LFGSS survives by donations

Are monthly costs still circa £600?

Just above.

About a year ago it was closer to £700 but then currency exchange moved in our favour and the costs declined again.

Our costs are largely static in $ and € and fluctuate according to the exchange rate. And it's not a smooth fluctuation as our costs are made up of lots of suppliers (TarSnap, AWS, Linode, Gandi, etc). The £ amount has swung whilst the actual costs are stable.

As a guide, it costs just over £600 per month to run when ammortized over the year... but some months are actually around £500 and some months around £900 (depending on when domain renewals and TLS certificates are renewed). Donations are around £500 per month with some occasional larger ones, and the overall difference still being made up by a bit of eBay and Chain Reaction Cycles affiliates. We have 2 other donors outside of LFGSS who contribute, Islington Cycling Club donate a monthly amount and Brixton Cycles made a large one-off donation in January that saw us comfortably through January.

Question: Should we experiment with Google AdSense banners?

They've just reached out to me and I haven't tried it in absolutely ages (close to a decade)... but with total number of donors slowly going down, maybe we should try it again?

I think if you're happy with it go for it. I don't particularly like ads but I also see that you need to secure a stream of income.

Don't mind them at the top or side personally. I hate it when on some forums there's an ad in place of a forum post that you have to scroll over to get back to the content though

I would say its worth experimenting.

Perhaps for non-logged in users first?

I guess you could also look at A/B testing using a Cloudflare worker to see if it affects engagement (/puke)

I’m obviously not a part of the inner circle on this forum, however I am making a monthly donation. It took me 2 years of membership to realize donations were welcome/needed though.
Aren’t there a way of contacting all members and explaining the situation to them and reminding them? Like in a personal message or something?

A crazy version could also be an annual charity event where hippy or skinny or someone else would ride something ridiculous to raise money for the forum :)

The monthly donation - 'buying the forum a beer' is a good sell I think. I do this (£3) but, when I get round to it, I could bump it up to a fiver.

Jimmy Wales sends out emails to everyone in the wikipedia database, every year or so

Perhaps for non-logged in users first?

Or people who have a regular donation get the ad-free version? I think that seems pretty fair: It costs money to run this website, so you can pay us one of two ways - adverts or donations.

(I'm aware of the fact I'm being hypocritical - I have an ad blocker and don't have a regular donation set up.)

just sold my bike. thanks. I have sent some money through.

A forum I used to use required you to have paid a yearly fee (5 if memory serves) in order to sell anything. Paying got you a little symbol my your username, it self policed very well.

No ads please. I pay regular subscription. If needed I would pay more if it meant no ads. Fuck things.

I'd up my PayPal monthly payment (buying the forum a beer) but I can't work out how to do that.

Delete the regular payment and create a new one seems to be the easiest solution. I think you have to do it on desktop, not mobile/app.

This may help.

One of the great things about LFGSS is the simplicity to the user and lack of ads. Would it be worth another call to all users to consider setting up a donation?

Just set up a monthly donation. This place has been too good to me, well nigh I started giving something back.

Creating a new, repeating payment seems just as impossible. Will have another try in a bit

Any good?

Edit, ignore it’s not what it appears to be.

The link from the first page helped (although it doesn't look like this)

https://microcosm.app/out/NZkwh

Seems easier to do a recurring payment via mobile then online.

Anyway, £4.50 monthly donation set up, £3.00 (hopefully) cancelled.

Yeah I was just about to link to that, don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.

Monthly donation setup.
Big up bossman for a site that's given me many good friends and happy memories over the years.

Got a little pay rise, upped my monthly amount. Keep it up @Velocio et al!

Inspired by the kindness of @rhb donating a Rapha kids jersey I’ve set up a monthly donation

Just started a monthly donation.

Appreciated, thank you