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Considering this project is supporting the forum, the thread should be a sticky on the homepage/latest, rather than it being buried in the Cycling Club thread. Need to maximise visibility to get those orders.
Added to the front page.
Though jersey production has nearly always been a loss maker... either we lose money because they're under-priced and the quality and unit cost was too high, or we failed to remember to charge VAT, or we got both of that right and went for lower unit cost by making more and had left overs (meaning we lost money again).
This time around they are basically break even. The margin is so slight, that it's really for all of you.
Money for the forum comes from donations (majority), affiliates (some). T-shirts and caps make good margin, so those work... but they're a bit of a faff to make. The forum historically has made more money from a single £10 cap than a single £75 jersey, and we're more likely to sell them all even if we order extra.
The jerseys are for you.
Donations are what pay for the site.
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Cool. Having had business dealings with Milltag myself, I fully understand the margins involved. Hoping the day comes when it becomes a workable revenue stream for the forum.
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Bump
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bump
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And me...
Would definitely buy a cap (plus donation), if they're in the offing...
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Just donated 10% of my recent sales.
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December donation - thanks for LFGSS :-)
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@velocio How much are your monthly operating costs at the moment?
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First page is still roughly accurate as it's around £700~.
It fluctuates with currency exchange rates as bills are in USD, and some prices have had some inflation as operators put up costs, but largely it hasn't wildly inflated since after settling post-Brexit shock.
The affiliates are still holding on, and are just under 1/3 of total running costs, donations make up the rest. We would've fallen short this month (December 2017) as affiliates are seasonal and over the year work out as 1/3 but don't fare as well in the Winter... but selling the LFGSS jersey meant that there was enough to offset the drop and so it's still OK right now.
One of the other clubs using microcosm.app also set up a £50 monthly donation (that's Islington Cycling Club), and so that has offset the expiration of some donations (which happens naturally when funding sources expire, etc).
Basically... it's ticking over OK. There's no big pot of money anywhere, but there's no debt either. If it runs into trouble I'll bail it out and will do a donation drive.
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Oh, and our greatest risk is that Wiggle / Chain Reaction exit the affiliate game or dramatically change the payment structure.
They are a single affiliate that makes up 90% of the affiliate earnings. eBay has collapsed, as have all of the others. But Wiggle / CRC are holding on strong.
If they exit in 2018, or change their scheme in any major way, then we'll be down 1/3 of our monthly costs.
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Moved to front page for a while... doing OK actually isn't a great place to be.
The best place is to have many small donors giving regularly. This means that were Wiggle / CRC to bail, or were some of those who donate larger amounts irregularly to stop doing so... then we'd be OK.
We're just around the break-even point at the moment... so it's not a problem. But being above that comfortably and able to lose Wiggle / CRC would be a far better place to be.
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LFGSS survives by donations
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@Velocio
I remembered to add the button back to the home page.