What strategies are webmasters coming up with to compete with google mail's service with its 1gig of space?

Jason

Hi Jason.

The service provider with whom im currently paying 170$/Mo for a dual cpu/raid1-80gb/2gbram/500gb traffic/Mo has quoted to me a 1.2 TB RIAD5 Setup upgrade with additional 2000GB traffic @ 400$/Mo which means that in case im up with that i pay 5700$/Annum for a 1.2TB RAID5 and 2500GB Traffic/Mo. (pay for 5 months and get 1 month free)

With this as basis and presuming that there is no overselling, each GB costs ~4.75$/Annum

With above cost per GB in mind:

• Add up some subdomain hosting user.domain.com and offer ab 30 MB space there and provide access to subdomain using filemanager of GM (Courtsey Charlie's Mod)
• Build up a directory service and charge some "small amount"/Annum there. (geocities charges 60$/Annum for a 25 MB account as an indicator)
• Tie up Google Ad Sense to your directory.
• Give Away Google's 1GB on your site too (not many would ever reach to use that level of space and only the most "Unorganized" user would ever reach that level of space utilization)
• Put up a "Strict" anti spam compliance so that users do not invite SPAM to their account just for the heck of testing your commitment wrt your offer of 1GB MailBox space.
• Reject SPAM at MTA level by integrating with RBL's. Few legit mails may be lost but not your fault.

Ad sense should get you enough to take care of the 4.75$/Annum of operating cost wrt "space and bandwidth".

The above is just a projection on the actual Adsense revenue that i could get (though check awaited) on a small userbase that i have at the moment. BTW, 4.75$/Annum of costs includes a fully managed support with support staff available 24/7 online on ICQ/AIM/Yahoo and i have not yet found a single day where i had to repent for switching over to present service providers. The only time I really needed their support was for kernel security upgrade which they did in less than an hour after being contacted (i honestly cannot do a kernel upgrade). Similar offer elsewhere could cost you 47.5$/Annum which would drive the whole business model out of existence.

Down the line if Google Stops Ad Sense, by that time you would have enough subscribers and had proven your credibility to your subscriber base so that if you ask for 5$/Annum more, they wouldn't mind paying that.

Just sharing my thoughts on which im currently pursuing my model.

Thanks
Anup

Sorry, I've tried searching every where and way I can think of to find the mod this is referencing...

What is Carlie's "filemanager of GM" mod?

thanks in advance,
Michael Coyne
seaturtle.org

Hi.

The FileMan mod is located at:

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...orum.cgi?post=264538

This is how i use:

After a GM user completes signup, from within the mail account he creates a Subdomain Account ( a separate script which allows access for authenticated GM users for creation of one account). The subdomain format is username.gmdomain.com for example. Then this subdomain account is accessible only from this fileman mod (no access thru ftp).

Configure thru mod_vhost_alias in httpd.conf and add a wild card entry in the parent domain zone file pointing to the ip where this mass virtual hosting is supposed to run (on the same server as GM).

[EDIT]

• I have not allowed FTP access as i found that the subdomain space was being used for filetransfer from multiple locations and such users were not using the webmail at all. So id discontinued. You could allow the same in case you have pure-ftpd compiled with mysql support as the Subdomain Account Creation Script creates db based details of the account also
• What i forgot to add to the above post was :: Compile mod_gzip (presuming that it's apache/Linux combo) as that would approximately give 50% reduction in bandwitdh consumption if the sites are having css/javascript and images.... or would be more if w/o them, besides giving a speeded up site access . For NT + IIS based i think there is a commercial software by name of httpzip or something which achieves the same result but costs in excess of 200 $.

[/EDIT]

Anup