The Reality of Website Costs

I have posted this on both my personal blog aaron.wrotkowski.ca and the GrapPro website.

TLDR: I’m not shutting anything down. But things might get uglier looking. This is a less than 1,000 word read.

Back in 2014 I purchased web hosting tri-annually. I was able to renew it triannually at the same price twice. Since 2023 I’ve been paying the same annually I paid triannually. And it’s going up along with SSL and other costs.

Prior to SSL, my blog’s best month was 2,757 unique visitors when I wrote my FFIV: My Star Wars blog and I posted it on Reddit. I had another jump in 2017 to 2000 unique visitors in July and August. Funny enough it was again videogame blogs. Why didn’t I keep writing about videogames? My next non wrestling popular spike was in December of 2021 writing about Downtown Windsor.

In 2019 came All Elite Wrestling and I decided to start writing about the promotion. I didn’t really get any traction beyond a couple hundred unique visitors every month until last year. I did an article about what’s actually wrong in AEW that got a lot of traction. In April 2024 that jumped up to the 2,000s after I wrote about Billy Gunn being the worst. So thanks Billy Gunn.

It wasn’t the primary reason for me starting GrapPro. I had wanted to do a wrestling specific website for a while and split the personal blog from the wrestling blog.

Starting a new website is tough and expecting people to transition over is also tough but it turns out I didn’t really lose an audience. GrapPro has done 1,161 unique visitors in August for launch, 1,482 in September, 2,770 in October (The Death Riders articles have been good to me) and 1,350 in November (Back down to earth I guess) but this is with the personal blog doing 1,500 on average in those months as well. So I’m doing better, not worse, breaking the wrestling content off. Almost all of my blog posts since then have been music related. So people like that enough to stick around.

What’s the point of all this unique visitor talk? So I get 3,000+ unique visitors across a blog and pro wrestling website, what’s the big deal? That’s what I thought too. I didn’t think 3,000 unique visitors was a big deal. Until I started trying to look for new hosting.

I thought my current host was bleeding me dry and I could find a cheaper host with better service. And then I told them my numbers and they all said, “We can’t handle that at a lower price.”

I’ve already been dealing with the fact my current host can’t handle it. Any time I post an article or update an article? I’m dealing with server errors. Just publishing these got multiple errors. I can’t tell you how many times someone has told me a link doesn’t work and I have to say, “just refresh it” like a dork. It’s like having to tell someone who walked into your store that the lights will be on in a minute.

So if I want reliable hosting that can handle the GARGANTUAN traffic I’ve been getting of 3,000-5,000 unique visitors across two websites? I need to pay.

The point is this comes out of my pocket. I’m trying to host these things to write and avoid having to go to a Medium or some other website where it’s hardly my own real estate. Medium is owned by a guy who co-founded Twitter. In other words, he’s real good at giving up a great service to a fucking idiot and absolutely destroying the value of it. He also co-founded Blogger. Do you know where Blogger is? It’s owned by Google. Do you know anyone who uses Blogger still? Fuck no. So I don’t trust Medium. I trust paying for a host to host a website I built.

What I’m getting at is that I need to pay for these costs and it’s now getting close to beyond my means.

I’m never going to charge for my writing. I don’t believe paywalls work for the way I write.

I’ve dabbled with doing ads in the past but I’ve ever got serious about it. Now I have to. I’m also going to have to get the GrapPro Subscription service back going and take it serious as well.

For now I’ve replaced links with a PayPal Donate button.

I have no intention of closing the projects down but I need to afford them.

So if you start seeing ads? If you start seeing dumb products advertised? Please just… keep your Adblock off. Just for my websites.

I would love to run GrapPro as my full time job but I’m not there yet. I’m right now in, “How am I going to pay for this hosting every year with rising food costs, rising rent costs, and rising utility costs?” and my vow is to never go paywall. If I don’t go paywall I need donations and I need ads.

If I get enough donations to not have to go full ads then you won’t see any. If I don’t? Come 2025 you’re going to start seeing ads creep up. And when they do I’ll have something on the website telling you to keep your Adblock off. Just be nice and do that.

To recap:

• I just got new hosting to replace the current hosting and it’ll cost more than the previous hosting but promise better service
• The amount of unique visitors I get on both websites is the expense I’m now paying for
• My blog and GrapPro might have ads in the future unless I get enough donations to take care of the rising costs
• I really hate writing this and it bums me out

Once again, here’s a link to PayPal to donate.

Thank you for reading and thank you for your support.