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why does it cost you so much to run this site?

• PaulHoule 12y ago
  It has 100GB+ of image files and handles pretty heavy traffic volume from web crawlers alone because it has something like 5 million pages covering 2 million or so data items. I need a hefty MySQL instance to back it because (i) I need to have fast response time for the site to be usable (ii) The database is horribly bloated (maybe 80% of the table mass doesn't have to be there) (iii) The physical instance of the database isn't as optimized as it could be An optimized system would cost a lot less to run. It's plausible that better monetization could make the site break even now, but if I could lower the cost per image by a 3x-10x factor I might be able to put more images in (there are another 50 million or so I can grab) and maybe drive up traffic but really I haven't done it because I've been pursuing other deals that have better expectation values. Also from an ops perspective it is a wooden round, I only have to make an editorial change once a week and something goes wrong with it technologically less than once in six months. In theory I could delete a bunch of database columns and the system might keep cruising, but it might come crashing down and cost $1000's in billable time to make right.