Donations

Really sorry to read this, specifically because of the implications for microcosm.app (which I support whole-heartedly)

I've actively not made a donation because I thought the affiliate revenue was enough to cover costs, I'll sent set up a regular donation now that the immediate troubles are over.

That used to be the case, but isn't presently. It may recover, but I don't know that for sure.

When LFGSS moves across to microcosm.app (and i'm interested in that because I'd like to use the port scripts myself) will the revenue/costs become part of the startup's bottom line? i.e. supported by cash raised by funders?

Microcosm is relying on two things, one more than the other:

1) That we can massively drive down the costs by being a platform, and just doing things more efficiently "for the cloud".

2) That the affiliate and transaction revenue will be more optimised, and fewer dollars left on the table.

#1 is the key one though. LFGSS costs a lot to run, and I've always known it should be a significantly lower number. If the software and architecture were better, the savings would be considerable. Even today, LFGSS would have been fine on the revenue it has if the costs were half of what they are.

The other optimisation that reduces costs is simply that Microcosm lets a lot of sites run on the same hardware. There's less waste, so for the same revenue (active users on multiple forums), there is less overhead.

Even at today's revenue, Microcosm would be fine.

Though obviously, it's not as super-attractive as this time last year when the affiliate revenue was double. And that certainly is worrying for long-term profits.

But on the upside of that, Microcosm wants to help sell tickets to track days, and to manage classifieds listing... so revenue LFGSS doesn't get today, Microcosm will see a small bit of in future.

An important point: No donations end up in Microcosms account. Donations are purely for LFGSS; to cover debt (now that we have some), costs, and if when it moves to Microcosm there is some money left over, then we'll figure out the best thing to do with it (treat it as a club donation to help fund LFGSS rides and activities?).

Also: I saw this because of Corny's FB post. Share the sh*t out of it.

I'm not on Facebook, no idea what he said.