More Bandwidth and Revenue Needed

[Coderjo]

(sorry, long post)

xort, how about I post a nifty little table built from the data for august?

Code: Select all

+------+-------------+---------------+---------------+----------+
| dls  | video_count | bandwidth     | pct_bandwidth | pct_vids |
+------+-------------+---------------+---------------+----------+
|    0 |       28858 | 9514086774818 |         33.00 |    79.39 |
|   50 |        6232 | 8798511199207 |         30.52 |    17.15 |
|  100 |         779 | 2910870116770 |         10.10 |     2.14 |
|  150 |         244 | 1557879731843 |          5.40 |     0.67 |
|  200 |          78 |  752857051190 |          2.61 |     0.21 |
|  250 |          38 |  452363007786 |          1.57 |     0.10 |
|  300 |          25 |  343384593580 |          1.19 |     0.07 |
|  350 |          21 |  369657854308 |          1.28 |     0.06 |
|  400 |          16 |  446654281788 |          1.55 |     0.04 |
|  450 |          11 |  228720772244 |          0.79 |     0.03 |
|  500 |           4 |  117028038332 |          0.41 |     0.01 |
|  550 |           7 |  192141559032 |          0.67 |     0.02 |
|  600 |           5 |  163223949786 |          0.57 |     0.01 |
|  650 |           2 |   71273460700 |          0.25 |     0.01 |
|  700 |           5 |  256076784162 |          0.89 |     0.01 |
|  750 |           2 |  572297822208 |          1.99 |     0.01 |
|  800 |           1 |   59119312896 |          0.21 |     0.00 |
|  850 |           2 |   90148339320 |          0.31 |     0.01 |
|  950 |           3 |  127361215000 |          0.44 |     0.01 |
| 1000 |           1 |   65488539648 |          0.23 |     0.00 |
| 1050 |           3 |  225380063412 |          0.78 |     0.01 |
| 1250 |           1 |  104206521200 |          0.36 |     0.00 |
| 1300 |           1 |   88189874392 |          0.31 |     0.00 |
| 1350 |           1 |   83647723520 |          0.29 |     0.00 |
| 1400 |           1 |  126969472540 |          0.44 |     0.00 |
| 1500 |           1 |   81662140416 |          0.28 |     0.00 |
| 1550 |           1 |   55376169526 |          0.19 |     0.00 |
| 1750 |           2 |  307129124864 |          1.07 |     0.01 |
| 1900 |           1 |  168448131072 |          0.58 |     0.00 |
| 2800 |           1 |  250930956288 |          0.87 |     0.00 |
| 3100 |           1 |  245862830080 |          0.85 |     0.00 |
+------+-------------+---------------+---------------+----------+

dls - low end of number of downloads for the group. 0 means 0-49, 50 means 50-99, and so on.
video_count - number of videos in this group.
bandwidth - amount of bandwidth consumed by this group.
pct_bandwidth - the percentage of the overall bandwidth for the month used by this group.
pct_vids - the percentage of the unique videos downloaded in the month that fall within this group.

if you look at this data, you can see:

33% of the bandwidth was used by videos that were downloaded 0-49 times in the entire month. also, 79.39% of the videos downloaded fall within this group.
another 30.52% of the bandwidth was used by videos that were downloaded 50-99 times in the entire month. there were 17.15% of the overall number of videos in this group.
adding the previous two points together shows that 63.52% of the bandwidth was used by videos downloaded 0-99 times, and that 96.53% of the unique videos downloaded were downloaded 0-99 times.

bittorrent really doesn't become worthwhile until you have at least (as in the abolute minimum of) 2 people downloading a file at the same time, which isn't likely to happen until you get up to 400 downloads or so (guestimating). the overhead incurred by putting the lesser-downloaded videos out via bittorrent is simply not worth it, as it puts more wear and tear on the raid arrays, makes the tracker memory usage go up, increases the number of HTTP requests that must be handled, and wastes bandwidth on the peer-to-peer traffic overhead.

you may also see the following information, if you add the pieces of information together from above...

Code: Select all

videos downloaded more than 200 times:
+-----------+----------+---------------+---------------+
| vid_count | PCT_VIDS | bandwidth     | pct_bandwidth |
+-----------+----------+---------------+---------------+
|       185 |     0.51 | 5618453425972 |         19.49 |
+-----------+----------+---------------+---------------+

videos downloaded 200 times or less:
+-----------+----------+----------------+---------------+
| vid_count | PCT_VIDS | bandwidth      | pct_bandwidth |
+-----------+----------+----------------+---------------+
|     36163 |    99.49 | 23208493985956 |         80.51 |
+-----------+----------+----------------+---------------+

These tables show that there are 185 videos, making up 0.51% of the unique videos downloaded, that used 19.49% of the bandwidth. Torrenting these might be worthwhile. But then there is also the risk of someone undesireable taking notice and spoiling the party for everyone.

[celibi87]

Hey,

It also seems that web site + BT = high on "nuke" list. Until that changes, I think we really can't raise our risk exposure even more than it is now.

Phade.

i dont know if our exposure is already big or small. all i know is that when i go to a con and check out the amv contest they talk about this site in paticular. Are we exposed? I do believe we are. I am against putting bt on this site cause i love how it is right now.

[7sigma]

I am against putting bt on this site cause i love how it is right now.

Well, something must change if we want the site to keep going. BitTorrent could be useful in lightening the load of the most popular vids, but that's only half the problem (and it creates a lot of new ones, like drawing big guns in our direction).

So, I guess we could think about advertising again. The fact that we have a lot of people with some cash (we have at least a PC and an internet connection) that all share the same hobby ought to be worth something. Again, the somewhat gray area we live in might really hinder this idea, but it should be considered anyway.

The perfect solution, however, would be simply increasing donations, since the cost-per-user of the site seems to be really low, as Phade said. I don't have any bloody idea on how to do this without hurting users in a way or another, though.

[SQ]

Well the envelope art contest is a step in the right direction.
The only problem is that the donations that come with those envelopes will probably be used to fund the prize for the contest instead of the site. >_<

[Phade]

Hey SQ,

That depends entirely on the amount of donations and if the prizes themselves are donated.

Phade.

[SQ]

Well Phade, maybe if I had some advertising space for my contest, I'd be more inclined to donate a prize for your's. ;P

[that would be me amending the user ad idea with donations]

[CrazedMoogle]

hmmm... as long as i can tell, the main issue here is raising funds without making a paysite out of this place... ideally, the things to get paid would be little, useful services that make downloads easier and give more accessibility, and generally make things more pleasant for donors.
problem is, what's listed in pledge pages (aside from being redundant and overly insistent) isn't enough, i'm always like "wait, that's it? i can get all i want without limits and get by without paying a dime!". see a loophole here? people must be led to think they can't get everything without paying. only they wouldn't pay the videos, they would have to pay for the sugar coating. here are a few ideas.

bug non-benefactors a little with small limitations and nags, which wouldn't affect the retrieval of the movies but would make it easier to download them after donating. ideas range: for example search limitations, or the inability to post comments for videos. "leeching mofos" don't really care about dropping two lines anyway.

implement methods similar to certain sites that force a timeout before getting new content and won't let people download more than a certain number of files at a time. for example: no new downloads until 5 minutes have passed and no more than a download at a time. donors might still be limited a bit, since bandwidth ain't free, but they'd only be minor things... maybe removable with an extra buck

place links to videos that other people downloaded/rated the most on the video download page, it would have to be simple statistical comparison, only most popular entries would have to be filtered for obvious cluttering reasons. recommendation systems are great marketing tools, and they make people at least want to browse them; the gain from that would cover the actual cost of people getting more than they wanted to. also, this link box would have to be accessible from a place that won't affect regular downloading activities, probably on the "download starting page".

also, if you guys wanna sell all of these godsend goodies, you'll have to make them look like the first thing non-donors need, advertise them more and talk less about money. when i look at the pledge stats page i'm always like, "these guys have gotten much more than they needed to get to cover costs, my support won't make a difference"; money talk and stats tend to make people cling to their purses, it's a matter of fact. so just keep the balance secret, we only need to know you're in need of money. it will start rolling in more than when stated, because people won't know *when* the alert is over; they'll think you always could use an extra buck.

there's still the option of reopening the online shop, only it would need something interesting to attract customers: sell mainstream commodities, like anime dvd's, manga and such, or anime-related merchandise, like action figures and stuff like that. maybe even host little auctions or bargain sales on stuff that users have and want to sell, and get a little commission out of the auction price to cover that little extra cost. of course there's the problem of releasing something on here which infringes the rights of the same stuff you would sell, but that could be fixed by registering the online shop under a different name and by making the money transfers to amv figure like bandwidth expenses, since the new site would have to rely on the same server.

honestly tho', i think the best way to keep the boat floating would be an adoption of most of the methods listed in this thread... you know, pitching in every penny you could use. limiting especially seems like a great idea, although i would probably be the first to get throttled well, that's it... i apologize in case i sounded greedy or if i seemed like another leecher, for i actually am. i'm currently "recharging my batteries" and i get by with part-time jobs, so my income is not exactly comparable to that of a white shirt sorry 'bout that.

[Kuromiko_Aya]

I personally like the Idea of setting up a booth at conventions.
I mean... even if it's just a couple of random admin members I think it might work out. I don't know about other peoples reasons for donating/not donating but I know that if I had a way to send money I'd love to. I don't know any address I can send a check to and, honestly, I have no idea how to pay for things online. So if you could just setup an actual place to donate to it may be a lot easier.
besides... randomly showing up at ANY big event and begging will usually get at least SOMETHING... it always works for me anyways...XD

[Garylisk]

People on the net leech things. It's a fact.

Most people who know about this site and download AMVs probably also download fansubs.

And probably most people who download those fansubs also download licensed anime.

"If it's available for free, why pay for it?"

That's a big thing on the net these days.

In closing, ideas here that I think are good:
1. OT forum for donators
2. BitTorrent the most popular videos. Coderjoe has been spamming the IRC channel for a while now about how certain videos are draining a lot of bandwidth. This would be easy to implement, and you rea;;y don't need to be paranoid about it, Phade. BT is fast becoming a standard on the internet for file transfers. Big sites and big companies are more and more starting to use BitTorrent for file distribution. For example, Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft updater program is a BitTorrent client that is specialized for just WoW updates. BT may be Peer to Peer, but it's controlled peer to peer. People can't just jump up and share anything they want on your BT tracker. You make the call on what is allowed and what is not.
3. Forums titles for donators. This is an awesome idea, and I think it'd be easy to do. If you can make someone's forum avatar says "Donated" underneath it, would it be so hard to also turn on the already existing phpbb feature of titles?
4. (Not sure if this was mentioned or not) Let forum donators have 100x100 avatars. This is the usual on most sites I've been to. This site has a limit of 80x80, which is just stupidly small if you ask me. An extra 20x20 won't hurt anything, and will be, again, a pro for donation.
5. Cap bandwidth for non donators. Someone mentioned that this wouldn't affect dialup users. Are the dialup users really taking that much bandwidth? Sure, I suppose if you have 4k/sec or so and multiply it by a thousand, it's 4000k/sec... but still, that's a thousand users only using 4000k/sec, where as a thousand broadband users, which there are more and more of every day, would use way more. I generally get about 150k/sec-200k/sec on my dl's from this site. Sometimes I'll get up to 300k/sec. multiply that by a thousand, it's big time bandwidth use. Cap them to 30k/sec, and you've just cut the usage by a ton.
6. OK, I've always been a big supporter of this one... Only let donators upload local - This will decrease the number of local videos available, and thus decrease the number of local videos that get downloaded. This, of course, has the con of making videos that donators might want unavailable to them so easily, since non-donators DO make good videos that people will want to download... but if you make use of the server space for storage of your video a donator benefit, it would behoove the editors to donate so they can get their work hosted.
7. I dunno if I am serious on this one or not... Limit the formats that are uploadable - Don't allow people to upload videos that are in WMV format, etc. Only allow avi, mkv, etc... any of the preferred direct show non-proprietary video formats. Maybe this owuld cut down on the number of spammy videos that get uploaded. I know I groan every time I see a WMV format video, and think to myself "What a waste of bandwidth..." - Of coruse, this is also making a broad generalization that people who encode in WMV format generally aren't donators as well. So who knows.


I dunno, I am tired, otherwise I might think of more stuff...

[SQ]

Garylisk: Limits formats = bad idea.
I donate and I make WMV videos. I'd be seriously pissed if they didn't allow wmv videos.
There's already a big hupla about WMV = bad, and I know that. So if I want to encode WMV videos, I'll deal with the karma that comes with it. Making a broad generalization is just like saying DivX = Pirated footage. Not everything that's DivX is pirated, not everything that's wmv is bad.

If Phade allows flash files to be uploaded, than WMV should have no problems, as well. If people want to deal with the kharma of "WMV = Bad video" then let them deal with it, and let people avoid their videos.

Now, limiting non-video files, like whatever WMM's project files are- since those get uploaded a ton- that would be a good idea. But wmv is a perfectly viable video format and if Phade stooped as low as to completely abolish it alltogether, I'd think even less of the local idea than I do now(which is pretty bad).

On another note, the ad thing was kind of a joke, Phade. What kind of prizes are you looking for for your contest? Brand new? Like new? Used?
Brand new I've got the new ONe Piece PS2 game playable Demo Disc(although that game's already so it's probably not a great idea to give), the Dragon Quest 7 PS2 Playable Demo Disc (not opened and not out, yet, yey).

As for opened/like-new, I've got a ton of supposedly rare Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and a 15GB internal Harddrive, Ceres: The Celestial Legend DVDs #1 -3 Region 1(the US version, not bootlegs, I swear) and the Yu-Gi-Oh! Movie Region 1 DVD (shudder).
If you want any of them drop me a line and I'll see about sending them to you ASAP.