Dear Hostel Management Readers,
It is with mixed emotions that I write this to inform you of some upcoming changes to HostelManagement.com and to solicit your input.
Over the past several years, HostelManagement.com has rapidly grown into the largest resource of free business information for the hostel industry worldwide, with over 5,000 pages of content, thousands of visitors per week, and over 1 million website pageviews per year. Thousands of you have come together to contribute your thoughts, questions, ideas, advice, and generally support and encourage the hostel industry at large.
Offline events, meetings and connections have taken place across the globe, and friendships have been forged that supersede ordinary business colleague relations. You have taken this site beyond a resource of information and turned it into a worldwide hostel community. I cannot begin to express my gratitude to all of you for your involvement and your continued enthusiasm for hostels.
How HostelManagement.com Has Been Funded:
HostelManagement.com began years ago as my personal project, and was funded directly out of my pocket. Until recently, HostelManagement.com also received funding from consulting, marketing, web design, and other hostel-related services performed by a small dedicated team under my management. We are no longer able to take new clients due to time constraints. Unfortunately, with the end of that income source, the funding for HostelManagement.com is now once again coming directly from me, which is not sustainable. The cost of running HostelManagement.com is in the tens of thousands of dollars per year, not including the countless hours I've spent developing it and the thousands of emails that I send and receive each year on its behalf. The site is simply beyond my means to financially support alone.
I am looking for a long-term solution.
Since the amount of cash that HostelManagement.com currently holds is nearing its end, and I cannot continue to pay for the project's bills myself, a solution needs to be found quickly.
Some ideas that have been discussed are:
Once again, on behalf of the HostelManagement.com team, I want to thank everyone who has contributed to making this site the leading resource for hostel information online and for making it the rewarding community that it has become! If you have any feedback or suggestions, I would like to hear them. My email address is [email][email protected][/email].
Thanks,
Josh (Hostels)
Founder & Webmaster
Rucksack Brian
Community Manager
12 years
I say go for Ads. Maybe the hostels themselves can post some ads here. Also some of the companies developing hostel management software may post some ads (it makes sense considering the public).
Also some affiliation would be interesting.
Like some affiliation with hostels, hotels or books.
12 years
There's an option i didn't see...and that is to charge a membership fee to the site. perhaps having different levels for those who have hostels and those seeking hostels. barring that, i think advertising or not-for-profit. However, i think the not-for-profit angle will be harder in this recession environment, while hostelling ads could be very profitable because services that are directed at our market segment currently have no where to advertise...good luck to you josh as i'd hate to see this end.
12 years
Hi Josh,
Long time lurker almost never poster here :)
A few thoughts:
a) Before anything else, look at your cost base. If (without taking into account your own time) you're spending "tens of thousands of dollars" per annum running this, then there could be significant means to cut that back to something far more reasonable. To be honest I'm struggling to figure out what you are spending the money on!
So I'm not trying to pry, but if you were to post some kind of outline of where that money is going, readers may be better able to give suggestions on how your costs could be brought under control.
b) Regarding your various funding ideas, assuming you're aiming to recoup say $20k per annum, then a combination of your second and fourth points would be the most practical. I know nothing about non-profits, but think you'd struggle to raise that through donations, especially given you'd need it year in year out. There's some obvious hostel-related services that would have considerable appeal for hostel owners, and if they're looking for a targeted niche, you've certainly created it here. If you're thinking of Adsense, I'd recommend against it, especially given what you say about placement, as there's no way you'll raise $20k p.a. on Adsense in a forum on the traffic level you mention.
c) Couchsurfing used to put out a detailed financial report before they shifted to the dark side, see here for an example: http://www.couchsurfing.org/organization_finances_2007.html I'd suggest putting something like that together along with some detailed readership stats and approaching a few hostel targeted businesses (eg the booking mgt mobs) cap in hand and see what they have to say.
But I would say, the first priority should be to get your costs under control. Speaking from experience I know forum & site mgt can be somewhat labour intensive, but I think that would be the right place to start. Cut those in half and you need to ask site sponsors for half the dosh - win win.
Good luck
Stuart
12 years
Hi Josh
I say put ads up. I personally would love to place an ad on the site towards the end of the year. And i dont think ads will make people enjoy the site less. Especially if they are well placed and there is no constant popups and other annoying stuff
Regards
William
12 years
In my opinion you should try to hope in members´support. If it´s not enough, you can put ads.
This forum is something not very common, competitors in a business sharing informations. Whatever is the initial goal, turning it into an organization and / or let someone invest some money, even for no profit, can be dangerous soon or later. A membership fee makes complicated having new members, probably.
Thank you for your work and help so far, anyway.
c.
12 years
I've been there, not only are you lose a lot of money but the majority of the people couldn't care less. I think a few adverts and a donate button is a great idea.(I don't know how feasible it is but I know other sites that if you donate you get to chose a little icon to appear next to your name everytime you post, you'd be surprised how effective it is. Not because people want one but people don't want to not have something their peers do).
Having a chat with Hostelworld, Hostelbookers, Gomio etc about advertising. Another method to raise cash is to start doing a weekly or monthly newsletter to everyone registered. You can get someone to sponsor it which brings in extra revenue. I think charging a membership fee would be a VERY bad idea and could close the side for good.
Good luck.
12 years
First, thanks Josh and team for all you've done over the past few years. I've found the site very useful and would definitely like to see it continue. I'd be against paid membership as I think it would kill it off. Ads wouldn't put me off - they could even be useful. Donate button also sounds good.
12 years
Hi Josh,
It's Mark from Myallocator.com here. We might be able to offer you free web hosting if this helps? We would hate to see the site die as it's really useful in many respects. Alternativley we would be happy to advertise/donate if you went for these options.
You can e-mail me privately on [email][email protected][/email] if you want to explore the free hosting option.
Best wishes,
Mark & the Myallocator team.
12 years
I think what you need to remember Josh is that as you're not making any money from this and sinking your own hard earned cash into this there's going to be lots of people willing to donate or offer their services either at cost or for free.
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