O
old.[FMD]Stu_Granger
Guest
How about starting your own Mini Barrysworld. Of course using your own "corporate" image 
Get a group of web designers, computer technicians, Unix/Linux network support technician, marketers and create your own "Barrysworld". Simplified to the extreme here you go on your own mini business plan
I have an office, you can port a 8Mbps connection costing £60k per year (inc. kilostreams), set up a router and hub, 16 powerful 19" Rack servers (P3 800Mhz, 9.1Gb SCSI, 512Mb RAM running Linux). Each server running a different MOD, 5 14 player games per server. Equipment will cost you £30k. Put 5 workstations in the office with desks, chairs and telephones for 1x web designer, 1x computer technician, 1x unix/linux network technician, 1x entrepreneur/marketer and 1x secretary costing about another £7k in equip/furniture, plus 1 years salary for each costing £60k (each of the 5 staff will assist in getting news, and new busines, etc), plus heating, lighting and office expenses £12k
Set up a virtual ISP using Telinco/World Online lines (costing about £2k), paying on average quarter of a penny for every 2 minutes. Set up a webserver offering news, reviews, articles, listings, files, free webspace, forum & chat room. Set up banner advertising on every page of the site (paying penny per impression) and promote the dial-up service as "better latency, fewer hops to the game servers), etc.
Do some promotion in the games magazines, send out some promotional material to some potential sponsors, etc. Spend 3 months up front costing £6k.
Total investment for 1 year = £165k. Servers and workstations should last for 3 years (give or take a stick of memory and the odd harddrive). You need to generate £120k a year in revenue from dial-up, sponsorship and banner advertising.
You can have up to 1,120 players on all servers at one time. Average gameplayer plays 2 hours a day. 24 hours in a day = potential 13,440 players (could be more, could be less).
Out of 13,440 players 30% will want to be a clan = 4,000. The average clan is 10 players = 400 clans = 400 x clan web pages (inc. web pages, files, forums, guestbooks, etc). Lets say each clan web site gets 40 hits per day (each clan member visits website once a day and hits 4 pages) = 16,000 banner impressions at a penny per impression = £160.00 per day. Plus you get sponsorship of news pages, articles, chat room, etc. Lets say an additional £320.00 per day. Total Advertising & Sponsorship is £480.00 per day - could be more or less.
You are promoting your dial-up service which will allow you unlimited diallers (telinco lines & isp service is large, they handle tech for dial-ups and bandwidth for users, etc.) so lets say out of your 13,440 players 20% use your dial-up = 2,000 people. Plus a further 500 just surf and use email = 2,500 people spending average 2.5 hours online (2 hours playing and 30 minutes email and surfing) would generate quarter penny for every 2 minutes on average. Would equal 375,000 minutes = £470 in dial-up revenues (could be more could be less).
Your business could survive on just the ad revenue or dial-up revenue alone ... or if ad revenue and dial-up revenue were at 50% of their current figures.
Using these figures, your income would be £950.00 per day, equalling £345,000 per year. Less your £120k per year costs = £225, less 12% interest on the £165k invested = £20k and say a misc cost of £50k for any problems, equipment, bonuses for staff, etc. Would give £155k less your equipment over 3 years at 12k = £143k in profit.
Lets say someone of the clans wanted a clan server. You would have to buy a server at £2k which allows 5 clans (if public ... but they are clans so give 8 clans per server Each server would require 500Kbps each average over course of period. Over and above 8Mbps, 4Mbps extra is £25k per year. Gives say 5x clan servers (40x clans) and another 4x public servers (280 players at one time = 3,360 more players over a day - could be bookable servers which you could have another 2 or 4 servers for the bandwidth used). Cost of clan servers etc would be £20 in bandwidth + £10 other costs per month + £7.50 per month for server after 3 years) total = £37.50, rent as public/private servers with rcon and FTP for £75.00 per month.
League websites and League servers could be arranged without much disruption to standard services
It is possible to do a Barrysworld on a smaller scale and properly so the service generates a profit. Getting bigger as revenues increase using investors, bank loans and leasing arrangements to set up and improving with new servers, services, benefits, etc. If the 5 dedicated staff were partners taking less wage and investing a bit of money themselves it could be possible. If anyone would be interested in persuing this "dream" no timewasters please contact me at support@klan-kermit.co.uk
With thanks
Stu_Granger
Get a group of web designers, computer technicians, Unix/Linux network support technician, marketers and create your own "Barrysworld". Simplified to the extreme here you go on your own mini business plan
I have an office, you can port a 8Mbps connection costing £60k per year (inc. kilostreams), set up a router and hub, 16 powerful 19" Rack servers (P3 800Mhz, 9.1Gb SCSI, 512Mb RAM running Linux). Each server running a different MOD, 5 14 player games per server. Equipment will cost you £30k. Put 5 workstations in the office with desks, chairs and telephones for 1x web designer, 1x computer technician, 1x unix/linux network technician, 1x entrepreneur/marketer and 1x secretary costing about another £7k in equip/furniture, plus 1 years salary for each costing £60k (each of the 5 staff will assist in getting news, and new busines, etc), plus heating, lighting and office expenses £12k
Set up a virtual ISP using Telinco/World Online lines (costing about £2k), paying on average quarter of a penny for every 2 minutes. Set up a webserver offering news, reviews, articles, listings, files, free webspace, forum & chat room. Set up banner advertising on every page of the site (paying penny per impression) and promote the dial-up service as "better latency, fewer hops to the game servers), etc.
Do some promotion in the games magazines, send out some promotional material to some potential sponsors, etc. Spend 3 months up front costing £6k.
Total investment for 1 year = £165k. Servers and workstations should last for 3 years (give or take a stick of memory and the odd harddrive). You need to generate £120k a year in revenue from dial-up, sponsorship and banner advertising.
You can have up to 1,120 players on all servers at one time. Average gameplayer plays 2 hours a day. 24 hours in a day = potential 13,440 players (could be more, could be less).
Out of 13,440 players 30% will want to be a clan = 4,000. The average clan is 10 players = 400 clans = 400 x clan web pages (inc. web pages, files, forums, guestbooks, etc). Lets say each clan web site gets 40 hits per day (each clan member visits website once a day and hits 4 pages) = 16,000 banner impressions at a penny per impression = £160.00 per day. Plus you get sponsorship of news pages, articles, chat room, etc. Lets say an additional £320.00 per day. Total Advertising & Sponsorship is £480.00 per day - could be more or less.
You are promoting your dial-up service which will allow you unlimited diallers (telinco lines & isp service is large, they handle tech for dial-ups and bandwidth for users, etc.
) so lets say out of your 13,440 players 20% use your dial-up = 2,000 people. Plus a further 500 just surf and use email = 2,500 people spending average 2.5 hours online (2 hours playing and 30 minutes email and surfing) would generate quarter penny for every 2 minutes on average. Would equal 375,000 minutes = £470 in dial-up revenues (could be more could be less).Your business could survive on just the ad revenue or dial-up revenue alone ... or if ad revenue and dial-up revenue were at 50% of their current figures.
Using these figures, your income would be £950.00 per day, equalling £345,000 per year. Less your £120k per year costs = £225, less 12% interest on the £165k invested = £20k and say a misc cost of £50k for any problems, equipment, bonuses for staff, etc. Would give £155k less your equipment over 3 years at 12k = £143k in profit.
Lets say someone of the clans wanted a clan server. You would have to buy a server at £2k which allows 5 clans (if public ... but they are clans so give 8 clans per server
Each server would require 500Kbps each average over course of period. Over and above 8Mbps, 4Mbps extra is £25k per year. Gives say 5x clan servers (40x clans) and another 4x public servers (280 players at one time = 3,360 more players over a day - could be bookable servers which you could have another 2 or 4 servers for the bandwidth used). Cost of clan servers etc would be £20 in bandwidth + £10 other costs per month + £7.50 per month for server after 3 years) total = £37.50, rent as public/private servers with rcon and FTP for £75.00 per month.League websites and League servers could be arranged without much disruption to standard services
It is possible to do a Barrysworld on a smaller scale and properly so the service generates a profit. Getting bigger as revenues increase using investors, bank loans and leasing arrangements to set up and improving with new servers, services, benefits, etc. If the 5 dedicated staff were partners taking less wage and investing a bit of money themselves it could be possible. If anyone would be interested in persuing this "dream
" no timewasters please contact me at support@klan-kermit.co.ukWith thanks
Stu_Granger