LFGSS survives by donations

Or is that a real PITA?

It's effort.

First we'd need to know what people want to buy... and then we'd have to pull all the info together.

That said... I have seriously thought that instead of passively letting the affiliate revenue evaporate (which is happening), that if we were to prove our value as a source of sales, that we could try and reverse the current trend of affiliate revenue ending.

And the way I thought that it could be done... would be if we have a link to, say, Wiggle... to a product, that instead of going directly there, to put up an interstitial where we show the same product at a lower price elsewhere and get people a better deal.

Basically... affiliated shops do not value forums, but if we could provably show the drop in revenue were it to be directed elsewhere, they may realise that actually there is real revenue from the stuff that users on forums buy.

But then... in my head that sound like the most passive aggressive thing ever. So I didn't even start to do that.

Any forcing for a "donation" is counter-productive. It's better to introduce obligatory yearly subscription then... But that would inevitably kill off a part of the forum members mass, so never a good idea.

From a sometimes lurker now back working in Lahndon, you're welcome.

Monthly donation set up as ill be using it more often again now

Monthly donation reactivated.

I've learnt a lot from coming on here.

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.

I now live in Aus - I noticed that with wiggle vs CRC. Looks like affiliates are only available on wiggle.co.uk., but seems to work on CRC.com (as it defines it's geo-applicability by using "/au/")...hence CRC now gets my shout!

@Velocio, just seen this and wondered if, as a CIC, you could swing it to obtain some grant cash to keep the coffers topped up.

Doesn't look bad, and we're eligible under "Who?" but not under "What?".

In that it has to be a brand new project with a new and distinct deliverable. Just saying "Hey you'll pay for this wonderful site and I can stop begging for donations" probably won't cut it.

If we did something like say, "Hey we'll make an iPhone and Android app and will attract at least n thousand 18-25 year olds to social and recreation rides in and around London"... well it fulfils the new deliverable (the apps), and a new project with a new audience.

But then... that would cost more than the grant.

I'll stew on it, to think of whether there is an angle whereby it could work without the cost from our side exceeding any grant.

Update on last month... we actually ended about £100 over our normal intake. eBay revenues were slashed (they've had tracker issues and have issued apologies and said that they will back-date some earnings in the coming months), and we also had a lumpy outgoing as a few domain names renewed (though not the blindingly expensive .sm one yet).

End result of last months donation drive: £100 more than in the bank at the end of the month, and 84% of the months' cost were exclusively covered by donations.

It should mean that we're ahead slightly this month too.

In celebration of not having to nag... I've been getting on with writing the new front-end in Go. It's a massive job but has to be done as our software is now old (Python + Django versions) and it's so painful tracking those versions and all of the dependencies and Go has been so pain free for the API... that I'm moving the front-end to the same language so that when I can get things done a lot easier.

Oh, and I'll be changing the authentication and sign-in stuff soon too.

Apologies, just realised my PayPal was chucking out my subscriptions due to replacing my card. Just updated details, 2 monthly beers coming back at you.

Updated the first post.

Changes: Total monthly cost now approx £670

At the start of the year it was £530 per month. The difference isn't just down to exchange rates (though that is a big part), but also due to adding the new authentication https://auth0.com/ and shifting email provider to improve deliverability https://www.sendgrid.com/

The donations have settled around approx £490 per month and make up the bulk of income. eBay is still declining but making up most of the rest. The other affiliates are barely worth talking about, it helps but is no longer reliable.

We're just over the break even point month to month, but each month we do need to recruit new donors because some still expire/roll-off/choose to no longer donate, etc... and so on.

Generally: We're OK, nothing to worry about at the moment.

How do I increase my donation?

Sorry, what's the current PP email for manual donations again?

paypal@lfgss.com or donations@lfgss.com?

paypal@lfgss.com works.

Just realised the button is gone from the home page... oops.

How do I increase my donation?

No idea.

But I would presume you:

1. Head here: https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_manage-paylist
   
2. Filter the list to only show Active.
   
3. Cancel any existing subscription to LFGSS.
   
4. Create a new one via the button on the home page of LFGSS.
   

Didn't cancel. Just added a second recurring donation on top as I wanted to. Ta!

Appreciated.

That link BTW... is the most buried in all of PayPal.

Sometimes people have set up 2 donations accidentally, and it confuses the hell out of them and I when we later figure it out.

Cheers - sent my bit in, hope it helps :-).

Forum lurker giving a little back today :)

Many thanks. Appreciated in times of GBP wobbles.

Only just seen the post - have increased my monthly contribution.

Small contribution from me today

Tried again to set up a monthly contribution, and shoved a slightly larger amount in to cover for the last months where I've apparently not donated. I keep ticking the box for making the sum a monthly thing but so far no good. Can't find it through the link you posted earlier (https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_manage-paylist) either, only shows other stuff I subscribe to like spotify, google play etc. Any ideas?? @Velocio

Hmm. I can't find any automatic payments for you. I see the ones you've manually done in the past but there isn't anything regular.

It may be... oh. It looks like PayPal at some point split their product offering. Automatic payments and donations no longer overlap, and it looks like I might have to define subscriptions that I then sell.

Bugger.

The automatic thing may in fact be broken then.

I'll see if I can run some reports this evening to see whether any new ones were set up in the last couple of months.

Would be great to be able to set it up and forget about it, hope you figure something out.

I might have missed the (technical) point, but I began making a monthly donation when you started this thread and PayPal have just notified me that the latest payment was made today.

Existing subscriptions seem fine, new ones are the issue. It seems that new ones are just one-off small donations rather than regular ones.