IW's May be going down..

[Ziroc]

Originally posted by johnny: So do i Z, but obviously you can't rely on it. I for one haven't donated since i moved to my new appartment last year in June, simply because i have to pay twice as much rent as in my former place, so count me out as a regular donator. I wish it was different, but it's not. I'm sure i'm not the only one here who has to look after their budget very carefully. No matter how much i love IW, i also have to eat, and sorry, but that's a little more important to me if you don't mind. We need an amount of money, so IW can start selling merchandise, like i said before, it works, i've seen it on other sites. IW could also function as the middleman when people buy games, books, or movies online, so that it receives a certain percentage of every order that's placed. And for god's sake, allow one or two banner adds in the forum summary, i don't think anyone cares wheter they're there or not.

Yeah, I'm going to add the google ads. We'll see how it works out. But I have tried the ads before, and the linkpayoff if you buy games through IW, and it didn't earn anything--And the state of advertising is pretty bad right now.--Same for print. Have you seen the thickness of gaming mags lately? Thin as hell [img]smile.gif[/img] , I remember when the PC Gamer Holiday issue was like an inch thick.. hehe..

And when I had ads on every page, the highest clickthrough month was 7 clicks [img]smile.gif[/img] But we'll see. If it helps, hell, I'm for it!

BTW, you all know that I don't want anyone that can't afford it to donate. I totally agree, eating is a WEEEE bit more important [img]smile.gif[/img] . Maybe you could create a beer, and call it Ironbrew!! And sell it for IW! lol.

[ 03-11-2005, 10:05 PM: Message edited by: Ziroc ]

[krunchyfrogg]

I hate to play Devil's Advocate, but why does this site rely on donations when many others do not?

[johnny]

Check this out. It's worth a consideration, don't you think ? You're an artist, so you could do the drawings yourself, and there's lots of stuff to decorate. Who wouldn't want to flip a burger wearing an IW bbq aprin ? Or drink coffee out of an IW mug ?

This COULD be a big help. It wouldn't hurt to ask around for the costs, i'm sure there's a few people willing to invest in something like this to get the ball rolling, including myself.

[armageddon272]

I would donate, I love this place and it's lack of ads. Problem is that I'm too young to have a job (for what I know) and don't have the money to donate.

[Ladyzekke]

Well I am pretty sure I successfully sent you a donation Dan via Paypal. My first attempt failed because apparently my hubby had an account and used MY email addy! He cut up all his credit cards 6 months ago, but I don't know how to kill his account and replace it with my own. So I made one I think with a yahoo email addy, seemed to work. Please let me know Dan if you got it!! I'm again so worried about this sort of thing!

And yeah again, I personally, financially, can only come through 1-2 times per year re donations. It of course depends on what's going on in my life. But so many use this forum, again it would be such a non-problem if more people donated, even if just a small amount. I also will say that I don't mind banner ads, just hate popups. I visit a lot of websites and forums that are heavily visited that have banner ads. And if IWs ever had them, I'd make it a point to click on them, and remind everyone else to do the same [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Bungleau]

Let's open things up for discussion on how to keep things going along. If every member could send just one dollar a month, there would be no issue. Heck... a quarter a month... a measly 25-cent piece... and out of 16000 members, that'd be $4000. Call the member numbers inflated and say there are only 1,000 of those 16,000 who post and participate... that'd still be $250, which would cover us (and the increased bandwidth Z talked about).

Anyone got a spare quarter lying around in their couch? In their car? Backpack? Swap a soft drink for water at one fast food meal, and you've got quarters for three months (maybe six, depending on your soft drink size).

I remember going to university and looking down on those little $250 scholarships I heard about. Why waste my time? My tuition was $5,000 per semester... $250 per year wasn't going to make a bit of difference.

But get a few of those, and they add up to real money. I wish I had been smart enough to realize that back then. I was $2,000 in debt when I finished. Just one of those little guys would have saved me $1,000. Two, and I would have broken even. Three or more... hey, there's beer money.

So do your part. Find a quarter. And send it in.

I did mine.

[Dave_the_quack]

Dan, I know it sounds a bit of a cop-out, but I would most likely send a couple of bucks if I knew what Paypal was!

Currently I just use my internet banking "pay anyone" to send payments to whomever, although this has not been tried and tested (by myself, at least) for overseas friends etc.

How do you go about getting a paypal account, or is it possible for me to just directly send funds into your own bank account? I would need your BSB and account # to do that, which you may or may not feel comfortable giving out.

PM me if you wish to talk about it through a private means,

-Dave

[Ladyzekke]

Dave, I just clicked on the Paypal icon above here, and went from there. It seemed to work, although I wait to see confirmation from Ziroc. I just chose what was on the left hand side, which seems to let you use your credit card to pay but you are not an official Paypal member? At least that is the route I went.

[Bungleau]

Paypal has two different levels of member. Anyone can become an accountholder and make payments on your credit card. Once you do, Paypal encourages you to become a certified member. To do that, they make two small deposits to your bank account (after you give them the account information over a secure connection) and ask you to tell them how much they deposited. They don't take it back... [img]smile.gif[/img]

Once you've done that, they offer you the "choice" of either paying someone via credit card or via direct withdrawal from your bank account. You can also start receiving money that way as well... so if you're interested in starting a little internet business on the side, you don't have to go get a merchant account to be able to accept credit cards. Paypal does that for you.

Only drawback in my mind (and the reason I put choice in quotes above) is that once you're certified, they default to using your bank account to send money. You can still use your credit card, but you have to work at it.

I've used it for several years for sums ranging to several hundred dollars, and not had any problems.

[Ziroc]

Originally posted by krunchyfrogg: I hate to play Devil's Advocate, but why does this site rely on donations when many others do not?

Because other sites have 800 pop up ads and crap. IW will NEVER do that. I would rather shut down. (Normal ad banners are ok--NOT sex/gambling though)

The main reason is traffic. We get slammed daily, so it costs more. Many forums that are free have free webspace, and are given so many GB's a day/month and then they are closed until the end of the day/month.

IW Generates nearly THREE Gigabytes of data each day! That is more than some well known websites make in a week!


And most of the forums I visit have donation goals as well. (Paypal too). [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 03-12-2005, 12:18 AM: Message edited by: Ziroc ]