Quote:It would make sense to lower the costs by cutting out readers that only generate costs.
I'm a bit curious about the 30.000$ costs. Didn't costs went down with Amazon hosting and the like?
Nah, the hosting costs are a comparatively small portion of this. While we'd certainly like to use Amazon AWS (or the Google Cloud) their pricing is prohibitive for a website with high bandwidth requirements. We are using "Hetzner" in Germany. They offer unlimited traffic. We are also using dedicated servers. That isn't perfect in terms of contingency/migration but again - it is a MAGNITUDE cheaper.
The primary costs come from the camera/studio gear and the extra room for the studio/office. Honestly I can't imagine how to cut costs further. 30.000$ is the minimum. Again this is just to keep thing running and without having any profits/salary. So in part time mode and effectively two persons in the boat, we are really talking about 80.000$ p.a. that have to be generated. Let's face it, we will not spend several hours per week in front test charts for absolutely nothing ... Taking sample pictures is fun as is chatting to you folks. However, the rest is work really.
PS: We are at already far below those 80.000$ nowadays.