ATS...money or members? or both?

I came across this site today that estimates the net worth of a domain name based on it's traffic and ad revenue. Out of curiosity I typed in abovetopsecret.com.

Wow...

Not sure how accurate this is, but it is estimated that abovetopsecret.com (just the domain name alone) has a net worth of $396,616.30. That's alot for a domain name.

Here are the stats from www.websiteoutlook.com...

abovetopsecret.com Estimated Worth $396616.3 USD

Net Worth : $396616.3
Daily Pageview : 180357
Daily Ads Revenue : $543.31

Last updated 3 Days ago

So my question to you all is, at what point does ATS stop becoming about members and start becoming about generating ad revenue?

Lets take the newest "event" on ATS for example. The Gilliland Ranch investigation. What's to stop ATS from just making up a bunch of stuff to generate traffic to increase their ad revenue? Cuz at almost $550 a day in ad money, that's a hefty chunk of change. That's $3,801 a week. Or almost $198.000.00 a year just based on ad income alone.

The way that the new investigation is plastered all over the site makes it seem like a pretty big event that ATS is proud of. It's been advertised all over the place. In return this generates more users and more money. The way the investigation is presented makes it seem like it is geared to make the site money and increase it's popularity.

Sure, they had people there to confirm things but all the people there were in cahoots with the site.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say ATS does this, but merely, what's to stop them from doing this? Just making stuff up for money?

I recall reading a thread a while back on Prophet Yahweh. ATS wouldn't do a deal with him because he only wanted to make money out of the deal. Well I just realized that ATS in a way is no different from Prophet Yahweh in that the purpose of their business is to generate money. Going back and reading the Yahweh thread in this light makes ATS's stance on the issue seem kind of hypocritical to me.

Forgive me if this question is off base, but one things for sure...it makes for a great discussion.

[edit on 9/14/2008 by Mr Gone]

Originally posted by Mr Gone


I recall reading a thread a while back on Prophet Yahweh. ATS wouldn't do a deal with him because he only wanted to make money out of the deal. Well I just realized that ATS in a way is no different from Prophet Yahweh in that the purpose of their business is to generate money. Going back and reading the Yahweh thread in this light makes ATS's stance on the issue seem kind of hypocritical to me.

[edit on 9/14/2008 by Mr Gone]

Dont say about Prophet Yahweh, did he tell the truth when ats gave chance, dont blame ats, can you dontate enough money to keep the servers running and the pay the site maintainance staff and meet the rising demands of space due to new threads starting, like this thread do you think our SO could run this as charity, will you work without salary? you will need a salary to support yourself and meet the expenses and ats can meet its expenses only through ads.

Originally posted by peacejet


Dont say about Prophet Yahweh, did he tell the truth when ats gave chance, dont blame ats, can you dontate enough money to keep the servers running and the pay the site maintainance staff and meet the rising demands of space due to new threads starting, like this thread do you think our SO could run this as charity, will you work without salary? you will need a salary to support yourself and meet the expenses and ats can meet its expenses only through ads.

There is NO WAY that the site requires almost $200,000 a year in maintenance costs. No way in hell. The mods here do it for free (which I would question if I was a mod, seeing how the site makes so much money).

So in the end, realistically, who is paid for running the site? Maybe a one time fee to the programmer that built the site, unless SO built it himself or something. Server fees, staff (mods don't get paid) so the only staff that would get paid for the site would be maybe the Admins, and the owners. The hosting companies, or the cost of the servers for them to host themselves.... none of that requires as much as $200 grand a year...sorry.

Taking your cost points one by one:

1. Keep the servers running - How much money does it take to keep a server turned on? Maybe as much as the power bill?

2. Pay the site maintenance staff - This is your only valid point.

3. Meet the rising demands of space - Sorry my friend, but Gigabytes are cheap nowadays....you can get a whole terrabyte for $180 at Wal Mart.

4. Will you work without salary? Ask the mods, they do.



[edit on 9/14/2008 by Mr Gone]

My line of thinking is that money is a bi-product of having a successful website, it may not have been started for that reason, but merely too harness and nurture a hobbie or intrest and gather other peoples opinions thats related too your own intrests.

In response too your question re: Faking the Robbie Williams thing too generate income.... (thats not a direct quote, but along your line of thought.)

It is well known in UFO circles that Robbie has been interested or publicly shown intrest in UFO's for some time, prior too ATS taking up this investigation with him aboard.

In the end, this site is a huge undertaking, by the founders, they need too pay for costs attributed in running it so that you can post your opinions and create threads that question their actions, if in sometime you create a website that is an outstanding success and requires you too participate in it's up-keep, I dare say that you would need too generate income too support it.

Though I really don't care what Robbie says about UFO's and really (for me personally) if it gives any credence (sp?) to the phenomena, I think that you should start learning some php, http, java and C++ so that you can start a website on which I can come on and post a thread questioning your motives in regards too advertising so that you can keep your site afloat.

In short, it costs money.... that money has too come from somewhere...

Fox.

(Hoping that the ATS Admins will have some insight into this.)

Yes, I see your point. But, if you had a business, which this site is, wouldn't you want to support the interests of your business in order for it to make money?? Its normal. All I'm saying is that ATS is no different. However, on a site like this, that can be a dangerous thing. Because then the issue can come into question of, are you playing with information to generate money? And when you have a loyal legion of followers that believe anything you say, then this doesn't seem too far fetched that one would secretly want to take advantage of them.

Scientology comes to mind here...

Also, to prove my point, I bet this thread will end up locked and/or removed because it does not suit the interests of the site (which I believe are to generate income.) I could be wrong about that though, but we'll see.

And I hope no one takes offense to questioning the authority here. It is an important thing to do in order to gain a better understanding of things.

[edit on 9/14/2008 by Mr Gone]

If the doesnt have ads and doesnt generate income for SO then how will he meet his day to day expenses

And I thought that all moderators are paid salary to moderate threads

And one more thing SO has to deal with the authorities and the government when some issues arise considering the nature of debates here and will you be daring enough to face that

And do you think you can use the cheap hard disk available in walmart for such a huge server and what about the location in which servers are kept, rental prices have increased in cities and who will pay the internet bill and provide security software to prevent hackers getting the site down remember rense.com.....

At least now you should realise

reply to post by peacejet


realise what? that i'm wrong because you've conveniently explained everything to me. thanks. I now see the error of my ways.

Mods aren't paid. Ask them.

And I'm not suggesting they use cheap wal mart drives to store their space, but the cost is reduced all the way down the board. I'm sure the most expensive servers have dropped in prices in the same relation to cheaper hard drives...i.e, they aren't as expensive as they were years ago.

And what authorities does he have to deal with? I'm sure the gov could care less what we talk about here on abovetopsecret.com....a site that has 10,000 and some odd regular active viewers....not to be mistaken for the 100,000 non active subscribers. I'm sure the US government cares about what 10,000 people across the world say. 10,000 people out of 7 BILLION.

Yes...yes, now I realize...thank you.

As far as I have seen, this site has not taken advantage of me for financial gain, I have never been pressured into clicking onto advertisements, though those yellow highlighted links that were advertising, kinda annoyed me. But I think they have gone, not sure though.

My Email has not/never been spammed by ATS or someone that gathered my information from ATS's database.

I think that you are clutching for some distinction and trying too persecute a site that has your best interests at heart, they have said they will not compramise you privacy.

And they will not compramise your privacy purely for money.

Your thread will not be deleted or removed or just moved, I venture that ATS Admin will keep your thread live, so they can see what fellow ATS'ers think about them and the site in general.

Cheers, Fox.

reply to post by fox_3000au


You misunderstand. I am not trying to persecute here. Merely asking, where does all that money go. And if ATS did take advantage of you, how would you know? They could be taking advantage of you right now....not by spamming. There are other means to take advantage of you other than spamming you. Such as getting you to come to their site to increase their page views which in turn increases how much their site ads are worth.

That is how I am talking about taking advantage of us. Not through spamming or even physical means.

Also note, I am not trying to say that ATS does this, just merely a what if.

Still, you gotta say that it's a pretty good question. Where does all the money go? And if I truly had my members interests at heart, I'd be honest with them about where the money went.

Eventually the 'power' of money and the greed that is attached to it will take over..

It is only my opinion.

Two things.

First off. The ranch thing was done very tastefully without making any outlandish claims whatsoever. As a matter of fact, I thing they downplayed it more than anything.

Second. This sounds like sour grapes to me. There is no law against making a little crow in this lifetime.

Recommendation. Get over it.

You arent understanding,well leave it, ok, what do you want to say regarding this, tell you point clearly do you want to be paid for starting threads

Originally posted by peacejet
You arent understanding,well leave it, ok, what do you want to say regarding this, tell you point clearly do you want to be paid for starting threads

Hahah...yes! pay me for starting threads! no, just kidding. But I just think $200,000 a year is alot and they should let people know where all that money goes, even if it is into their pocket. One thing is for sure though, they'd take the interest of their company over your interests in a split second....you aren't making them $200,000 a year. Their site is.

In the end, this doesn't really effect me. I don't care really. Just thought I'd ask. I make my own money my own way and hardly ever log on here. Just really wanted to see what the community thought about it.

[edit on 9/14/2008 by Mr Gone]

reply to post by Mr Gone


Fine who will pay the taxes, will you pay them.



Dont worry about money all is going for good purposes like the Gilliland ranch investigation and for introducing new things to ats, remember what one of the site administrators said, we can expect a surprise next year.

I guess it's just kind of like finding out that your favorite band in the world sold out and kicked their fans to the curb for the interests of the record labels and the almighty dollar. Just kinda sad really.

[edit on 9/14/2008 by Mr Gone]

At the bottom of the pages is a link to the
Website Statistics

even looking at the stats for July, you can see that this website received
10,795,907 page views, if each page is about 10KB in size, then the bandwidth alone would be over 100GB / month.

There must also be a number of servers, at the bottom of each page is some text similar to

ATS Server: www4.theabovenetwork.com
Powered by AboveTop:Board v2.3
Header data processed in 1.252 seconds
Page processed in 0.395 seconds
13 total database queries (4)

So I think there are at least 4 web servers, plus a database server.
A setup like this would be a few thousand dollars every month.

I think we a fortunate that this website does generate revenue and that we are not charged for membership.

Please remember that

The Above Top Secret Conspiracy Community Web site is a wholly owned social content community of The Above Network, LLC.

and so it is a business and not a hobby.

I don't think that this site needs to create hype as it's already one of the most popular boards on the Internet.

Ok time to get seious the site did a speculative calculation based on the visits to the website I meant the traffic and that does not proportionately equal as revenue.

For example take the govenment run website nasa, does it have any ads? are they doing business for money?

Heres what the website says of their revenue

Net Worth : $3.4 Million Last updated 11 Days ago Daily Pageview : 1551480 Daily Ads Revenue : $4657.44

Now say do nasa have ads on their website did nasa get 3.4 million from the people who visit their website

Heres the link to the same website you said that ats gets 200,000 dollars.

www.websiteoutlook.com...

[edit on 14-9-2008 by peacejet]

But, really....

Why do you need too know where the money goes?

You access this site for free, your not paying for anything... its not like ATS is receiving any of your tax dollars.

So why do they need too justify where the money eventually goes too?

Is this what you need too hear?

Springer.... new Yatch.

Jhonnyanonynmous... Breast augmentation

etc, etc.

Fox.

reply to post by peacejet


Yes, yes NASA's website does have advertisements....