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Give your money to the NW in the form of a donation! [community]
 
A couple of users were asking about donations, so I set up a donation button through Paypal.

You do NOT need a Paypal account to donate, it also accepts credit cards. What you do is click on the button, put in your donation amount (USD) and then if you are going through Paypal sign in and complete it, if you are using a credit card hit the credit card link near the bottom left. The actual transaction is done on the Paypal site, so you don't have to worry about Negative World stealing all ur credit cardz.

It costs me about $75 a year to keep this site up, not a whole lot, but I do make dirt at my day job, am paying for grad school, and still live with my mom at 30 so every bit helps. Also, the web designer spent a lot of time and work to implement skins, navigation layout, make the site work quick and neat, and implement the options you asked him, all this instead of doing a paid professional site. I'm not going to grub for money though, you either want to donate or you don't. No pressure.

So clicky clicky the button below!


PS. As this is a free site and I want it to be free and equal to all, donations will NOT get you into the lower levels. Sorry. But we will give you our unrestrained love... that is a fair trade, right?!

URL to share (right click and copy)
02/10/10, 07:23    Edited: 02/20/11, 18:05
 
   
 
I notice this isn't a sticky anymore.

You still taking donations?
05/08/10, 08:23   
Sure thing! Button still works (I hope.)
05/08/10, 08:27   
I sent in my donation. Keep it up dudes!
05/19/10, 23:58   
Donated! This site rocks and I want it to continue rockin.
09/10/10, 00:20   
I refuse.

In fact I think YOU should give ME money.
09/10/10, 00:45   
^LOL

I'm currently unemployed, but I'll definitely make a donation once I start back working.
09/10/10, 02:30   
$10.

i love this site.
09/11/10, 20:51   
Done, keep up the good work guys!
09/11/10, 21:11   
Looks like I started a trend!

\o/
09/11/10, 23:32   
If you plan to host in the US I would recommend GoDaddy. They host three different websites that I've created for various friends and the service is good. I'm not sure what aspects are priority to your hosting (cost, up time, technologies supported, bandwidth limit, etc.) but I thought I'd give GoDaddy a thumbs up.
09/13/10, 00:32   
Maybe a goal to strive for would motivate donations? I mean, Zero could post "Here's the host we want, this is how much it costs", and then we'd see where the money's going. I donated $20 not that long ago, and while I know Zero has invested money in this site over the years and I trust him enough to not line his own pockets with our money, I don't have a clear idea where that cash went either (and therefore am unlikely to donate again). It's terribly abstract, unless we're shown.
09/14/10, 03:48   
@Pandareus Well I think I broke it down before, and it costs something like $70? a year to pay for the domain and the host. I'll have to look into that but if it's not $70 it is very close... $10 a year for the domain name and $5 a month for the host. That is with the current, bottom of the barrel host, so if we move it will probably cost more. I'll have to look into better hosts and see if I can find some recommendations from people I trust. This is a very, very busy week for me though... ug. If anyone else has any suggestions I'm all ears.

I was trying to get Simbabbad to accept some money for all of his work too, but he wasn't having that.

I was also kind of updating every time people donated for awhile and keeping a running total but I got lazy about it. To be honest, there were a bunch of donations right away and then like nothing... 2 or 3 maybe over the last few months... until recently with this thread bumped again. Most of the donations tend to be $5 or $10. I don't think we have even broken covering a year yet, though I'd have to look into that. It's close.

I'm certainly not trying to get rich off of the site (nor does that seem like a viable possibility anyway, lol) and I try to keep things at full disclosure as much as possible. In fact, if I could find an easy way to link from my Paypal to the site I wouldn't mind having a totally open look at how many donations received (user names/emails omitted, of course) but I don't know any way to do that, so maybe every once in awhile I'll tally it all up and post.

So I guess I break things down like this, yearly:

Domain/hosting fees: $70, will probably rise

Development fees: Whatever we can convince Simbabbad to take, plus maybe a few bucks for the work I do (I guess I do SOME work around here... actually, within a whole year I probably do a lot)

Money lost by keeping a site that could have ads ad-free because I love you guys SO much and don't want ads: $X?

Speaking of how much I love you guys, Y-Alpha and I have been talking about Negative World shirts, and we're trying to keep the costs down there, so basically my idea was to price them to either just break even or possibly even take a small loss, just because it's a cool idea and I want it to happen and I want people to buy them.

I know this is a kind of vague and not-as-itemized as would be nice list, but then, I haven't really been pushing donations down anyone's throats either. I sort of set it up as a kind of if you want to help out, neat, if not, no big deal thing. I'm not financially struggling or anything and it's not like the site will shut down without donations (though they certainly help when thinking about moving to more expensive hosts.)

Or maybe it is more a "you paid $20 a year for IGN Insider, we're free and a lot better... but if you can donate a couple bucks that'd be cool" type deal. After all, what the hell does IGN spend it's money on that it needs to charge for Insider?

Paying one of our editors to write poorly written articles trashing Nintendo: $60,000/yr?
Paying another of our editors to write poorly written articles trashing Nintendo: $60,000/yr?
Paying yet another of our editors to write poorly written articles trashing Nintendo: $60,000/yr?
Updating the message board format once in the last 5 years, but searches are still broken: $X?
09/14/10, 17:08   
IGN started doing the Insider thing at a time when they were doing bad financially. And then they just kept it around. I mean, why not?

They make a hell of a lot more money off ads than Insider, though.
09/14/10, 17:18   
How much less?! I think the lowest anything around here would be is $4 a month. Actually, our host advertises at $3.95 a month and I emailed them about it before because I'm paying $4.95 and their reply was something about how sometimes they run deals yada yada but it sounded like bullshit to me, especially since I'm STILL paying $4.95 and they have been advertising at $3.95 for a long time now. Blah. The $3.95 a month is supposed to be for a 2 year contract but they're charging me two years at a pop anyway so I should be getting the lower price.

Speaking of which, technically I have already paid up until May 2012 since there was an auto-renew payment that went through in May (totally forgot about this until right now) for two years, but that's not a big deal. If we find a better host we cut our loss and move on. (But that WOULD be another cost, since I would basically be double paying for two years.) (Or maybe I could get a refund... HAH.)

Which reminds me, ANOTHER thing I want to do with my life is figure out everything I have on autorenew payment and make a list of it all. Because it's not even something I think of day to day... double blah.

Anyway, I got this host on a couple of recommendations, and it was fairly highly rated so... I'm sort of dubious about trusting the word of others. But then, what other options are there besides trusting others?
09/14/10, 18:28   
Ok full disclosure. Sorry if the numbers don't match my guesstimate, it's not like I kept a running tab in my head.

Accurate as of September 14, 2010.

Yearly costs:
Hosting @ $4.95/month = $59.40
Domain @ $10.95/year = $10.95
Total = $70.35/year

Mind you, as stated above, there are other costs, the main one being time (though mostly that is Simbabbad now,). Also, thinking longterm, I've run this site for like 8 years out of pocket, so it has probably cost me over $500 over the years (and LOTS of time) to get everything up and where it is now. Infrastructure and the likes.

Donations (as of start of donations, February 9th, 2010):
13 donations
Total: $153.50
Total after Paypal takes their cut: $144.37

Keeping in mind that more than half of the donations were within the first few weeks of having the donation button, then it mostly dried up, so I'm not sure if it can sustain itself at that rate forever.

So I guess it has turned slightly into a commercial venture, though as stated, I'm not really interested in making money off of this site. See, now you guys have to convince Simbabbad he deserves some money for all of his work!
09/14/10, 18:59   
Edited: 09/14/10, 19:02
Hurray, thanks for fixing it, Simba! Please take my money!
09/15/10, 16:28   
Wait, this wasn't a sticky until now?
11/28/10, 02:14   
It stopped being a sticky awhile ago, I think?

BTW, we have purchased server space from a new host which costs a bit over $8 a month, and it costs $10 a year to keep the domain up, so we're looking at around $110 a year to run the Negative World. Furthermore, we're still locked into about a year and a half of a two year contract with the old server, so it's closer to $200 a year for the next year and a half or so (unless I can convince them to let me break contract *crosses fingers*)

Just letting people know the financial situation. I'm never going to beg for money, but I certainly don't mind donations!

PS. Also we should be up on the new server in the near future, so look forward to that!
11/28/10, 02:27   
Edited: 11/28/10, 02:27
My credit card expired and I haven't renewed it! So I can't donate!
11/28/10, 02:37   
Just donated. Keep up the good work!!! This place is great.
11/29/10, 04:15   
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