Phil Dinghra has sent out an email saying he can't afford to support 3dporch.com any more and will be shutting the site down. 

That's a shame as it is a useful site - especially for the Nintendo 3DS community, who have uploaded over 40,000 3D images to the site.

At the same time, the site has some serious flaws that would need to be addressed in order to attract more users....not the least of which is getting rid of the annoying "wiggle" animations for every image in view.

Whatever... Here is Phil's email, which I received a couple of hours ago, around 13:30. 

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Dear 3D Porch User,

I'm the owner of 3D Porch, and I wanted to thank you for your contributions to the site. All the wonderful images have encouraged me the whole way through.

Unfortunately, I've come to the point where I can no longer afford the time or money to maintain 3D Porch. I've been running it at a financial loss ever since it started. For the past three months, I've tried and considered nearly all possible options:

DONATIONS - I would need regular monthly donations to keep the site up, and I just don't estimate it being enough.

PAID ACCOUNTS - Again, there are some people interested in paying for accounts, but I'd have to really convert a lot of users to barely make it work out.

MORE ADS - I'm already making as creative use of ads as I can without trashing the site, but it's barely making enough.

MORE FEATURES - Offering titles, tagging, albums, or social features may improve some visibility in search engines (maybe doubling my traffic), but monetization of image sites is so weak, that it wouldn't really help me break even.

The bottom line is that 3D Porch would have to be 5x more popular to break even, and 10x more popular to even give me a decent trickle of income.

I don't see that happening, and so I'm going to have to close the site. I don't have an exact schedule, but here's a general roadmap:

- Allow uploads for the next 24 hours (but turn off the bulk uploader)
- Create some sort of download script or tool for users to capture all their work. I'll probably get this set up in the next couple days.
- Remove 99% of the content on the site in 14 days.
- Create a public, museum-like archive of 3D Porch in about 30 days. This museum will probably just have 500 or so photos.
I won't be sending any more emails. So if you want to stay up to date with what's happening, please follow @3dporch on twitter or checkhttp://3dporch.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=399d54509f706c838dc5f66fa&id=f07ab70b49&e=74a3306ea8 for updated info.

- Phil