blog.BrewAdvice

Revenue Ideas

BrewAdvice.com officially launched December 22, 2009, with a few users helping us get it started the week leading up to that launch. Since then, the community has grown strong. Questions are answered within a day, if not within minutes. Some of the more active users clean up the site regularly. Taylor and I have both turned off the administrator settings on our accounts, because the community almost entirely running the site. We’ve built a machine! It’s alive!

As this is a community, run by you, we thought we’d share some information about the inner workings, the cost, and the future of BrewAdvice.com

BrewAdvice is built on the StackExchange platform. While we have the know-how to rebuild the application, we really like what they’ve done, it works pretty darn well, and, well, it’s already built. There are a few sites built on this platform, the most well-known one being StackOverflow.com.

Currently, the platform is in Beta, and is therefore free. Beta 7 should be coming out soon, and there have been talks that Beta will be over soon.

Once that happens, we will have a 45-day free trial, and then we will start paying. At our current usage rates, the cost will be $129/month. If we start getting more than 1 million page views a month, that gets higher. But that’s not really our concern for right now. We’re at about 18,000 page views in January.

We threw Google AdSense on the site to see what would happen. We didn’t expect to bring it $129 a month, but we did expect some revenue to offset this cost.

As of yesterday, those ads have generated about $3.25. In about 45 days. So, obviously, this is not going to offset the costs.

As of this writing, the ads have been turned off. There’s no reason to subject you to ads if they don’t do anything!

I want to make it clear that we didn’t start this site to make money, nor do we expect to make money. However, we also don’t want to spend too much money on the site every month.

So, this being an awesome community, we figured we’d bring the monthly cost issue to you. What do you think we should do? Here are a few options:

• Sponsorships
• Donations
• Affiliate programs

A sponsorship would entail finding companies to pay for ads on the site. Unlike Google AdSense, these ads would be directly related to the site and our community. Ads would be for things like Great American Beer Festival, rather than a coffee maker when you mention the word “brew” in a question.

Donations would mean you, the community, would open your wallets - or at least your PayPal account - and help support the site financially. Spreading the cost over dozens, if not hundreds of users, makes it a very small financial commitment for each user. There are currently about 110 users.

Affiliate programs would be other companies giving us a kickback if you buy something from them after clicking on a link on BrewAdvice. Amazon has a great program. Northern Brewer does not have a program.

We have a few ideas on how to make this work, but we want your opinion first.

BrewAdvice.com Community - what are your ideas on how to pay for the site?

Question and Answer Website for All Things Beer Launches

BrewAdvice.com, a community‐driven site focused on answering all questions related to beer, officially launched today. Unlike forums, message boards, Facebook, or Twitter, BrewAdvice.com is specifically set up as a simple question and answer knowledge base. Ask a question, get a number of answers, select the best one, and get on with brewing. The site was quietly opened to the public a little over a week ago, and the response was overwhelmingly successful. To date, there are already over 50 users asking and answering almost 40 beer related questions.

Questions range from basic homebrewing process questions, like “How do you choose a yeast”, to more theoretical brewing questions, such as “What does ‘Imperial’ mean with regards to style?” to the more advanced side of the craft, for example the effects of aging on Alpha and Beta acids in hops. There are also questions that aren’t strictly for the homebrewer, such as a question about pairing beer with mussels, and general beer storage advice.

Users on the site gain reputation through activity. The more active a user, the more power he or she has on the site. One gains reputation by asking good questions and leaving good answers. As users participate more, they gain access to commenting, voting, and moderation tools. “It’s a site run by the community,” says co‐founder PJ Hoberman.

“It’s kind of ridiculous how much I have already learned from this site,” says budding homebrewer Jordan Rounds. “BrewAdvice is now a daily stop in my internet travels.” Frequent visitors to the site range from aspiring homebrewers to aspiring brewery owners, beer bloggers to beer judges, and everyone in between.

BrewAdvice.com is built on the Stack Exchange framework, made famous by the tech Q&A site StackOverflow.com. The site is currently maintained by two administrators, Taylor Beseda and PJ Hoberman, both web developers and homebrewers in Denver, Colorado.