I think it'd be funny if we had a "Swear Jar" and those who were most naughty on the board might have pressure brought to bear, to buy the next month's funding so it can be perpetuated banner ad free...
It could be like selling indulgences... ...where has that ever gone wrong?
--Ray
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I'm not slow; I'm special. (Don't take it personally, everyone finds me offensive. Yet somehow I manage to live with myself.)
Ray, that's a cool, totally unenforceable idea. Maybe we could have a bake sale.
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If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen! - Samuel Adams
But seriously, if all regular posters would donate $5 per year -- the rough equivalent of a Combo meal at Wendy's -- this board would have plenty of funds.
Get out your widdle wallets!
Of course I have the moral authority to browbeat everyone because I already put in my pennies.
We could always tax our people to build up our towers of Rameumptum...
Or charge a fee for moderator mediation (kills two birds with one stone, in that most people will decide to play nicely)...
Create a "demo" version of the forum for new members so that they can only interact on a limited basis until they pay...
I don't know. Good question, because no one should feel obligated to contribute, but it would be nice if everyone was willing to pay $5 every once in a while. This then will help contribute to everyone being a stakeholder to the success of Bountiful. Even if we eventually need to take the forum to it's own site, no one person should have to foot the bill.
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It seems to me the only thing you've learned is that Caesar is a "salad dressing dude."
What I think stinks is that they didn't pro rate your donation Bokbadok. They took your whole $4.95 or whatever, but you only got the last few days of August for it. Then you got the whole month of September for another $4.95. With $0.10 left over.
Just pay attention to when you donate. Make sure that if the account is empty you donate towards the begining of the month otherwise it is money down the drain. Good business practice would have been to apply your donation only to the days it was good for and save the rest for later months. There would still be almost $5 left in the account if they did that.
It is about $0.17 per day of service, but if you donate to an empty account on the 30th of the month you are paying $4.95 for that one day. Think about it and donate wisely. Hopefully if there is always some money in the account that will never be a problem again.
Actually, it wasn't my impression that the board worked that way. I haven't been charged yet for another month, and it's on my card if there aren't enough donations. Bok actually donated $10, but there was also a $4.95 setup fee which I wasn't anticipating. So, she planned to pay for two months, and wound up paying for one. Also, it looks like we'll go over our 10,000 max page impressions for the month. I'm thinking of switching to a plan with more page impressions, but that's more money per month.
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If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen! - Samuel Adams
Oh good. I wasn't aware of the start up fee either, so it looked like you all had been given the short end of the stick. I am glad that is not the case. I saw that Bokbadok had donated $10 at the end of the month, but the next month their was only $0.10 left. I figured that $4.95 was taken for last month and another $4.95 for the current month. My mistake.
bokbadok wrote: Way to go, Tyro, our newest contributor! We're set for another two months!
Tyro is truly a gem of a person, and I'm glad that people are contributing. It does mean a lot to me. Of course, I have to be a meanie now and say that it probably won't be enough for two months. At the rate of traffic this board is getting, I'll probably have to go to a $10 or $15 a month plan. I am really glad that this board is getting more posts and more people. Even if it stayed at the level it is, I'd say that it is a success. But it is still growing, which makes me glad. Unfortunately nothing is free. I could move the board to it's own server, and I'll look into that. But I'll have to compare costs. Any hosting service charges you for going over a monthly limit of traffic. Which would be more expensive, leaving it here, or moving it?
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If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen! - Samuel Adams
Thank yew, thank yew! I hope my little bit will help.
I don't see why things aren't free, though.
It was free when I first started it. But we had to put up with ads and a weird URL. Now, thanks to Bokbadok and now you, we don't have to put up with Hooters ads anymore, and we have a much simplified URL, bountiful.activeboard.com
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If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen! - Samuel Adams
thanks for paying... I'll do my share sooner or later...
--Ray
Ray, you could donate a dollar from every book sale to the board. That way, not only would you be losing money on your business, you could drive it under in less than a month!
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If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen! - Samuel Adams
Where do we stand on monthly rates right now? I noticed the funds available dropped from $10 credit to $4.95 still needed for the next month to now $14.95 needed?
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It seems to me the only thing you've learned is that Caesar is a "salad dressing dude."
I switched plans. We were on a $4.95 a month plan, which is why it showed that earlier as the amount due. I then changed to a $14.95 a month plan, which is why that shows as the amount due now. See, yesterday was the bill date. So the $10 credit evaporated in the $4.95 a month fee, plus nearly $10 in overages for almost 30,000 page views. I covered the rest that wasn't covered by the credit. I also upgraded the plan, so instead of getting 10,000 page views included, we now get 50,000 page views. The next lowest rate plan was 25,000, and I figured that we were already over that, not even taking into account future growth. So, I upgraded the plan and paid for the difference. Now I'm hoping other people will pay so I don't have to next month! Bokbadok and Tyro are wonderful. I really appreciate their contributions.
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If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen! - Samuel Adams
You can get a domain hosted with a forum included for less than $10 a month (I use GoDaddy). In fact, my web site costs me less than $5 a month for hosting.
As to the advertising, Activeboard allows you to have a free forum if you will let them put whatever sort of banner ads they want. The forum owner has no ability to yea or nay what it is. I guess earlier on, there were some rather risque banner ads showing up and we opted to be prudent and pay to have them removed. Thus far, three individuals besides Arbilad have contributed money to the forum's account with Activeboard to keep it banner free.
We're thinking that if forum members want to list a "classified" for goods or services they would like others to purchase, it would be appropriate for them to make a donation towards the monthly cost of the now non-free forum to Activeboard after we get a chance to review and approve the item.
I'm with you, Titus. I think that if the price gets to be too much, we should consider moving to our own hosting environment, and I mentioned that to Arbilad early on. Of course, that would put a lot more maintenance responsibility on Arbilad or someone else too because we'll need a new forum software that we'll need to maintain, and then comes the logistics of others contributing in the first place.
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It seems to me the only thing you've learned is that Caesar is a "salad dressing dude."
There's a link at the bottom of the page. There's a number in red. That's the amount I still need to pay, but keep putting off because it's not quite due yet and there have always seemed to be other uses for the money.
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If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen! - Samuel Adams
main page, under the statistics, with the heading "community funding"
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If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen! - Samuel Adams
I think it'd be funny if we had a "Swear Jar" and those who were most naughty on the board might have pressure brought to bear, to buy the next month's funding so it can be perpetuated banner ad free... 
Thank yew, thank yew! I hope my little bit will help.
