When I first started the site. It grew quite fast. For saying that I was new to the fandom, not well know etc...
It had a few popular artists on it streaming even when it was the horrid html tables with the IRC embed chat.

It had a purpose, it was needed. A safe place where anyfur could live stream without the problem of outside trolls stumbling upon the stream or the site administrators banning them for the prons. And that was its USP. A safe live streaming site for the fandom.

So it grew, a follower of on of the artist that used the site then worked on developing V1.
It was great, proper user accounts, settings page, real stream security and able to grow without me having to set each user up.
We saw that bring many users onto the site, over 2000 within 4-5 months. We started having some event streams like UncleKage's Winestream that still goes on today very successfully. We use to host (and I hope soon they will start again) a monthly Furry night club in LA.

There were some problems. So we created V2. A lot better on the backend and added a few more features. We then added our own chat. It worked well for what we needed. But users wanted more. We then improved with V2.1 with better user interface. V2.2 having another new chat, the one we see today.

And that is how it is today. A year and a half on, nothing new. About 8-10 months ago a new site popped up.
Picarto.tv
For a few months everything on FS was great, mroe and more users, never not having someone stream live. Had 100-300 viewers average.

But as Pic started to grow, many art users on FS started to leave.
And for one good reason....


When I first created FS, a few people pointed out that it just being Furry will limit the site. It will mean users who don't always do Furry would have to use it and suffer ridicule or something or go back to LiveStream for those none furry streams.
So while my intention was to open FS and turn it into the next LiveStream site from the beginning, we did not do it fast enough.
Competition came along and tripped us up pretty much.

So from then, we have had a steady decline as more and more use Pic rather than FS. And the majority of furry streams are art. So it is the biggest wedge of users.
While other streams like gamers still come in, the site has never been popular for fursuiting stuff like fursuit makers.
There are a few on there like my good friend who makes all the purdy cats. Really it is not something that is done a lot as it is quite a protected thing.

Really, all that is left is a small amount of art streams, a dozen gamers and the weekend shows as well as the monthly.
Don't get me wrong, I fully appreciate these users. And I don't hate others for moving. It is a free market.

Other sites now have better features, more users etc so it is more worth them going there.

Sadly the developer left FS, a new one has been appointed but work as usual gets in the way.
At the moment, FS nearly breaks even every month.


We have somewhat hit a problem where due to the user decline, we lose income as the amount of donations lowers.
But because of large shows on the weekend and the regular monthly one, we need higher spec hardware and connection speed.
We have also become a very stable and reliable platform. While there are the occasional datacenter hiccups like we had a few weeks ago. We still hit between 99.99% and 100% every month.

But that it at a cost. A cost which means we nearly break even, and that we can't afford to pay for development of the site or advertising of the site. Which is a problem.

Even if we were to move it back to the EU (pissing off a lot of US users) to a server that could still support the site bandwidth and hardware wise. It is still only $20-30 a month saving. Probably lose that as US users (only because of their ISPs own fault) would stop supporting the site.

So what does one do?
I have already sank enough money into the project that I could have actually bought a half decent fursuit by now.

The site is online and running as it is. But for how long I don't know.
I manage to put in the spare cash once in a while to support it. Most of my profits from my online store selling fursuit accessories does this. That was meant to fund me being able to go to meets and cons, but it doesn't.

And what do I get out of it?
Well I am not after getting popular from it for sure. I am not after financial support from it either.
TBH I no longer know what I want from it. I hardly ever stream on it now too (probably down to me getting 4K monitor, any gaming I do I don't want to do at peasant 1080p any more so I have overheads for streaming).

The idea for FS was that it would grow, the users then supporting it allowing it to host more events such as con streams.
While we get a few on there, we can't host ones like AC as the site is not large enough for it and not known enough for cons to know to stream there.


I have a feeling that soon. Running along this knife edge that we are going to slip.
That means having to take out the most expensive thing which is the server. Downgrading it to either lower the service quality or lowering the capacity. If you do either, we lose money because quality means less people will use the service, and capacity means the weekend shows, which again means we lose more money. We then have to lower the server again, resulting in a loop and then finally hitting the point where we can no longer afford the streaming software server side, and that is game over. There is no going back. It is dead.

Everything we worked hard on, invested time in and lot of money in has gone.
And I have no idea what to do right now to save it from this.

And like this journal, IDK how to end it just like IDK how to fix this problem.
All of which is my fault. I did not take the advise of growing the site to a larger audience and it is why we are now here...