spidercrab,
an idea for the patreon is to have something up there like, “X subscribers covers hosting”, and “Y subscribers covers hosting and paying tech support a fair wage”, “Z subscribers and we start a communist superpac”
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Do we need money? I’ve been busy at work and just haven’t gotten around to actually doing it but will donate if we need money. How much if so?
My understanding is that maintenance costs are covered for now with ads + patreon, but gregoreo and zikzak are putting in many many unpaid hours so if you can throw in a few bucks for cheeseburgers that’s helpful.
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Cool, I figure 5 bucks a month on Patreon can help cover some of that.
Can help more if needed at some point.
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This is all correct. The two open questions (in my view) are:
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How much slack do we have in the current level of hosting? Zikzak had previously said that we’re bumping up against the current limits and we might need to upgrade if we can figure out how to increase our user base. We have a little excess coming in each month at the current level, but would be much closer to breakeven if we upgrade.
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If we do have excess building up, what do we do with it? It turns out that’s a contentious issue that we’ve backburnered but haven’t really solved.
I’m the guy that’s overseeing the money, so if you any more specific questions, let me know.
No more reporting?
Oops. Here’s our current status:
Paypal balance is $171.70, basically direct donations people have made, less payouts. Only payouts so far have been to zikzak for hosting, which is $20/month (assuming we stay on the current hosting plan) and has been reimbursed through October 2019.
Patreon balance is $426.92 with about $70/month pledged (net of Patreon fees)
We’ve earned about $4.50 in Amazon referral fees.
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Are there many people donating above the $3.50 suggested or just a couple whales? $70 net is quite a bit above what I would have expected based on number of listed donors.
There are currently 3 members donating $10/month and 13 donating between $3-$7/month.
Bump - coming up on two months since the last statement.
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Also, the community should probably start figuring out what it wants to do with the accumulating slush fund.
Yes, thanks for the reminder. (It would be helpful to tag me in the message next time so I get a notification.)
1. Current status:
Patreon balance of $570.50 with 16 donors.
Paypal balance of $201.70 made up of one-time donations from various donors, less payments made to zikzak for hosting.
Ads:
Google AdSense has a balance of $94.19, although I’m skeptical that amount will ever be paid out.
Amazon Associates reports earnings of $4.15 from November 2019, with nothing since then.
Total of $772.20 available, with about $100 of hypothetical ad money on top.
2. Outflows
Still just $20/month for hosting paid to zikzak. At one point there was a concern that we’d need a better plan to deal with greater traffic. @zikzak, do you have any thoughts on whether that’s likely?
3. Ads
I’m pretty ignorant on the ads front, but I am getting this message on the google account:
I’m not sure if that’s informative or if there’s something I can do to fix it.
4. Purpose of balance
Here’s the contentious piece - what do we do with the funds that have built up? It’s certainly not my place to say. I’m just the guy responsible for the accounts. I think the site still owes a real debt to the people who have worked and continue to work on getting this place up and running smoothly. I know that prior conversations about this have been terrible, which is why I’ve been hesitant to bring it up. I’m also not even sure how a vote would go - should it be voted on by the community at large or by the people who have donated? Or just me because possession is 90% of the law?
I’m willing to start a thread to have that conversation if you’d like, but I’m not optimistic about that thread being productive.
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There should probably be a thread and if there is I will propose that we just give Gregorio and zikzak like $600 to split it however they feel is fair.
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I’ll even suggest something selfish, the site could buy T-shirts 4 Myself zik Zak Gregorio kreative smacc Cuse and any of the other secondary contributors.
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$600 isn’t that much compensation for @zikzak and @anon46587892, but with all of these primaries coming up, I’m confident I can easily ratchet that up to about $5-$10k on predictit.
I’ll let everyone know how it goes.
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Give it to Bernie
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It’s probably not a high priority given the AdSense revenue is not huge, but I have experience with ad monetization (mostly on mobile) and can say that this is “a thing” and not just an empty threat regarding a real impact on revenue. The ads.txt file is pretty easy to put together and upload.
According to the thrice-hourly texts he sends me he prefers to get it in $27 increments
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We’re not currently running anything from AdSense so the ads.txt warnings don’t mean anything. We also have another ad account spidercrab should have access to with about $20 in it. I can do a more detailed update on all that when I get home if anybody wants it.
I think if we’re going to go the political donation route we should decide to donate it to the eventual Dem nominee rather than a current candidate. Bernie is the most popular candidate here, but there are plenty of people who contribute regularly to this site that are backing other (clearly inferior!) candidates.
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