Okay I've been wondering this for a really long time as Scotty now able to hire full-time staff and the server must be really robust to handle heavy load.
I love this community and really curious about how the website generate revenue as I don't usually click ads and I assume (?) most of Ozbargainers won't click ads or even have AdBlock.
So the ultimate question is how Ozbargain business model has been surviving?
Yes it's based on volume. On an average day maybe 5-6 out of every 1,000 visitors click on ads, so to keep OzBargain alive we need to make sure it's popular enough. To keep it popular we need to make sure that it's useful and don't piss off too many people :)
As of server costs, I got many ways to save money there. Maybe I will find sometime to discuss and share that with the community.
As of server costs, I got many ways to save money there. Maybe I will find sometime to discuss and share that with the community.
apparently there is a website where people give tips and post deals on how to do save money.
Would I be supporting OzBargain if I just clicked on an ad every time I visit the site, which would be a couple of times per day?
once a day, on different ADs yes.
multiple clicks, no not really, Google has means of detecting what it considers as legitimate clicks.
My suggestion would be — no. Advertisers are paying Google / OzBargain for the ads space here hoping to get some return. If people click on ads that they are not interested in, advertisers ended up not getting enough ROI, they might just reduce the rate or pull out the ads.
If you are not interested in the ads, I think it would be better to install AdBlock or turn off ads from your profile here. It would save you time, Internet bandwidth, and save the advertisers money. If you are interested in supporting OzBargain, just tell your friends about this site :)
So the ultimate question is how Ozbargain business model has been surviving?
It's a money saving site, it runs off the smell of an oil rag ;)
Actually, the whole site runs off some $199 netbooks, mods and power users take it in turns sitting in mcdonalds using the free wifi and the dns automatically redirects to the connected netbook.
I thought the site was a virus that is part of a botnet and uses round robin dns…
I'd assume it would still be ad revenue, if you have a large volume of traffic you only need a small click-thru ratio to earn a good return.
each click can earn anywhere between a few cents to a few dollars, depending on the AD