This is something that I've discussed in one of the
threads back when taking on RPGWatch in May of 2022 (man, time really flies...). I won't be doing it like Myrthos for several reasons, and the fact that much of the expenses and maintenance work done on the server and our hosting environment in general benefits more than RPGWatch alone is also a factor in that. Like you said, it would be difficult to calculate exactly how much of the various expenses to attribute to RPGWatch vs. the other sites I run and/or manage. There are certain expenses that are easy to attribute to RPGWatch alone, like various forum and addon licences and domains, but they represent only a fraction of the overall running and operational costs.
I've been running RPGWatch out of my own pocket for nearly two years now and to be honest, I didn't bother doing the maths on how much that's cost me. I've had to deal with a major disaster last summer when my house was flooded that's basically put my life on hold for several months and dealing with the aftermath of that has kept me preoccupied to the end of last year and beyond. My goal now is to get back on track with what I've been wanting to do around here last year before being interrupted by the flood.
Enabling RPGWatch visitors and members to contribute to the costs of keeping RPGWatch online in the future and offsetting some of the costs incurred over the last two years is definitely important, so that's my priority at the moment. Later on, I will be looking at advertising options,
as ads are normally the main source of income for websites such as ours, since the majority of visitors will not support the site with donations. Once these basics are sorted out, it's easier to work on all the other aspects and improvements to the site, as you don't have to worry about the bills associated with keeping everything running any more. Profit isn't my primary concern here, as there are many better paying online enterprises than running independent gaming websites. I do run a business in RL though, so I need to make sure that in the long run I'm at least not losing money, and if there's any income left after covering all the expenses, that's just more incentive to work on and improve the site further.