LFGSS survives by donations

For almost every reason you can imagine. All at the same time.

1. A lot of companies that offered affiliates have stopped doing so because cashback sites and coupon sites are eating the revenue without sending them new customers (why give up margin on existing customers? affiliates are to win new business, an acquisition play rather than a retention play)
   
2. A lot of affiliate revenue we should get has been lost to browser plugins offering cashback purchases (we attempt to place a cookie, the browser extension changes the tracking code and place their own)
   
3. The companies that have stayed are offering less of a cut
   
4. The companies that have stayed are offering affiliate revenue on less than the total revenue... i.e. some sales, some products, etc are not eligible
   
5. The terms have changed, cookies are shorter meaning that if someone does click a link, put it in their basket, but doesn't buy immediately, then if they return and buy it 31 days later, still as a result of reading about it here... then unless they clicked the link on here again, we don't get a slice
   
6. The terms have changed on the type of sale, i.e. eBay in 2008 was almost 100% of the revenue on LFGSS and we made profit enough to fund T-shirts, etc... but, now they only give a decent cut of the "Buy It Now" revenue, the rest isn't eligible at a decent rate and who uses BIN anyway?
   
7. Incognito and private browsing in some browsers (Safari on all platforms is most noticeable) is so aggressive that it prevents the 3rd party cookie that tracks affiliates, so we don't get credited as the source
   
8. The terms have changed on the geo applicability of a sale, i.e. we aren't credited with Amazon.com sales, only Amazon.co.uk sales.
   
9. People are buying less. This one is so simple, but appears to be true... revenue has dropped for this audience (LFGSS) and so the slices are smaller.
   
   

Some of this has been happening for a while, I can look at the eBay reports for the last decade and see the revenue go from covering all costs in 2009 to some months recently where it was literally £3.61 and I had to triple-check to make sure I hadn't broken some code somewhere.

The premise for affiliates still sounds good... if we build this massive audience and send you customers, you give us a slice of the revenue attributable to that audience.

But it doesn't work if the terms and availability of it is much reduced, and if people are also spending less.

I'm not really sure what the answer is there, that market seems to be constantly evolving.

I'm just glad that our raw costs are really low, and that we have people here who care, and that this means it is very viable for the entire costs to be met by small donations from many people.

The donation drive over the last 4 days pretty much means we're done already. Mission accomplished. I'm only leaving this up to ensure that really... even if the £ slides further (increasing our costs as bills are nearly all USD), and even if everyone stops spending (totally wiping out the last of the affiliate revenue), that it's cool... and who cares... that the stream of small £2-£8 donations, that no-one really notices... that it's enough.