History of BME

I know Shannon well enough to know he is NOT in this for the money. In fact, he has paid a LOT out of pocket for others. He does what he does because HE has a very strong interest and desire into the entire subject of body modification. He may not be into getting castrated personally, but he still has an interest in the subject, and he himself has some body modifications. He is "sharing" his interests, and being very generous in hosting a lot for us, out of pocket. Yes, he does charge for his site, but you can also get free membership for submitting material. His site used to be free and open to ALL, but very few were giving and most were taking, and those that gave were not able to gain access because of the bandwidth all being taken up by the leaches, and there was also an issue with people coming in, taking the pics, and then posting them to the Usenet (where those IN the pictures never wanted it on any site other than BME) and some were even putting them on THEIR sites (some pay commercial sites) as their own.

Also, the cost of running an open site like that ran so high that it came down to a choice, close it down entirely, charge all for using it, or make it a member's only site. He decided to make it a member's only site. In fact, he REFUSED to make it a pay site for the longest time, and insisted that ONLY those who submit articles be members, making it more akin to a club. But people kept insisting they wanted access, did not want to submit articles (or thought they were not material for an article), and actually it was the "people" that insisted that Shannon offer access for money "as well" as the option to gain access by submitting articles. He gave in and started giving membership for money "as well", but this was not his goal, nor was it something he personally wanted to do.

His site has since blossomed many fold. This does NOT mean he makes a lot of money out of it. I know how much money it takes to run such a site. We are talking millions of hits, and gigs of bandwidth a day. Just ask a few web servers how much they charge for a gig a day and a few million hits a month, with hundreds of megs of stuff on the site, and you will soon see the thousands that can cost you, personally. That money does not come out of thin air. His goal, from the start of offering access for money "as well" as free membership for article submission, was to ONLY make it self sufficient, he is by no means rich, not off the site nor from his salary, he's just a normal person like you or me, with some unusual interests, that has moved his interests into a site that has become extremely popular. And for a site like his you cannot just get any server too, many servers want nothing to do with such an extreme site, so that means less servers to choose from too, and no free servers for sure.

It is often for the uninitiated to confuse his site with those thousands of pay adult sex sites out there, but his is not like that. There are some similarities, but that is all. I know all this because I have watched the progress of BME for many years, from when it was free and open to all until now, and remember the messages he put on his site about the problems, and posts here, and talks of how to resolve those problems. In many ways his site became what it is today due to ALL of us here, and what WE kept asking for. For instance, BME Hard, the fantasy site of BME, was due to the extreme demand for it from many of us, he used to give membership for those fantasy pictures but just never used them, because his site was NOT about fantasy. However as those images grew, and were not being used, and people kept asking for fantasy pictures, and the demand for such a fantasy site grew, he eventually gave us what WE asked for.