So I've spent the last week or so crafting a couple thousand word article on how to fund a large fan site. There's a need; I've been corresponding back and forth with a few other fannish webmasters who are all in the same boat as I am. We've got big sites (of varying values of "big") and we are all trying to get enough funding keep the lights on and the hard drives spinning. Fandom sites are fairly hard to monetize due to a variety of demographic factors and we have big hosting bills.
 
I wrote the how-to-fund-your-fan-site article with the best of intentions. (If I do say so myself) I'm pretty good at figuring out ways to keep Firefox News's bills paid with ads. What I've learned here should translate to other fannish sites easily. The pay isn't great -- I effectively work on the site for less than minimum wage --  but it's a fan site, I love it, and I'm not exactly trying to get rich.
 
However, when I sent a beta copy of the article with tips and tricks for increasing ad revenue to Melissa, my Igor assistant, she basically said, "You can't do that right now."
 
(I know Igors aren't supposed to talk back, but I'm a progressive evil overlord and I encourage this among my minions. Sometimes they're smarter than I am. Smart minions with minds of their own beat groveling yes-ma'am minions any day of the week if you're trying to take over the world have a well-run web site. Besides, groveling gets annoying after awhile.)
 
She suggested to me I shouldn't post it because of Laura Hale. Because of Fanhistory. Because ads, and making money on advertising, is in a bad stink in fandom right now. And my initial reaction was, "Oh. Yeah. You're right."
 
So I filed the article away to post at a later date.
 
And then I thought about it a bit.
 
And then I decided I was annoyed enough to write an article about how it really is okay to make money off a fannish web site. (With the usual caveat that none of us except Xing are getting rich at this.)
 
First off, let's establish what's not okay. And this doesn't have anything to do with money, or advertising, or being a business targeted at fans. This pertains directly to the whole Laura Hale mess.
 
In the process of running a fan site, it is not okay to stalk people. Digging up personal information on people who want nothing to do with you, posting their personal contact information on your site, and then refusing to take it down borders on stalking. It's also not okay to be rude to people who are basically okay, nice people who haven't done anything to hurt you -- and have a lot to lose by you posting their identity on your site. Fanhistory is, at best, rude in the way they have compiled information on fen.

And if you violate the basic and generally accepted behavioral standards of a community that you're trying to make money off of, (1) you suck and (2) you'd better expect a vicious backlash from the community.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, see the link above for the ugly details. Ithiliana does a good job of covering most of the pertinent details of the story.
 
However.
 
There's a certain element of fandom that is screaming, "YOU CAN'T MAKE MONEY OFF OF FANDOM! Evil! Boo! Hiss! Die, foul capitalists, die!"
 
And I respectfully and politely disagree. Well, mostly politely. Somehow, I can never get the snark completely out of my virtual voice, but I can see where the anti-capitalism fans are coming from. I mean, it's fandom. We're all in this for the squee and the love and the obsessive-compulsive desire to memorize every single line from our favorite TV shows. (I can do entire passages of dialog from Disney's Gargoyles. What about you?)
 
The anti-capitalism fans would claim that anyone trying to make money off of fandom isn't really a fan. They must be an outsider, or a turncoat.
 
To which I say: Pbbbbb.
 
Okay, okay, I'm trying to be polite. Really I am.
 
To which I say: Let me explain my position here.
 
Running a small site is something anyone can do. It's easy enough to get free hosting, or pay a few bucks (and by "a few" I mean $5 or so a month) for slightly better than free hosting. With a couple clicks of a mouse in Cpanel, you can install phpBB, or Wordpress, or Joomla on your $5 a month site. Then put a few pretty pictures on it, and some content, and call it a site. Voila. Easy. Simple. I could put up a small fandom site on any topic in under an hour.
 
But fandom needs the big sites too. By nature, we like to congregate together. By inclination, we are a pretty social lot -- what fun is being a fan without lots of other fans around you? Squeeing alone is just not the same as squeeing to an audience of other fans who squee right back. Without big sites to support large groups of fans, we'd be scattered to the four winds across the 'net -- one fan here, two fen there, all alone in our lonesomeness. The big sites let us hang out together in large mobs.

However, the more of us congregate together in one spot, the more expensive the hosting gets and the owner of the site has to pay for it somehow.

 
Someone might start out with a $5 a month hosting plan and a pretty site, but if bunches of fen descend on it they'll blow that cheap hosting plan to smithereens in a real hurry and then things start getting eeeeeexpensive. Firefox News, for example, is hosted by Servercave. Have a look at the cost of their hosting plans for virtual servers. We have one virtual server, and not the cheapest offering on that list, either. And it's real easy to get more expensive in a hurry. Sites have a tendency to grow on a bell curve, and the cost of hosting goes up directly proportional to the amount of traffic. One of the webmasters I'm talking to has three dedicated servers with loadsharing. (Dedicated server = lots more money than a virtual server.) I'm willing to bet she's got a hosting cost in the high three or low four figures per month depending on her exact setup, and depending on if she's purchased or is leasing her servers.

It's pretty easy to end up with server costs in excess of a good-sized house payment per month. And this is why I react with pbbbbb! to anyone who says people should run fan sites out of their own pocket. Sorry, folks. When you start talking dollar amounts in the three and four figures range, I have one of two reactions: "Not happening!" or "Needs advertising!"

I love fandom. $But not that much$.

And on top of that, a really big site takes time to run. I probably spend about six hours a day doing site related work here at Firefox News -- and that includes taking my laptop to my day job so I can work on the site on lunch. I'd speculate that most web masters of large sites put in the same kind of time -- maybe less, and sometimes significantly more. Running a big site is at best a part time job; at worst, it consumes your life.

So to anyone who says that website owners are somehow in the wrong for putting ads on their sites to pay for the servers and maybe make a little profit? Have a raspberry.

And anyone who thinks we're getting rich? Have raspberry pie, with whip cream on top and a side of vanilla ice cream. On the house. It's got lots of raspberries in it. Tasty, isn't it? (See, I said I was going to try to be polite. I'm even offering them pie.)

However, fan sites that are making money off of fandom need to be giving something back to the community. Otherwise, you're just a leech regardless of your server costs and no matter how much time you put in. Laura's site is a good example of profiting off fandom without giving back -- at least, the damage she's doing exceeds the benefit to the community. From what I've seen, Fanhistory is an attempt to link fandom identities (multiple pen names for the same person) and past fannish behavior and actions while ignoring the wishes of the fans in question who might not want this information easily available. This site is upsetting to the fans affected by it. They didn't consent to be profiled on the site, do not want their information shared, and in some cases could be professionally or personally harmed by it.

At best, fan reaction to Laura Hale's site will be for fans to keep sooper sekrit identities more secret for fear someone might blab where Laura might see. This isn't a benefit to anyone; it means fans can't tell anyone their real names or their fanfiction identities. And sometimes, you kinda need to do this. Forget giving someone your real name for a secret santa exchange, think twice about attending a con where you have to put your real name on the registration, be careful who you buy merchandise from if you need to pay with a check, and God forbid you ever tell anyone who knows you as Jane Plainfan that you also write NC-17 slash as Susie Smutfic, even if you know they like to read about boysecks!

Because Laura might find out. And she might tell everyone, including people you wouldn't want to know.

This isn't healthy and it isn't giving back to the community.

My personal opinion is that if you're going to put ads on a fan site and earn a little advertising revenue, you need to be giving back with a site that fans find beneficial, and which they want to use and go to and which they feel good about visiting. The site can provide a service (forums, blogs, chat rooms) or content (a blog or web comic) or whatever else people actually want to go to a site for.

If you are giving back to the community, and spending three or four figures a month on hosting, and spending hours a day running a site that fans love and would be upset if it went away? Then yes, it's okay to put ads on the site -- hell, it's okay to even turn a profit sometimes, if you're really lucky and blessed with the right balance of traffic and ad revenue to hosting costs.

For example, for Firefox News, we provide news, reviews and meta -- written largely by members of fandom, on a site staffed and owned by fans. I've also spent mid-four-figures on site development (i.e., programming) so that writers on the site get a share of the ad revenue with a Google-approved program. It's all about giving back and being part of the community and not being a leech or a scraper. (And, uh, lest anyone get the wrong impression, I'm not getting rich here. I don't ever expect to be able to quit my day job. I'll be happy if the site continues to operate in the black.)

So.

Now that I've laid my position out, the next part of this article is the how-to-fund-your-fan-site-with-advertising article mentioned above. Yes, there's a concern that people might conflate us with Fanhistory because, dude, I'm daring to talk about how fans can increase their ad revenue. And I seriously did consider shelving it and posting it later. However, after second and third thoughts, I'm putting it out there for those who might want to read it. Because I know I'm not one of the bad guys, and I'm not going to let somebody else's bad behavior stop me from giving back to the community.

And the article in question?

Was all about giving back to other fans.