I'm not sure anyone who provided a website like his would count the perceived "value" any of the personal time against the pleasure of providing a service such as he did. The real costs probably came from the upkeep of the website itself. I've been buying my own web services for websites that I do since the 90s and I can't remember how they were priced back then, but I know the costs were higher than they are today. Especially if he had to pay extra for databases, more bandwidth, access to scripting services such as cgi, perl or asp (I have no idea of the tech he used, just tossing some possibilities out). Today, most large provides give you a decent amount of bandwidth, free scripting access (for the most part) and a healthy amount of database storage. For the two web sites that I run I pay $70/year for one and $95/year for the other. I don't pay extra for more bandwidth, storage or mysql databases, but then again I don't deal with a million visitors a year. If I did I could see myself paying several hundred dollars per year for each site. It's so easy to place a "Please donate here" Paypal link on a web site. I bet if he had done that prominently more people would have contributed. Greg Matthews ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kith-n-Kin" <Kith-n-Kin@cox.net> To: <varoots@rootsweb.com> Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2007 5:09 PM Subject: Re: [VAROOTS] English-America website gone - where? > This is one of those occasions where I am sorry I didn't know about > something valuable out there, just because I "hadn't gotten that far." > > For those who wonder why "all this isn't free," this is instructive > reading. > > I think he missed a bit, so not counting what he probably did "for > himself", > this tells it: [brackets mine] > > Cost of One person - [personal time @ $30/hr] > Cost of research [travel, books, manuscripts, copies] > Cost of compiling [personal time @ $20/hr, plus, say, Excel or Access @ > $500] > Cost of website [10 years] [$100?] > Cost of web publishing [say $200 for software, plus $25/hr for building > the > pages and upkeep] > > Contrasted with: > > Number of visitors - over 1 million/year > Number of requests for individualized research - hundreds > Number of appreciative e-mails - dozens > Number of donations in 10 years - 6 > > I'm sure no one wonders why he gave up. > > But isn't it amazing how many people think this is just how it "should be" > -- not only with the volunteer sites, such as this one, but the commercial > sites as well (which I gather he was trying to avoid). I'll bet he was a > contributor (money wise) to Rootsweb 'way back as well. > > How sad. > > It'd be nice if he would donate it to someone who could post it -- or he > could publish it in, perhaps, PDF, so we could buy it. Anyone know Thomas > Langford? > > Pat (in Tucson) > > -----Original Message----- > From: varoots-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:varoots-bounces@rootsweb.com] > On > Behalf Of Robert Stafford > Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2007 10:49 AM > To: varoots@rootsweb.com > Subject: Re: [VAROOTS] English-America website gone - where? > > This page from the Wayback Machine tells the story: > > http://web.archive.org/web/20060615014221/http://english-america.com/index.h > tml > > You can pull up other pages with search: > > http://www.archive.org/web/web.php > > Bob Stafford > > > > Vickie Elam White <VEWhite@nycap.rr.com> wrote: Does anyone on this list > happen to know the fantastic website English-America.com? I > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > VAROOTS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes > in the subject and the body of the message > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > VAROOTS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message