1. Current status:
Patreon balance of $896.70 with 22 active donors.
Paypal balance of $166.40 made up of one-time donations from various donors, less payments made to zikzak for hosting.
Ads: I’m pretty uninformed about Ads. My understanding is that both google and Amazon efforts have yielded virtually nothing. (I think we might have a hypothetical amount on Google, but not large enough to actually withdraw.) @zikzak knows more about this, so hopefully he’ll pop in with info about ads.
Total of $1,063.10 available through Patreon and Paypal.
2. Outflows
After a hosting upgrade earlier this year, this is now $40/month for hosting paid to reimburse zikzak. (@simplicitus has covered the website registration without reimbursement - thanks! )
3. Ads
Again, don’t know much/anything about current ads.
Overall, we are definitely self sufficient, which is great and very much appreciated. I just wish we had a way to gain more users. I really enjoy hanging out on this site and wish there were more people here.
I know we were considering ways to use the funds previously. As a thought, what about running a Facebook ads campaign? I am happy to help volunteer running the actual campaigns, but would need someone more technical to help figure out the attribution piece and also someone to help with the creatives.
Just an idea, I am not overly attached to it or anything.
Half true. Amazon started strong, then quickly fell apart several times, then came back and never generated another nickle. Numerous other campaigns were also attempted, some of which generated multiple nickles, and little else. Current campaign is holding steady at a bit over a buck a day, which will likely be enough to cover hosting. We have yet to hit a withdrawal threshold anywhere, but should by the end of this month if nothing goes wrong.
I won’t claim to be an authority on this stuff, but it seems unlikely to me that we could create and place ads that were so effective they brought people to this forum and also caused them to stop using Facebook.
Put another way, the amount of money we’d be giving them directly would dwarf any loss of revenue they would experience from our ads reducing their traffic.
If it were up to me (and I know it’s definitely not), I’d let the forum traffic continue to grow (such as it is) organically. Maybe put more effort into Twitter and other “free” channels, if there are folks who are willing to step up and put in the time.
Finally, I think that most here understand that spending the money collected so far would need to involve some sort of democratic process that people could accept and even hopefully feel good about. There were some attempts to flesh that out early on that were a little rough and kind of turned the subject into a bit of a third rail. So, I don’t really have any ideas (and none of it is my money anyway so take this for what it’s worth).
This is ignoring that there are 22 patrons through Patreon meaning at least $22 a month is being added to the coffers, plus eventually the ad money will build up enough to actually be withdrawn.
Because it’s basically free money, and people who don’t want to see ads can easily avoid them through any number of means, including just by joining this group: https://unstuckpolitics.com/g/AdOptOut
There are longer answers, but the last time this subject came up it turned into a huge drama bomb.
This is a reasonable question that may be worth a community vote. My personal view is that I’m not crazy about entirely relying on donations for a few reasons:
There’s no guarantee that current patreon contributors will continue to contribute. Two former regular contributors stopped their contributions after becoming unhappy with some aspect of the site. And that’s ok! People shouldn’t feel compelled to contribute, particularly since we’re experiencing quite a lot of economic uncertainty. I appreciate the fact that people have been generous. But I just want to point out that current Patreons are no guarantee of future Patreons.
It feels a little unfair to me to place the costs of the site entirely on the small group of donors. That could be a completely idiosyncratic take.
Stepping into more controversial territory, this site’s expenses as currently reported do not reflect the enormous amount of uncompensated labor that @zikzak and @anon46587892 have put into the site. I continue to have hope that we’ll be able to recognize their efforts in some way.
So my overall view of the current ad status is that the ads are unobtrusive, avoidable, and a good way to provide some of the ongoing funds for the site. And to be clear, I’m not a mod or an admin or anyone of any particular importance. I just keep track of the money and direct it to the places that the community approves.
Its not “basically free money”, that’s a terrible misrepresentation of what advertising is. But the ad opt out link is a reasonable alternative (as I can’t adblock on my phone) so I’ll drop it. Thanks for the option.
using a browser (Brave) on my phone that blocks all ads has been amazing. Since I started using it a year ago it says that it has blocked 272k ads and trackers
Patreon question cuz I’ve never used it before, can I make a one-time donation or is the monthly recurring donation the only way to go? I get why the monthly recurring is probably better for UP, but a one-time works better for me ATM.
ETA: I’ll read this thread in more detail later today but looks like PayPal is an option.
I think you can set up a Patreon and then cancel it. But I don’t believe Patreon supports an easy-to-use one-time payment option. Easy alternative is to donate through PayPal using PayPal.Me
I’m slightly reluctant to be a nag, and I have absolutely zero concerns about where the money is, still, I think regular reporting of the balance, revenue, donations and expenditures is a vital part of being treasurer. Like, monthly or something.
Ok, I’ll do my best going forward to post at the beginning of each month. Here’s where we stand now:
Incoming:
We currently have 20 donors on Patreon, generating $123/month. This number has gone up and down over time as we’ve had some people beginning to donate and other people who have chosen to stop donating. (I will only reveal who donates and who chooses to stop donating if they give me permission.)
We occasionally have someone donate via a one-time amount via paypal, but that’s pretty infrequent. It’s happened 5 times in 2020. (The most recent of those was in July from someone who is refusing to take credit for it. Since I cannot link the paypal account to particular user names, I am unable to confirm who it is. This is very frustrating to me.) This count of 5 also includes the Skyline Chili gift card. No, @SensiblePerson, I have not yet used it. Believe me, this site will be informed when I do.
We have been running ads and currently have a little more than $300 Canadian in that ad account, if I understood @zikzak correctly in his last message to me. There’s some question about whether/how we can actually transfer that amount into an account that we actually control. (We had a similar issue with Google ad money that we were never able to get our hands on.) That’s a question for @zikzak, though, as I don’t control or access the advertising account.
Expenses:
Zikzak is paying $40/month for hosting fees and I am reimbursing him quarterly.
In the Bank
$88.07 in a Paypal account that is in my name
$1,274.12 in a Patreon account that I have access to. I have not yet transferred any money out of this account, but at some point I’ll have to in order to keep reimbursing @zikzak (unless a bunch of money comes in through Paypal).
So that’s $1,362.19 that we definitely have access to. Plus the expected value of whatever we can get from the ad account.
Looking forward:
I’m enormously grateful to everyone who contributes, but I’m slightly concerned that the health of this site depends on such a concentrated few. For now, this doesn’t seem to be an issue, but I think we’re going to have to increase site capacity at least temporarily for the upcoming debates and election period. So I’m expecting that monthly expenses will pop up to $60 or $80 in the near future, but that’s just a guess on my part. And I continue to hope that we’ll attract new users.
Edit: I may be overreacting on the extra capacity - zikzak tells me we’re still well within our current plan, even during recent levels of high activity.
