That’s me in the corner, circa October 2004. I prefer landscapes. My family has been in Washington, D.C. for six generations. I’m a crabby Cancer and a cocky Rooster, but I don’t believe in astrology. I built my first website in 1997 out of boredom. I tend to be Scotch (look it up).
People ask me all the time why I do this. Because I can. That’s really the end-all of it.
It started in 1999 when I set out to own and run a few domains. ‘A few’ quickly became ‘many,’ and it became cost prohibitive to run each individually. I soon invested in a co-located server. Once I did that I was able to host as many domains as I wanted, and so I offered all my friends space. Over the years people have come and gone as they have liked, and I have changed co-los a few times in order to keep costs down and content adult-positive. The basic principles remain the same.
This is not a business. This is something I do in my spare time because I have the space, and usually the time. This is a long-term act of goodwill. I invest a lot of time in setting up accounts, communicating with users, and providing tech support.
While I do pass savings on as the group grows, I make sure a little extra is generated every month. Month to month cash overflow does not run anymore than the cost of a trade paperback, ever, and the only reason I keep it at that price is to accommodate extra overhead such as comings and goings, account upgrades and downgrades, and the occasional mistake of bandwidth overflow or a user sending in their dues late. And yes, I pay a monthly share just like everyone else! In fact, until co-location became more affordable in 2001 and we broke even, I was paying many times more per month than the other users.