Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ahhaha who wrote (2597)	7/30/1998 4:46:00 AM
From: FR1	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

You have to wonder about $50 hosting. That could break the backbone. The scale up suggestion I remember from the past, so what is ATHM going to do when the data traffic climbs? Do they have a slider? Basically, it works like this: 1) You give ATHM your credit card. 2) You will be paying in advance for service - just like you pay rent (so there is no accounting collection overhead). 3) ATHM charges you a $100 Set-Up fee (one time only). 4) ATHM charges the card $50 in advance of the first of the month. 5) You now have 50 megs of storage space for your web site. 6) You are allowed 1500MB of data transfer for the month. 7) If 70% of that 1500 MB is used, you will be notified by ATHM. 8) You can then authorize a $50 charge to your card for 500 more MB of data transfer, etc. Of course, they will help you set up your domain name, etc before you start. What is the definition of data transfer? If someone calls one of your web page urls, the page is downloaded to the customer's site so they can see it. That counts as a data transfer. Obviously, any files you allow the customer to download count as data transfer as well. Average web pages are usually around 50K to 150K if done correctly (static jif files, type and tiled background). This means you can show a total of around 15,000 web pages/month to visitors. Need more? For $50 more you can show another 5,000 pages, etc. You can also prepay any of the other services: Feature Small-Bus Std-Bus Premium Low-commerce Prem-Comm. Cost/mo $50 $125 $250 $300 $400 Storage 50MB 50MB 100MB 200 300 Data Tsfr 1500MB 2500MB 3500MB 4500MB 5500MB So you can have as much traffic as you want because the more the data transfer increases, the more ATHM makes money. They want traffic. The more the better. Providing the accountants set the cost/byte downloaded charge correctly, they can go as high as the sky. If they made a overhead mistake, adjust the charge. The beauty is that there is only one figure you need to adjust: cost/byte moved. The general business idea is: 1) Small guy sets up web site and starts selling stuff for only $50/mo 2) It works! Traffic increases, orders increase and guy pays more. 3) Eventually you become a big guy and have your own leased line and server. Starting charge of around $750/mo. Note: It seems to me you gotta think long and hard before you want your own site. You really gotta be good at UNIX, Apache and Perl or some equivalent. Even then, what do you do if the server goes down at 2am? What do you do for a mirror site? etc etc. Hosting is the way to go until you have a very strong business.