Future of this site

[André BARELIER]

Hi Dirk,
Congratulations, and warm thanks for having created this website.
I guess it needs a lot of work and needs some financial support.
Its growth will surely be very fast, and will require investments (personnel, servers, etc.)
How do you see the financing of this site in the future? will you introduce advertising? rely on donations (always random)? ask for an annual subscription?
Regards,
André

 

[dirk]

Hi Andre,

all my community forums are free of charge to use and will stay also free of charge. That is for sure.

It is way too early to make a plan on how to finance it, as we do not know yet, what kind of costs we have to calculste with. In a year we will have more consistent data, to do calculations.

At the moment I bear the costs and there are some Patrons, who donated. I find this a good model for a community.

The biggest hurdle will be image sizes in KB/MB and traffic, which will have a strong influence on costs. Let's see how this will develop over the coming months.

 

[André BARELIER]

OK, Dirk. Then, if euros are accepted, I'll donate some money to support your work.
About image size, I understand perfectly. Since all pictures posted here are supposed to be seen on screen, IMO, there's no point in posting full size images at 100% jpeg quality.
I think a limitation would be easily accepted. But you know all that, better than me.
Thanks again.
Regards,
André

 

[dirk]

Thank you. See the links in my signature or press donate in the navigation bar at the top.

 

[André BARELIER]

Thank you. See the links in my signature or press donate in the navigation bar at the top.

Sorry Dirk.
I'm used to be frank and direct. It is normal that a site is not free, as long as there are no ads, but I find that paying 30 dollars each year to be able to exchange with friends on a forum is way too much.
I don't understand why there is not a free amount?

 

[dirk]

I'm used to be frank and direct.

Do not worry, that is ok

It is normal that a site is not free, as long as there are no ads

This site is and will be free with or without ads, with or without donations.

I find that paying 30 dollars each year to be able to exchange with friends on a forum is way too much.

that is ok, too. Nobody has to donate. Do not worry about this.

I don't understand why there is not a free amount?

because it does not make sense for us. PayPal takes a percentage from the amount you pay and I do have to pay taxes on it. So I will only get around 35-40% of the amount you pay to invest it into this forum. If someone is donating only 5 or 10 Euro, he will think he helped a lot but in reality it is just a drop in the sea.

There are always only few people who donate. That is normal and I am totally ok, with that. But donations need to be at least 30 Euro to make any kind of difference for us.

You might think that if 500 users donate just 5 Euro would be also something. That is correct. But reality is, there will never be as many donators, no matter how small the donation is. This is my experience over 20 years.

But there will be in the future another option: depending how the requirements of this forum will increase, we might do some donation "events" once or twice a year, with open amounts. But this is too early to think about that. I first need more data to be able to calculate seriously. That will take some months.