Funding GardenPondForums.com

[addy1]

Don't feel bad addy1, I just tried to donate and entered the amount, hit donate and it said, "You can't donate nothing." Hum...

It took me right to paypal which I have on my lappy. click click, funds donated..............

 

[Stephen Noble]

Go figure. I did it again and it too took me directly to paypal. Thanks addy1!

 

[Ian]

Oh you guys are amazing, we're already half way to this month's target already! It's such a relief to know, as this makes such a difference to funding hosting and software licenses.

 

[combatwombat]

Hey Ian. Thanks for the awesome community you've built here. I see that the post editor has gotten a nice little update recently. Looks good!

I have both run my own small (unpaid) web communities and also have a website that earns via ad revenue. My recommendation, for what it's worth: Do both.

This is great, niche community where relevant advertisers are happy to pay to show ads to people who would generally be happy to see them. Ad blockers are still small potatoes across the web—not that many people use them.

Having advertising to make a site self-sustaining and then add'l funding sources to improve the community is a nice to place to be.

No reason you can't do both without being intrusive to the community at all.

I see you just opened up a little funding campaign. I'm off to donate now.

 

[GBBUDD]

As usual i'm in the Let me THink here.
i VOTE FOR ADDS .... play the adds uk daytime hours i'll just leave my browser open and we should be good by the time we here in the USA sign on the adds should be good and shutting down
Thoughts?

 

[Mike in Vermont]

@Ian Is paypal the only payment option for donating?

 

[Ian]

Thank you all so much, we've already hit this months target! That's 50% of the server costs all sorted for this month, which is handy as we're half way through the month . I am very, very grateful to you all for helping keep this site going.

I've already made a few improvements to the site, as it looks like it will be a sustainable way to fund things if it continues to be a success. I've renewed the forum, gallery, resource and showcase licenses and upgraded to the latest versions. This comes with quite a few improvements, so you may notice that the editor and a few other areas look slightly different.

As usual i'm in the Let me THink here.
i VOTE FOR ADDS .... play the adds uk daytime hours i'll just leave my browser open and we should be good by the time we here in the USA sign on the adds should be good and shutting down
Thoughts?

Unfortunately the ads won't earn when they're left on like that and I'm unable to time when they appear, so they'd need to be on 100% of the time. However, it looks like the voluntary donation scheme is working well so far - it's already generated half of the server costs in just a day, so I think for now I'll stick with this and let's see how it works out. There's no compulsion to donate, it's purely voluntary .

@Ian Is paypal the only payment option for donating?

Yes, for now it is unfortunately - simply as it's quite common and works well for very little maintenance and cost - some of the other card processors are quite complex to use for a small use case. You don't actually need a paypal account to donate using the link, you can donate as guest paypal member which means it basically just takes the card details as a one-off without needing a paypal account. Is using PayPal a deterrent (this applies to anyone reading this too)?

 

[TheFishGuy]

Thank you all so much, we've already hit this months target! That's 50% of the server costs all sorted for this month, which is handy as we're half way through the month . I am very, very grateful to you all for helping keep this site going.

I've already made a few improvements to the site, as it looks like it will be a sustainable way to fund things if it continues to be a success. I've renewed the forum, gallery, resource and showcase licenses and upgraded to the latest versions. This comes with quite a few improvements, so you may notice that the editor and a few other areas look slightly different.


Unfortunately the ads won't earn when they're left on like that and I'm unable to time when they appear, so they'd need to be on 100% of the time. However, it looks like the voluntary donation scheme is working well so far - it's already generated half of the server costs in just a day, so I think for now I'll stick with this and let's see how it works out. There's no compulsion to donate, it's purely voluntary .


Yes, for now it is unfortunately - simply as it's quite common and works well for very little maintenance and cost - some of the other card processors are quite complex to use for a small use case. You don't actually need a paypal account to donate using the link, you can donate as guest paypal member which means it basically just takes the card details as a one-off without needing a paypal account. Is using PayPal a deterrent (this applies to anyone reading this too)?

Will say that it would be more convenient to use the site directly but for such a small site PayPal is probably a lot more secure off to donate!