Donation Drive

[Biggles]

It's time for another donation drive! There's a major bill coming up soon and Sanfam is in dire need of money to pay it. If you can, donate something (anything will do) at donate@firstones.com (https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=donate%40firstones.com&item_name=FirstOnes.com&no_note=1&tax=0&currency_code=USD) using PayPal! (https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=donate%40firstones.com&item_name=FirstOnes.com&no_note=1&tax=0&currency_code=USD)

Click here to make a donation (https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=donate%40firstones.com&item_name=FirstOnes.com&no_note=1&tax=0&currency_code=USD)

[BosHaus]

You've got some money in your mailbox!

-The roaming philantropist

[Ranger Brian]

Just out of interest, how much of the bandwidth is used by the various mods, and do any of them pay towards the upkeep?

[Sanfam]

Well, the mods themselves comprise most of the site's bandwidth. At the top is IFH, followed by Buda5, and (only in terms of hits...)...the Sims.

Outside of those, it's a pretty even spread. Not much seems to change.

[Ranger Brian]

So how much is it costing each month? (If you don't mind me asking). As it doesn't seem that long ago since the last donation drive?

Has the popularity of the mods increased the costs?

(Oh and donation sent).

[Akrovah]

On the way.

[Sanfam]

the server costs $85 a month, and you are correct, it hasn't been long since the last donation drive. The problem lately has been that we're always going over in bandwidth, which costs $2.50 per gigabyte exceeding the limit. It adds up *really* quickly. Though, this latest overage really threw us into a massive panic.

[Biggles]

It was very unexpected and caused by non-normal operation that has hopefully been cleared up now. The problem is that we now have a lot of extra money to pay in overage fees.

[David of Mac]

How about we do it like the public broadcasting drives? Every third page load (for example), a full-page thing comes up advising people to donate, that then has to be clicked through.

Maybe you could rip off... that is to say, get some inspiration from this (http://www.code7r.org/joke/molgrp.html), for that vital Babylon 5 flavor.

[Sanfam]

Well, I don't quite want to advertise heavily. However, I'm looking into placing a rotating banner or other object somewhere into the major pages for the site for amazon or such.
something neat and usable, but not flashy or distracting. So...yeah. I'll see if I can get a sample posted up later.

[Bekenn]

You might try Google ads. They appear at the bottom of the page, text-only and non-obtrusive, and usually have something to do with the topic being discussed.

[BosHaus]

How about big flash ads that appear over everything in the page and don't go away for 30-60 seconds? Even clicking them won't make them go away.. stupid ads.

[Sanfam]

I've seriously considered google text ads. Since they can be formatted to fit in almost transparently, it'd be a perfect way to get some income without any horrible banners (And banners themselves proved to be ineffective many times before, so...)

[ShadowDancer]

$15 comin your way;)

[Falcon1]

How many kidneys has Sanfam got left now? :p

Actually save your kidney, just sent some greens ;)

[Random Chaos]

Originally posted by David of Mac
How about we do it like the public broadcasting drives? Every third page load (for example), a full-page thing comes up advising people to donate, that then has to be clicked through.

Maybe you could rip off... that is to say, get some inspiration from this (http://www.code7r.org/joke/molgrp.html), for that vital Babylon 5 flavor.

Well...if we want annoying requests for donations perhaps we should use popups. That way almost every Firstones regular that uses Mozilla gets to not see them :D

[Emissary for Drakh]

I second for the google ads. I'd click once in a while just to keep things rolling.

[Quigoni]

Well I know you don't want to change hosts, but just to let people know, powweb.com offers 5gb of bandwidth per DAY. @_@;

A domain for an anime convention I'm helping organize is using it and we have some pretty heavy usage. The place gets the job done as far as bandwidth is concerned.


-Quigoni