A lot happening at the site / app right now. I might be making some changes that impact you guys both directly and indirectly. The big one that may impact you is the potential end of the app if something doesn’t change.
Usage is way up, revenue is way down
I’m not going to bury the lede here: The app may not survive much longer.
So, this was never a full-blown business by any means. I have a regular job. I run this site and developed the app because I looked around at the weather information being pumped out by various outlets and saw that it was either over-hyped, under-informed, or too difficult to navigate. I wanted to fix that! And I wanted to help everyone – like, everyone! – gain access to a reliable forecast, quality radar, and the fastest available life-saving weather information.
But it ain’t cheap.
In the “before time,” when it was just this website, it cost about 600 bucks a year to maintain the site, pay for the server and bandwidth. The weather data and other ‘stuff’ ran about 1,500 bucks. So, all told, I was ‘all-in’ at about 2,200 bucks per year. Spendy, sure. But the good news is that ads from the site produced about 1,500 dollars in revenue per year. So it “cost” me about 50 bucks per month to run the site and make sure that everyone had access to a forecast they could rely on.
Fast-forward to today. With the app and all of the data needed to support it, as well as the website and all of the ‘other’ stuff, it costs about 21,000 dollars this year. And that is about 10,000 less than I expected because I was able to negotiate some deals with a handful of data vendors and web providers.
Speaking of expectations, I expected the jump to the app to help produce more income. It did not. In fact, it actually reduced the revenue from the site. Plus, the ads on the app made me next to nothing. Revenue for this year will be around 1,000 bucks. For the year.
So, to eyeball things, the costs increased by a factor of 10, and my revenue dropped by about 30 percent. I’m no Mark Cuban, but those numbers seem to be moving in the wrong direction.
Sadly, with my regular job taking up 40-60 hours per week and running and maintaining the site and app taking up another 20, I simply haven’t had time to “sell” the advertising opportunities nor business-related solutions to help keep the app from being a complete campfire of dollar bills.
Same data, new opportunities for you
This is where I need your help. I know you’re out there. About 5,000 to 8,000 of you use the app daily. And I talk to another 50,000 of you guys on Facebook.
The good news is that I have – again – worked with some of my data vendors to lower costs in the short-term, but that won’t be enough. At 21,000 per year in cost and only about 1,000 in revenue, I need to find about 1,600 bucks per month in order to keep the app.
A small offset is an agreement with Facebook to pay me for your engagement. That means every time you see a post and like it, comment on it, or share it, it helps – in a sense – pay for the site/app! But, from what I’ve seen, that’ll only net me about 10 percent of what I need.
The other place I would love some help? Direct support of the app / site. One-time, single person donations are always appreciated. And I would love to work with local businesses, too! Your monthly support would help keep the app around while also giving you access to the same 5k to 8k people I talk to daily! In an effort to jumpstart things, I have lowered the price on some of the support tiers so anyone interested can now get more bang for your buck.
If you’re interested, please reach out! I’m happy to figure out how your support of the site/app can be reciprocated through market reach. And you may ask, well where are the users?
All over! So, no matter where you are across the forecast area, there is a good chance I can help you reach potential clients.
Commercial Weather Data & School Forecasts
So, I have learned a lot since leaving TV. Like, a lot a lot. Turns out that the weather impacts business a lot. Like, way more than I realized.
During the last three months I’ve been working really hard to come up with a forecast and a delivery method that can help businesses, of all sizes, manage the cost of weather. While the latest TV forecast or weather app on your phone is great for planning your personal day, your professional day needs more info.
What do I mean? Let me give you some examples…
Plans written in stone:
You work in concrete and have to lay a new foundation for a large commercial building. But, as you know, you can’t do it in certain types of weather – temperature, humidity, and precipitation all have to fall within certain thresholds. But when you get out to the site on Monday, it is too humid to get started in the morning, Tuesday morning it rained overnight and the ground isn’t prepped anymore, Wednesday it will be too hot. You’ve now lost three days of work.
I can give you an AI-powered human-corrected forecast that is site-specific down to the hour, for thresholds you decide, up to 10 days out. So instead of showing up to the site each day hoping you can make a run at it, you know to wait until Friday and spend the interim four days working a different job.
Making cold hard cash:
You work in retail and decided against ordering any home winterization products for the upcoming Winter. Last winter, the area wasn’t hit too bad with cold weather, so you’re thinking it may not be necessary this year. Now, it’s Thursday and the forecast calls for a big shot of cold air on Monday. Everyone keeps calling to se if supplies are in stock and you have to tell them “No” missing out on the ability to help customers protect their homes.
I can offer an outlook that can see the chance for a shot of colder weather coming up to four weeks out. That can give your business the edge to order some of those products to make sure you are prepared. Then, as we get closer in time and learn how cold, how long, and if there will be any snow, you can make another push to make sure your store is stocked up and ready to go when the cold weather arrives.
Severe weather school day:
As a school administrator, it is your responsibility to safeguard the lives of kids at school. On Tuesday morning, you hear about a chance for storms and severe weather on Friday. You need to make sure that kids can get to school and home from school safely. Parents start to call and email asking about delays or closures due to the weather.
I’ve built an Excel-based dashboard that, with your predetermined thresholds, can make the decision for you about whether to delay classes, lets kids out early, or close school altogether. This data is AI-assisted and human-corrected to help you know, up to five days out, how the weather will impact your school specifically and what steps to take to mitigate risk.
I’ve put together all of these options to help you guys work around the weather because I’ve learned just how much money the weather can cost companies every year. I can’t promise perfection, but I can promise that our data and forecasts will help take the stress out of making weather-related decisions while also giving you an opportunity to limit risk and save money.
Upgrades coming
One thing that has been in the works for about 3 to 6 months are some upgrades to the app based on your feedback from the first 6 months of usage. The developers have been working hard at bug fixes and new features.
The bug fixes aren’t as “fun” to read about, so I want to share the new features: We now have “Dark Mode” as well as “slowed down radar”
The radar will also transition from current radar loop into the model-derived estimate of the future all on the same screen. Really cool stuff!
Tracking your movements
After a lot of reading and some reflection, I am ready to change from Google Analytics and Google Ads to, well, something that values your privacy more. Google is great, don’t get me wrong. But they also really want a lot of your data.
Sure, privacy is dead. We all know that our phones listen to us, every app listens to us, even our TVs listen to us in order to serve us ads for things we talk about. It is getting pretty ubiquitous. But it still makes me a bit uncomfortable. Maybe I’m weird.
But this gets me to you guys: Recently, Google changed the way to tracks analytics and serves ads on this site. So much so that I now need to start running one of those, “Hey! this site uses cookies! “accept all” or “reject all” ads” banners that run everywhere else.
Those banners, just as an aside, are there because cookies monitor and track everything you do on each website and then send that browsing data back to (insert-company-here) to help serve you personalized ads, remember login info, or track the sites you visit.
They aren’t all bad. Some are good. Some are needed. But some can be a bit intrusive.
Up until this point, I’d been able to opt-out of a lot of this stuff (but not all of it) from Google to protect you guys. While you are served “ads users may find of interest” based on the website you came from most recently to get to my site, I’ve turned off a lot of other options. It is one reason you don’t see pop-up ads on my site, either. I value your privacy.
This new stuff, though, I can’t find a way out of all of it. So I am thinking I need to find another option.
But it also means I would have to pay a different company for an analytics service I was getting for free. And I would also lose the income from the ads being served by Google. Not a great combo. Especially against the backdrop of what I mentioned above.
The Bottom Line
This website will never go anywhere. My desire to help people navigate the weather will never change. The app, though? There is a potential that the app may not last since it is, currently, quite the cash sink that is costing me both money to maintain and costing me previously made revenue. And while there is a HUGE benefit for you guys, I can’t shoulder the cost, as it sits, in perpetuity.
I need help to keep it up and running.
Y’all are more than just users to me; we’re a community. Even though I’ve physically moved away from home, my love for the Pine Belt and my friends in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama fuels my dedication to keeping everyone informed. However, there’s a limit. I have bills to pay and a livelihood to sustain. While my day job covers my basic needs, it can’t sustain a yearly loss of 20,000 dollars to keep everyone informed about the weather.
To everyone who has supported the site and app previously, I am profoundly thankful. You guys are awesome and I couldn’t have continued to do this – at this level – without you. Plus, your contributions to keeping this site and app going have been appreciated (both directly and indirectly) by – literally – thousands of people. You guys rock.
If you are interested in being apart of helping to keep people informed about the weather and/or you have a business that wants to reach up to 8,000 people (and growing) every day and/or you need site-specific weather-related info to help your business or school run smoother — contact me! Let’s work together to make the world a better weather-informed place!
How to Help!
- Download the app: Click Here!
- Personally support the app: Please click the donate button!
- Run ads on the app: Contact Us!
- Learn more about other services we offer: Check This Out!
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The “onetime payment” link is broken. And just add a “Contribute” button in the app itself.