If you recall, a few weeks ago I shared a site called Black and White Movies, which hosts the free download and streaming of over 500 black and white movies. (Check out that blog post - Dracula, Dawn of the Dead, and Charlie Chaplain: Legally Watch and Download Classic Movies for FREE at bnwmovies.com). I hope its been a fun and useful site for you. I know I enjoy it.
Since then, the site's creator, Yavor Milchev, has generously agreed to an e-mail interview, and I'm excited to share with you a little about him, as wells as some of his thoughts about classic film and his journey with Black and White Movies.
This might be a testament to the fact that I'm an Internet business newbie, but I assumed that Milchev would be a classic movie aficionado. It turns out, when he established the site, he was actually a marketer with an eye for opportunities.
Back in 2009 I was a marketer, working for the number one website for legal free music. That website was a pretty rotten business under the cover; however due to my exposure to it I realized that there were thousands of public domain films available online which were just not very easy to find. With a passion for web development, I decided to try to build a website which makes these movies easy to find and watch. It was a pretty interesting challenge as I had basically no background related to old movies and had to learn everything from categorization, to which actors are most wanted, to how to write good movie descriptions without leaving any spoilers. This is how BnWMovies.com began...
I was curious about how he keeps the website free for users. While the films are available for free because they're part of the public domain (meaning that aren't copyrighted), web hosting and other expenses can add up quickly. This is what he told me:
How is it free...it's not :) When people see free websites they rarely think how these sites are actually still alive. In 99% of the cases the answer is using ads. Nothing in this world is free, the bill still has to be paid, just by someone else. Those annoying pesky ads are the fuel behind the free internet. Using the money from the ads on BnWMovies.com I was able to pay for all expenses, leave a little bit of profit and make donations to some of the institutions which are involved in preserving old movies. I have a day job just as anyone else, the money I was getting wasn't nearly as much as a salary. Little by little however times have changed and people have decided to use Ad Blockers. At this point there's barely any money left after paying the expenses and thus the website isn't being maintained as much as it used to since I've had to focus my available time to other activities which can help my family financially.In other words, between now being a software engineer and having the family that he briefly mentioned, he must be crazy-busy, and yet he still keeps up BnWMovies.com. Which I think is pretty impressive.
Finally, he also told me about the value of black and white movies, both for his viewers and for himself.
The majority of the site's visitors are elderly people. Some of them enjoy the films because they remind them of their own youth, others value them because they were made to entice using an interesting story played by great characters who convey lessons which you can use for life (as opposed to nudity, toilet humor and explosions). You can't see much of that in today's popular movies. For me personally they are also valuable for their historical insights. Watching them is like stepping into a time machine and being able to see what the past was like, and maybe learn from it to improve your future.
So, my dear viewers, that is a little bit of Yavor Milchev and Black and White Movie's story. If you like the site, please consider supporting it. Check out the Show Your Support page, to find out how.
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