Midnight Oil

I hear over and over from people who are thinking about trying to monetize a fun side project “to cover hosting costs.” I have even succumbed to this line of thinking a few times: “Let’s just throw on AdSense and see what happens..” Whenever you get this idea, you need to resist temptation and push aside your thoughts of casual money. Especially in the case of AdSense, you’ll just end up making your site a little uglier, while probably not even making enough money to cover the time you spent inserting the ad code.

First, let’s examine what it really takes to “cover costs.” Even assuming your side project is a fairly hefty web app that requires its own VPS, you’re still probably looking at no more than $100/mo in hosting fees. Put in context, you’re probably spending less on your project than you’re spending on your cell phone, and that $100 estimate is on the high end. Most side projects can run on the crappy shared hosting you’ve got your blog on, or piggy-backed on a VPS you’re using for something else. In those cases, it’s essentially free.

Still want to cover your hosting costs? Well that’s easy. Just cancel your cable tv, or skip eating at a restaurant twice. Costs covered.

Second and most important, remember that it’s perfectly acceptable to have hobbies that cost you money and provide nothing in return except enjoyment. My favorite comparison here is rec-league softball. I played for several seasons and I loved it. I had to spend about $100 to get all my equipment, and then each season had a registration fee of about $60. It never occurred to me to monetize my softball game in order to cover those costs. Maybe I could have sold ad space on my jersey, or some crap like that, but it probably would have been a huge waste of time. Why should a web hobby be any different?

The only reason to monetize a web project is if you intend to make serious money. There’s no guarantee that you’ll succeed, but a sizable payout (defined however you want) should be the goal. Until you’re ready to look in the mirror and say, “Let’s make some money!” then don’t worry about it. Just take pleasure in your hobby and the knowledge that you’re making the web a better place.

Update A lot of people on Hacker News disagreed with my “suck it up” mentality, and a few had some really good ideas on how to cover costs, without resorting to AdSense.

From jeff18:

• Ask a buddy to let you put the site on one of their under utilized servers. Sharing a VPS amongst a group of friends is a great way to spread costs.
• Ask a company to sponsor you.
• Ask for donations from the community. This is probably one of the best ways to “cover costs” if that’s your true goal. Just run a fundraiser once a year or so.

Regarding Jeff’s company sponsorship idea, I can personally say that’s a good one. I (as Obsidian Portal) offered to host the RPG Bloggers Network for free, in exchange for a “hosted by” link and a note to contact me for an introduction in the email sent to new members. They ultimately turned down the offer, but it would have been a killer deal for me.

From uggedal: Collect referral fees. Uggedal supports wasitup with referral bonuses to Linode. Referrals to your hosting company makes perfect sense for a hacker project, but you may have to get more creative if your subject domain isn’t hacker-centric.