From: fnf@fishpond.uucp (Fred Fish)
Subject: Re: to be or not to be
Organization: Amiga Library Distribution Services
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 00:56:52 GMT

In article <schwager.728013412@mike.cs.uiuc.edu> schwager@mike.cs.uiuc.edu (Mike Schwager) writes:
>Actually, I had rather suspected Fred was making a
>living off the Fish Disk distribution, especially with the number of disks
>that have been coming out lately!  Ok, call me naive... :-)

For the record, I generally make my living as a consultant, working on 
compilers, debuggers, linkers and other tools, though for the last year or
so I have been a full time employee of Cygnus Support, a company that 
provides support services for GNU software.  This makes my time worth about
$30-$75 an hour.

It takes about 40-50 hours of work to produce a set of 10 disks, which means
each disk represents about 4-5 hours of someone's time.  Given that there
are 810 disks now, if we take the 5 hour figure, that's 4050 hours of work
since 1985, or about two years of fulltime work.  If I had done this as a
living, and expected to net say $40/hr, I would have had to have shown
a profit of $162,000 to make it worthwhile.  I can assure you that my
actual profit is *considerably* smaller than that, probably averaging less
than $10/hr for my time.  This is one of the reasons why lately I tend to
farm out some of the work of constructing disks to people I trust, who are
local, and are willing to pick up a few bucks for some spare time work.
It still takes me about 10 hours to go over a batch of 10 disks, check
everything, make minor adjustments, and produce masters ready for duplication.

Let's run a quick estimate of the expenses of putting out a batch of 10
disks for 41 subscribers, and for simplicity, assume that they all have
opted for the $3/disk rate (I think there are about 5 who still go for
the $4 rate, the rest are all at $3).

    Income:
	41 subscribers X $3/disk X 10 disks		$1,230

    Expenses:
	disk preconstruction, 50 hours @ $10/hr		  $500
	blank disks, 410 disks X $0.50/disk		  $205
	postage (about half overseas airmail)		  $200
	duplication, packaging, mailing 15 hr @ $10	  $150	
	office expenses, insurance, mag, etc (prorated)	   $30	
	bubble pack envelopes, tape, etc 41 X $0.50	   $20
							 -----
						Total	 $1105

    Profit:
							  $125

This means that if just 4 more subscribers drop out, I not only don't make
anything for my 10-12 hours of work, it actually costs me money out of pocket.

>Given Fred's announcement, I don't know what we can reasonable expect from
>Netoids.

I don't know either, and it's a little early to tell.  The future of the
library is literal in the hands of the users.  So far I've had commitments
from three or four individuals or user groups to establish a subscription,
and Hypermedia Concepts has committed to donating a certain amount per
month (above and beyond their subscription) to cover some of the overhead.
I should know in about two or three weeks whether the response will be
sufficient to make it worthwhile to continue with the library, or put
a freeze on new subscriptions and just produce about one batch of disks
a month for the next 5 or 6 months and then shutdown the library, refunding
any money left from current subscriptions.

> If it were up to me, I'd say hey- let's indeed put our money
>where our mouths are.  Fred has been nothing but generous to a fault for
>the last 7 years now.  I thought he was just plain "generous", but now that
>I find out he's making nary a cent I'd qualify him as "generous to a
>fault" :-).  So, were it me I'd do something like this:
>
>     1. Change the charges for disks:

I'd like to change the charges, but I'd like to change them *downward*,
to about $2/disk.  With 100 subscribers, this would be reasonable.

>     2. Change the README file, to encourage more people to become direct
>        subscribers.

Yes, I should probably update the various README files, but I doubt this
would have much shortterm effect on the number of subscribers.

>Also, if Fred is having time constraints, I might suggest he get some
>reliable helpers amongst the Amiga community to sift through the incoming
>software. I think that would be viable only with fast network connections
>(both regionally and locally).  As Amiga users are the most dedicated and
>fanatical of all computer users (and I say that with the utmost regard), I
>think it would not be too hard for him to find people willing to go the
>extra mile.  But the logistics of communication could be a problem...

I've thought about this, and decided I would rather devote my time to
more consulting work than to herding cats, which is probably what such
a effort would be like.  If I do shutdown the library, there is nothing
to stop someone else from picking up the ball and running with a new
replacement library.

>Really, I think Fred should at least get an Amiga show and a vacation per
>year out of the deal.

Yeah, and a new A4000 as well...  :-)

>I would like to hear from Fred more specifics about what he wants.

Up the number of subscribers to about double or triple what it is now,
lower the disk rates, and everyone wins.

>So Fred, what do you think?  What would it take to keep things going?  75
>subscribers again, or simply X dollars per month?

Financial planning based on subscriptions is much easier and more reliable
than financial planning based on donations, which happen randomly and can
be cut off with virtually no notice.

-Fred



-- 
|\/ o\  Fred Fish, 1835 E. Belmont Drive, Tempe, AZ 85284,  USA
|/\__/  1-602-491-0048 {asuvax,mcdphx,cygint,amix}!fishpond!fnf
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc