I've been running it for over 10 years now, it's a database of Steam games, their updates, price history, charts, and a lot more.
In the early days we took monetary donations but stopped a few years in. It costs less than 100$ a month to run. Cloudflare reports 552.2M requests in the past 30 days, and 6.09M unique visitors.
edit: err, it's a genuine question, from someone that doesn't work in/with advertising, and had a .info domain within the first month they were offered, in 2001. Here's a rephrasing: Do ad networks, or customers of those networks, treat TLDs differently?
Assuming $0.50 net CPM on one AdSense unit per page view, that would be $70k monthly/$840k yearly revenue. And since operating cost is $100, that's all profit. I'm no AdSense expert but I believe this would be super conservative, maybe an expert could chime in with higher realistic numbers. Even if you don't like advertising there are other ways you could earn money with a site like SteamDB.
Why do you think google analytics is more right than cloudflare? Adblock can block GA, but it can't block cloudflare
More realistically, if he decided to do this right, and sell direct ads using something like Kevel, with "promoted" game slots or something on the homepage and search, he could do $10-$20CPM direct since it's a large and well known site with high purchase intent.
Let's say a conservative 4 impressions per page and 3 pages per session.
(12 imps per session * 6m sessions)/1000 * $10CPM is $720k / mo
This is a _very_ achievable number, quickly, for a site that is this close to purchase intent.
I don't understand. Even putting a single adsense ad at a $1 CPM would net him close to $20k/mo. This might be one of the least monetized sites I've seen at this scale.
Respect.
It's funny I wonder about the influence of ads too like you by using ad block experience a better internet (no influence on behavior).
There's a hijacking thing too of intent, at which point I modify websites to hide these above the fold attention grabbers.
My kindle forces you to read an ad everytime you turn it on. I know you could root it, lost money on device, etc...
SteamDB looks pretty amazing and sleek without ads. Putting ads would only degrade the user experience and force people to install adblockers or use adblocking browsers like Brave. Kudos to xPaw for keeping his site ad-free for all of us to enjoy.
I think very few people would knowingly turn down income of a million dollars per year. In fact I'd say it's a privilege to be in a position to be able to turn that down. I even see some people here who are asking him to make the income even though he doesn't want it so he can give it to a charity.
Although, affiliate links to games might be an idea (assuming Steam has such a thing). At least for the purchase if someone is interested in buying.
Steam does not have such a thing.
Maybe it is worth paying $0.00000018109 to satisfy someones request? If they are running up the bill to $0.00001642036 per person (90.6751339113 req/user/month) there must be something there worth something for them?
I get that some people are to cheap to purchase fun for others but at these rates it is more like people are against fun in general. One can be cheap but one cant be that cheap?
I've had this discussion before... uhh... a few times.
Them: Why are you doing this????
me: Aren't you having fun?
Them: YEAH, but why????
me: You see little jimmy over there? You think he is enjoying himself too?
Them: uh yes? But why????
me: Well, I don't mind it.
I guarantee you that there are game shops out there that would pay you like $10k minimum to "Feature" their game for a month or something.
You feature 5 games a month for 10k, you suddenly are at 50k/mo.
Or, you could go the route of using traditional ads like google ads etc, but those can be kind of spammy and the ad targeting kind of sucks.
I'd really recommend exploring that, and don't feel bad about using ads. You deserve to get rewarded for the excellent site you've put together, a lot of people clearly get value out of it.
> nginx, latest php, mariadb.
> and of less importance: memcached and influxdb.
As someone who loved all the RTS/Tycoon games back in 2000's, I look at making money through own ventures as just another game at the same time
Depends on the person, how slippery the slippery slope is, and the motivation for a particular project.
I could ask myself "how much money would I be willing to pay to bring benefit to a large number of people?" It's definitely nonzero. But that's not a great question, because we all hate losing stuff we have (and paying is losing). It's a lot easier psychologically to forgo getting the money in the first place.
(Note that I wouldn't be able to forgo that much money. Though I might be able to procrastinate throwing the monetization switch for a while. How long is relative to my level of privilege in my own finances.)
to those who haven't used the tool (listed at bottom of page), it can be great for discoverability with a ton of filters, and quick responses
Give a Steam Award to xPaw
A Steam Award gives the creator of this site Steam points!
Is the best we can do to support his work! I just wanted to point there is a /donate. Not sure why it need to be cold hard cash to count.
I do get game gifts to my personal account from time to time.
Great resource. Thanks!
Like others have said you could have affiliate deals with the game publishers direct, so there will be no in your face adverts.
You could also have banner ads that are complimentary.
Perhaps you don't need money, but personally I'd capture what I could as over 10 years that would be substantial.
You would then have extra reserve savings for yourself in case your circumstances change, or you could hand it over to charities
Love what you're doing regardless
Every time I think of a project like this, I convince myself that steam/amazon/twitter/Facebook/etc will rate limit any bot that tries to scrape data from their service.
Respect for keeping the site ad-free.
i am curious to hear from you about your experiences with people trying to scrape data off the site. i noticed that we cannot go back beyond a couple years for price history without logging in for one. is that a decision made because of people scraping data?
Would you monetize it to fund a nonprofit or charity?
I respect you for what you have done.