This is a post written mostly out of desperation from things I read on the internet specifically regarding Audiomatch (and to a varying degree Tabulas). Because this is somewhat of a sensitive topic, I'm going to write a short disclaimer.

Disclaimer: This is in NO way targetted at anybody personal in my life, so don't feel "bad" if you have done such things. Please do not also misread this as a cry for money and help, I am simply writing about what it's like to run these services. Please do not also read this as an advertisement to "buy" my products; the goal of this post is to "humanize" these services and for people to understand what really goes on "behind the scenes," so to speak.

So to those of you who don't know me: I am a college student at UNC-CH. I have no job; I spend most of my time on these projects, making them better and (hopefully) making a mediocre living when I get out of college running this projects.

The story that you've read over and over again is that I am moving more and more stuff "for paid" and cutting off free stuff for many of my projects; Audiomatch is the most notable ... Tabulas has slowly been constricting on the free user end for some time (and will continue to do so as I announce plans for Tabulas 2.0).

Now, a lot of you may be wondering, "Roy is a money-grubbing suit. He only wants more money for himself." This could be further from the truth. I am not obsessed with money; I only want enough to support myself and eat food. I am not out to be blinging in Benz (although that would be a lot of fun) drinking Cristal.

I think a lot of this has to do with misconceptions. I think these misconceptions break down into a few key points:

1.) These projects are very popular due to high signup. Ergo, Roy must also have a high number of paid users.
2.) Roy must make/have a lot of money due to the success of his projects.
3.) I make no difference when I don't buy a paid account. I also make no different when I register multiple accounts.
4.) Running these services are easy and require almost no overhead.
5.) I don't want to pay; just run advertisements!

I believe clarifying these positions will make people realize the truth behind these services. So let me break down each misconception and clarify each point.

Addressing "Roy must make a lot of money"
First off, let me be honest here in regards to my finances: I do not make any profit off of any my projects. In fact, I am losing money. At the risk of sounding too dependent for many prospective girlfriends (girls, I AM STILL NOT TOO BAD OF A CATCH... HAR HAR), I am currently in debt. Last month I went into debt (my parents have covered me for a few hundred from last month), but I will be billed another $370 in a few days, which I have not covered. I have not covered my $570 bill. And this does not include living expenses. Why do you think I had to cut prices on Tabulas accounts? You think honestly it was just because it was its birthday?

No, I had to slash prices because there just was simply NO demand for paid accounts. I am not blaming the general population, I understand most people CANNOT pay (either because of their age or international restrictions), and I certainly do not expect you to pay if do not like the service.

However, I find it insulting to me when I find people trying to cut through the backdoor and registering multiple Tabulas/Lightbox/Audiomatch accounts to try squeeze the "free aspect" when I have explicitly asked people to register one account per person. If you find yourself needing more space for gallery on either Tabluas/Lightbox and you like the service, you should be upgrading, not registering more accounts.

Addressing "Well, I'm just one person!"
You may be thinking to yourself, "Well, I'm one person. What difference do I make? I'm only taking up X megabytes more." Yes, and you're right. If you were the only person who did this, I wouldn't notice and we could all live like this forever. However, there is an incredibly high percentage of people who think like this; when you take this into an aggregate, what ends up happening is no one buys paid accounts and everyone registers multiple accounts to get more free stuff.

When I first launched Tabulas, I was a bit excited and gave everybody I knew and their friends lots of free stuff. As I have grown more experienced, I have been able to less and less give you free stuff. As much as I feel guilty that I cannot provide everybody I know with free paid accounts, I simply cannot afford to do this anymore. So any personal people who feel 'shafted' by my inability to give you free stuff ... please do not feel this way. When it comes to free stuff, everybody believes you are their friend.

I am not indicating any animosity towards people I refuse to give free accounts ... I just cannot afford to set some kind of precendent ("Well, why did you give THIS person a free account and not me?)

Addressing "Running a service is easy and cheap!"
Now as the most popular argument I hear on Audiomatch: "Running this service is easy. Quit whining about donations."

Let me put this in perspective. I am a (broke) college student, dedicating MY time to making a cool little product (with so much kudos to Neeraj for spending HIS time as well). Neither of us have jobs. We made a service that became quite popular (16,000 signups before we had to shut down free registrations). The site does scale, but servicing thousands of users every few minutes everytime their Winamp upates, while interfacing a database becomes VERY CPU INTENSIVE.

So while I work my ass off making a cool little product, I realize the hardware costs are piling up. So I decide to ask for donations. Then I realize although some really nice people donate, it's not enough to cover the costs of multiple servers.

So I decide to go pay. Then I get a flurry of emails and (anonymous) comments basically lambasting me for my decision. So basically because I spend time working on a site, trying to make it better ... and I'm paying for the site, I am obligated to YOU to keep it free? What kind of messed up mentality is that?

Running sites like Tabulas/Audiomatch/Lightbox is not easy nor is it cheap. You may think because you pay $9.99 a year for web hosting on a shitty shared server that somehow these economics applies to sites like Tabulas and Audiomatch, but they DON'T.

If you find a free competitor and you think our site sucks, GO FOR IT. The problem is that eventually they will reach the SAME crossroads; servers do not come free nor do they grow on trees ... EVERYONE will reach a problem once they hit that critical number of users where the amount of hardware required to service the site exceeds the wallet of the owner.

In Conclusion
I do not make money from my sites (yet). Is this whole thing a money-losing scheme? I'd like to think it's not. Based on my experience looking at the sites, there is a sustainable level of income that can be met if people would just quit thinking of Tabulas/Audiomatch/Lightbox7 as being "cheap and easy to run" while realizing that a real person runs and pays for the site behind the scenes.

So in a rare moment of controlled anger: To those of you who continue the believe that the "free internet" is your RIGHT, and that sites who "charge" for their content are wrong, please think again. You are an asshole who is making my life a living hell.