Business Model
for uidesign.net

Hi David

IMHO, the site must remain independent and non-profitmaking (taking into account your time), but costs are undoubtably an issue.

Have you considered formal sponsorship? Your friend at likk.net is already contributing, but it may be worthwhile approaching the key UI companies and individuals for further sponsorship - for example, Constantine & Lockwood ltd, Cooper Interaction Design , perhaps even Rational? I am sure you can think of others. The only concern would be independence - you would need to make it clear that the site was only sponsored, and was not linked with the sponsoring company/ies. You would also need the right to publish views which may directly or indirectly criticise your sponsors without them pulling the plug - they would be sponsoring the site as a service to the UI industry in general, and not as a direct advert.

The other issue is your own time - eventually you need to seriously consider delegating some of the responsibility and work. Perhaps it would be worthwhile requesting articles and papers for the site? Remember, you would be the editor, so you would still be in direct control of the site's content.

HTH. Keep up the good work.

Chris Pitts

Hi Chris,

I have always been keen to encourage others to write material for the site. However, this proved impossible in the beginning a year ago, so I dropped the idea. Perhaps now is the time to revisit it. I am particularly keen to here from anyone who has an article or white paper or book review which fits into the site content. It could be GUI, Web, WAP, Wireless, ASP, B2B as long as it has relevance for the issues involved in better Interaction Design.

David

David,

I don't believe that anyone in this business is going to argue with you about the cost of maintaining a viable site. If you do go commercial, the business model you select will be key. Any type of commercialization will add revenue, but it will also add overhead and the associated administrative costs. I think you have already found that the Amazon link is not going to pay the bills. If you are looking for my vote, I find most advertising on zines annoying, and prefer a subscription or membership model.

Why don't you come up with some commercialization options, and put it out on the site for a vote? With a little code, you should be able to survey your readership. Success brings its own set of challenges.

Good luck,

Jim Avery

Hello David,

I'm a physicist finding his way into the world of information technology. I've been writing code for years, so that's not an obstacle: but right from the start it's been clear to me that producing something which can really help an information seeker and user is very challenging - and, in addition, that the vast majority of developers seem not to care too much about it. For instance, I tried to find some material on web site design, and all I could locate were books on visual layout and HTML authoring. After being seriously frustrated by many many web sites with awful interfaces, despite flashy DHTML and whatever else, I could see that making something look nice is not enough!

Just this week I discovered your web magazine, and have already spent a good deal of time there. The number of web sites I visit where I have read articles from top to bottom I could count on one hand. That such a useful and pleasant to visit site as yours is non-commercial I find somehow ironic. I hope you can keep it that way, but I also hope you can get some reward for this valuable service - maybe the two are not reconcileable, I don't know.

In any case, thank you for your contribution. I have learned a lot already and have only read a very few articles so far. But I'll be back!

On the topic of money, when I buy from Amazon it's always amazon.de and not amazon.com. Is there any way to do that in a way that still makes a contribution?

Sincerely,

Tony Dyson

Hi Tony,

Thankyou for your kind words of encouragement. Indeed, you raise an important point. Trying to produce a webzine like this takes considerable effort. Very few people actually realise that this is essentially the output of one single person working a few hours, a few evenings per week. My wife has, so far, been very tolerant of this.

The cost of running the site for me is personal. Time spent producing the site is time away from my wife and dog and the few friends I have made in Dallas.

However, the cost of hosting the site is real. That cost is born by Alan Laird, owner of likk.net. I estimate that it costs around 2000 US Dollars per year to host the site. At the moment the Amazon affiliation certainly does not cover this cost. Though recent book sales have been encouraging and I really appreciate the contributions from readers.

The popularity of the site in increasing rapidly. 4 fold in the last 2 months. Assuming that the site continues to grow in popularity, then the cost of hosting it will increase linearly. This site already serves up over 50MegaBytes of data per day. If that were to reach 500 MBs then the costs of hosting would probably be beyond our personal means.

Alan and I are discussing alternative means of finance for the site at the moment. Expect to see some changes over the coming months. I certainly hope that the site can remain as uncommercial as possible. However, I cannot promise this.

Best regards,

David