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@Velocio
We're so close to moving to Microcosm that I've not chased on donations in months and months and last year stated that we were ticking over, month to month: https://www.lfgss.com/post3743785-430.html
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We are actually working on the Microcosm export and import scripts now, and so it is close. But it's still not tomorrow and our present costs are real.
The big issue: We've actually lost money every month for the last 6 months.
Our revenue comes from 2 places:
1) Affiliates (when you click on links to eBay, Rapha, Chain Reaction Cycles, Wiggle, etc and then subsequently buy something, they give us a kick back).
2) Donations (the PayPal subscriptions).
Affiliates has counted for about 70% of the costs for quite a long while, and donations cover the rest.
The affiliate revenue varies by season, dropping in the winter and regaining in the summer. And usually the summer revenue offsets the losses over winter and everything works out fine.
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The problem today is that the affiliate revenues collapsed in November (as expected, it's seasonal), but didn't then recover in Jan, Feb, Mar or April. In fact they've been between a third and half of the expected amount.
Meaning that I've personally subsidised the forum costs since November believing it would start to recover in January and have fully recovered by March. This hasn't happened.
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Todat we are about half of our usual revenue for this time of year. Meaning the losses aren't being made up and I knew a crunch was coming.
As it stands, we do not have enough money in the bank to pay any of the costs this month. The crunch is here.
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And I personally cannot subsidise the shortfalls (I only receive a take home wage of £850 per month and my credit card has been taking the hit when LFGSS falls short).
We basically need to recover the revenue we've lost through donations... which means either:
1) Encouraging more people to help out
2) Encouraging those are helping out to help more
3) Some generous sod has a couple of grand spare just to put us back to above zero and cover the shortfalls of the last few months
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My personal view is always going to be the "keep donations low, and voluntary, and encourage more people to help out".
So I'm going to change the site header and basically do a pledge drive for most of May.
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But if you are donating already and can afford to up the amount or frequency (i.e. from a beer a quarter, to a beer a month)... then that would be incredible.
Rather embarrassed it's got this far. Each month I've watched the affiliate revenue expecting the bounce after the Christmas slump, but it just hasn't happened.
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