The cost of theanswerbank website

[vicars]

Hi, I was wondering how much it costs to keep this website going. Does anyone know firstly how much the start up cost of a site like this is and secondly what the monthly running costs would be? I would assume a few thousand per month, but can anyone be more accurate? The reason I ask is I am thinking of a website with about this much interactivity and size (not to rival theanswerbank though!)

Thanks.

[andy-hughes]

I would imagine that the owners will be pretty coy about divulging costs, and they certainly wouldn't do it on here!

I was in on the ground floor, so to speak, and the original site was founded and financed by a company who were part of the Daily Mail Newspaper group - and judging by the high level of technical expertise it took to get it up and running, it was pretty expensive!

Other than that, I couldn't say, but it certainly isn't a venture to undertake lightly!

[OBonio]

It's difficult to quantify really. It would depend on the technologies used at the backend. The majority of the money would probably be the original implementation. Hosting costs wouldn't be too high I don't think. Saying that, I don't know the bandwidth usage.... I'm going to guess 20k original build, then 3k a month thereafter.

[WoWo]

It's difficult to say, being a Programmer who's worked on large websites I have an idea what they cost could be but it depends on data volumes which is anybodys guess.

To be honest the site is pretty basic with regards to initial setup and design. While it might look like there is plenty to it, all the forums will be using the same engine as it were.

As for hosting, again it depends on what sort of traffic it has and it's difficult to know how many people just pop on for a look rather than posting.