Well, that's a bit hard. You have to remember that the way things are setup over at WZ, that WorldzonePro is Worldzone's only major advertisor. The others are basically just 'fill ins' to keep our own ads from showing on every impression.
Rates and click thru's are definitly dropping. Our own click thru rate has gone down, but in the same respect, our impressions have shot upwards... 11 million banner views per month average now, but only a .54% clickthru rate, which used to be as high as 2%. So much for the bragging rights I had..LOL
However, you can figure different numbers into this. I dont know what they are right now, but you take that .54% clickthru's, figure out how many of those were Pro ads, and how many of those signed up for Pro, and the revenue for each click starts to skyrocket. Close to 90% of our paid accounts come from free accounts that switch over. Right now the Free/Paid hosting combo is becoming quite profitable..but I have no doubts that if Geo/Xoom were to get shut down, that combo would become lopsided and would fail unless free signups were shut down for a bit.
This is what Yahoo is trying to do now, except they may think that by shutting down the free and coming out with the pay, they will be able to make it. They might make it, but they are trying to move into and industry that even more competitive that the free hosting. I dont envy the people working there, and I am glad our company never went public. Where after 3 years we are finally becoming profitable and getting bigger each day...the public companies are feeling the heat from Nasdaq and probably dread ever going public now
But hey, they got $millions$ from going public. What did they do with it? Where's all that money now? I know how it all works, personally I have always felt that if you need to go public to make money, maybe you shouldnt be in the business. Expansion or new product development is one thing, but not to "start" a web based company. I think what you are going to see is that a lot of public 'tech web based' companies(Directories, Auctions, Travel, Books, etc), will fall out unless they go from free to subscription. Or in the cases like Amazon, charge more. Even that may not work this late in the game.
At that point, you will start to see a number of private companies that have been in the shadows start to emerge. Once the dust settles in the tech stock industry, these private (and profitable) companies may start going public to gain expansion revenue. That's where the real money with longterm profits will be.
Watch and I bet you I am right. I have made a lot of predictions here in the past, and most came true. One I remember from a long time ago was that companies like Amazon would eventually fail because their plan has serious faults. They sell for less than what they pay. How do you profit with a plan like that? Too bad I wasnt watching stocks and news back when this all started. As good as I am at predicting the outcome of things, I would be filthy rich by now....
And yes, hosting is getting cheaper too. What's going to set the hosting companies apart is support and reliability, as well as quality and speed. Many are already closing doors. Even Pro has faltered in the reliability issue, it is far better now, but it's still down about 2 hours a week, which is still too much. While I am on the subject, a 99.9% uptime guarantee is just as misleading as the 'unlimited' options, which is why I dont have a 99.9% uptime guarantee since most of the time it is the NOC's fault
Ok, well I guess I will shutup now, that's my .02 cents ($10 with tax)
[Edited by Webdude on 04-30-2001 at 05:31 AM]
