The business model that we have employed involved offering to eliminate our customers hosting, and online advertising expenses. By providing a free hosting service, it was a easy proposition for the customer: Expand their online presence, reducing their hosting expenses down to zero, free advertising/brand management across popular services (reaching over 100k clicks per month), and free ongoing first world labor/support during non business hours.
It may be shocking to learn then, that that division of LDI has been in the red for the past ten years. After the initial introspection on revenues, and debts ten years ago; it dawned clear as day that the near zero income generated (both present, and future expected) was going to be significantly outweighed by the costs to support our operating expenses. (rent, utilities, the scholarship benefits to the unpaid help involved.)
However, through our core principle of reducing sales to a minimal, we could avoid having to waste time negotiating fees, and integrating with payment vendors. We could keep internal costs low by utilizing extreme cost savings measures. The technical side of this was hosted on free cloud services. The losses from debt burdening were just the layman's exercise to practice theoretical finance. A slightly profitable arrangement was achieved if the debt burdening wasn't in place.
