's running, and even then it won't be as bad.

How do you get the data, do you have access to APIs or do you load up the site/xml feeds and take it that way? You only seem to be getting the questions, then linking back to the website... Not really much use in that, the related questions feature is nice, but again that's on the actual website, so why would a user come back to you after clicking one question?

Also is the $115 for the VPS? As that seems a bit steep, you can find them from £5/10 a month, hosted in the UK. I think if you changed the way your running the scrapper you'd see you don't need as much bandwidth/processing time for it.

 

[DesignerNick]

As said you would be much better using a cron and storing the data in a database. It will run in the background and only once every so often