Get Free Web Designs

Now that GFWD has a forum, our hosting and bandwidth is much higher the past few months. We have some paid text link adverts (top right sidebar on all site pages but the forum) that help cover the monthly hosting (which I pay the difference out of my own pocket), but every day the server load is increasing which means at some point the monthly fees will go up.

Fortunately we haven't had any downtime, which is nice, but I want to come up with some ideas to help raise additional money that will help offset the hosting costs for the site. Google Adsense isn't generating hardly anything, maybe a dollar or two a day and they don't pay out until the balace reaches $100 or more, which takes a few months, so that will probably be removed if another solution that has a better return is suggested.

A few people might suggest donated hosting, which on the surface sounds good, but with donated hosting, if there are problems or issues with the server or customer service, we don't have a lot of room to complain, which is why we currently have paid hosting, so if/when something acts up, we have the right as a paying client to say something about it without someone saying "well the hosting is free/donated, it is what it is" or something similar.

Also, I think it would be good to have some sort of design contest down the road, but with that most people want some sort of cash prize, which at the moment would have to be covered by myself and/or Aaron and we honestly don't have the extra funds to do that at the present time. Again most of the site expenses for GFWD's are covered by me personally or with some help from the current text adverts on the site.

One of the ideas I had was to remove the Google Adsense on the left side bar (on all forum and other site pages) and maybe replace it with 120×120 pixel banner advertisements. Maybe limit it to 4.

We do not want the site to become covered with ads, but something needs to be done. The site is doing well, Aaron and I continue to improve things with the code and we have a lot of new things coming to the site in the next month or so.

I'm open to any and all suggestions, so please be kind and share your thoughts and ideas. Thank you to everyone for your continued use and support of Get Free Web Designs.

Jason Cole said:

Try negotiating with a big provider of commercial templates to have 2-3 "premium designs" on the home page, and showing up in a seperate column for search results/browse designs.

This is an interesting idea, however I've never tried negotiating with a big provider of commercial templates before. Do you have any suggestions on which one to talk with? One that would complement GFWD?

acousticsam said:

An alternative to negotiating with a big provider:

If I'm not mistaken, there are many in the GFWD community who provide premium designs of their own. Perhaps dealing directly with these designers is also a possibility?

The premium templates idea makes a lot of sense.

This seems like a good idea, but would a GFWD member who already provides free designs to the site really be interested in paying to have some exclusive home page exposure or a dedicate page to show off premium designs? If so, feel free to contact me via my profile page and lets try and flush this idea out a little bit.

@Pete: If you win the lottery and decide to share with the site, that would be pretty awesome. Good luck and I hope you win

Now about ads in designs… as long as I'm involved with GFWD's, which should be a long time since I'm one of the site creators and founders, we won't have advertising placed in any templates submitted to the site. That has caused so much trouble in the past with other sites, I don't even want to go there.

I do think maybe we could do something with an advertising link in the header area when you preview designs (where it shows the design name, author and license). By doing that, it wouldn't be in or on the specific design, but it would show when anyone looks at a design preview.