sexual_sushi Posted February 9, 2010 Share Posted February 9, 2010 I just donated some money again, the goal is to donate $10 monthly or bimonthly and I'll post here when I do so hopefully people will see it and think about donating again. Cheers Shaun Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators gav240z Posted February 10, 2010 Administrators Share Posted February 10, 2010 I just donated some money again, the goal is to donate $10 monthly or bimonthly and I'll post here when I do so hopefully people will see it and think about donating again. Cheers Shaun Thanks mate, and thanks to everyone who donates. I really appreciate it. Just a reminder that web-hosting costs around $170 AU per month. Google Adsense makes us about $20-$30 p/month and donations really do vary each month between $20 - $70 (its hard to gauge exactly how much since members often donate different amounts at random intervals). Whilst our web-hosting is not the cheapest, I believe the service we get is worth the money. I've been through 2 other hosting companies previously (as well as others for friends / family / work etc...) and there is nothing worse than having a bad hosting company. I'm not sure what our up-time has been over the past couple of years, but off the top of my head its been pretty good and a large part of that is due to our host providing reliable servers. So yes I could probably save some money here and there on hosting, but for me its not worth the headache. Bottom line I guess is that I'm willing to spend a little bit extra on web hosting, but I appreciate any contribution made. If you don't have money to spare, you can contribute in other ways. - Refer / encourage a friend to join the site - Write up a technical how to article that we can make a sticky post for other members - Write up a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) post - to address all those same old questions we get when people join. - Arrange discounts for other Auszcar.com members through your own business or a local business - Take the time to say hi to new members and make them feel welcome - Submit details for a featured member ride on the homepage - this really helps me save time . - Stroke my ego and send me thank you emails saying how much you love Auszcar.com (just kidding I get enough of those already). You get the idea I hope anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FLEXZED Posted February 10, 2010 Share Posted February 10, 2010 hey shaun thanks for the reminder i just donated as well Loui Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zrevival Posted February 10, 2010 Share Posted February 10, 2010 Just a thought I personally really enjoy the website and usually check it once a day - however i have my link set to go straight to the forums to look for new posts. This means that i completely miss the 'donation' link which is on the home page. Quite simply - if the donation link was more 'in my face' then i would donate far more regulary to what is a terrific website, with a great bunch of regular members. Maybe the donation link should also be on the forum pages as well as i would imagine that is where most of the regular members spend their time (made this assumtion without checking webstats) Just a thought Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Camouflage Posted February 10, 2010 Share Posted February 10, 2010 Thanks mate, and thanks to everyone who donates. I really appreciate it. Just a reminder that web-hosting costs around $170 AU per month. Whilst our web-hosting is not the cheapest, I believe the service we get is worth the money. I've been through 2 other hosting companies previously (as well as others for friends / family / work etc...) and there is nothing worse than having a bad hosting company. Jebus that is expensive. WA Z Register is hosted with AussieHQ for around $250 a year (1 gig disc space, 10gig traffic per month, cpanel), and I haven't had any problems with them and support is great. (They bought out the old host we were with who were bordering on incompetent). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators gav240z Posted February 10, 2010 Administrators Share Posted February 10, 2010 Just a thought I personally really enjoy the website and usually check it once a day - however i have my link set to go straight to the forums to look for new posts. This means that i completely miss the 'donation' link which is on the home page. Quite simply - if the donation link was more 'in my face' then i would donate far more regulary to what is a terrific website, with a great bunch of regular members. Maybe the donation link should also be on the forum pages as well as i would imagine that is where most of the regular members spend their time (made this assumtion without checking webstats) Just a thought I was thinking that perhaps what I should do is once a month post how much our hosting cost is, how much we earned from advertising and how much was donated so everyone can see where we are at in terms of hosting costs? I realise a lot of people visit the forum section of the site so perhaps I can put a rotating banner on the site as a reminder for donations too. . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators gav240z Posted February 10, 2010 Administrators Share Posted February 10, 2010 Jebus that is expensive. WA Z Register is hosted with AussieHQ for around $250 a year (1 gig disc space, 10gig traffic per month, cpanel), and I haven't had any problems with them and support is great. (They bought out the old host we were with who were bordering on incompetent). Yeah unfortunately we need more than 1 gig of space due to the gallery and image attachments on the forum. Our last plan was $50 p/month which was good, however unfortunately the forum activity was causing high demand on the CPU usage of the shared environment. You may recall I was upgrading software and trying all sorts of caching technology but it didn't seem to make much difference and the next plan was managed virtual private hosting which was a fair bit more expensive. The hosting plan does allow me to host more than 1 website however, so I'm happy if we cover most of our hosting cost each month but not necessarily all of it. The longer term plan is to eventually integrate the entire website into a single software package (instead of 3 different ones like it is currently) which will make the site maintenance easier and allow me to easily move the site to another host (maybe cheaper?) if required. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sexual_sushi Posted April 14, 2010 Author Share Posted April 14, 2010 Ok so I missed out on my donation for March but I have just donated $10 for April. If you've got a few spare bucks get donating now Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FuzzyDropbear Posted April 14, 2010 Share Posted April 14, 2010 Yup, sorry Gav, missed the last month or two as well. Cheers mate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators gav240z Posted April 14, 2010 Administrators Share Posted April 14, 2010 Ok so I missed out on my donation for March but I have just donated $10 for April. If you've got a few spare bucks get donating now Yup, sorry Gav, missed the last month or two as well. Cheers mate. No problems guys, thanks for the donation again. I'm going to look into some options for donating members = less advertising and non donating members get more ads etc.. Right now for every $1 we earn from advertising $0.25 cents of it comes from members who sign into the site. So 1 to 4 ratio. So it makes sense to look into an option like that. Another reason to go the advertising route is that I don't like asking people for donations. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.A.R. Posted April 14, 2010 Share Posted April 14, 2010 If I had PayPal Gav, I'd throw a lot more $ the site's way. There has to be another way to donate as PayPal is a PITA to setup... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Z Posted April 14, 2010 Share Posted April 14, 2010 I check this site daily to take me away from the BS at work and after hours alot as well (no life). But I think the comment about what $ we need for the month and what we have might be a good idea (counter of some sort)... If I read that we needed say $200 this month and we were at $120, I'd throw a tenner in. Anyways, just a quick show of support for this site - I've got some old parts I'll post up soon, some of them will be donated to auszcar.com. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sco_aus Posted April 15, 2010 Share Posted April 15, 2010 On another forum I was on, they just did a graph for the month that showed how much left was need to cover the month, it made people think about it and donate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
620Z Posted April 15, 2010 Share Posted April 15, 2010 I like the idea of having some sort of Balance Sheet to show donations versus expenses each month. Gav I reckon you would get a lot more people throwing in when a short fall occurs. Obviously it's not at the forfront of the members minds and if they don't know you are short then you might miss out. Cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quandary Posted May 31, 2010 Share Posted May 31, 2010 I donated some time ago and got a confirmation email but it doesn't show in the Paid Subscriptions. Should it? Kind of worried money didn't go to where it was supposed to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators gav240z Posted May 31, 2010 Administrators Share Posted May 31, 2010 I donated some time ago and got a confirmation email but it doesn't show in the Paid Subscriptions. Should it? Kind of worried money didn't go to where it was supposed to. Sorry mate, yes I did get your donation and thanks. I just hadn't updated your profile yet. Since that is done manually I sometimes miss it or do them in bulk if I get a few. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GV260 Posted June 1, 2010 Share Posted June 1, 2010 Will Craig (or someome else) be accepting donations at the next Melbourne meeting as has been done in the past? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
620Z Posted June 1, 2010 Share Posted June 1, 2010 Well good question. I will accept donations on behalf of the Vic people and put it in our Bank Account or kitty which is for quarterly meetings/BBQ's etc. But like I have mentioned before Gavin's donations on line (Paypal) go directly to him to cover costs for hosting the web site. Sort of two different things. Whilst I thought about running a raffle or something at the Jag night. I decided that we did have neough cash in the kitty to cover us for now and didn't really want people to have there hand in their pockets every time we met. Unless everyone thinks I should do a raffle and or sell Tassie DVD's etc. So donate at your discretion on the night. Jag night will probably cost $250- including hire of venue, food and drink. Cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
benny Posted June 1, 2010 Share Posted June 1, 2010 everyone should chuck in at least 5-10 dollars for drinks etc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynton Posted June 1, 2010 Share Posted June 1, 2010 Hey Gav maybe you need a colored barometer on each page to remind us of the plus or minus situation of $$$ and usage. Lynton Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators gav240z Posted June 1, 2010 Administrators Share Posted June 1, 2010 Hey Gav maybe you need a colored barometer on each page to remind us of the plus or minus situation of $$$ and usage. Lynton Yes good idea Lynton and whilst I could do this manually, I don't want people to think I'm manipulating the meter . So I've been working on a way to automate it, I started last night. However there are a few things to work out in order to do that first. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators gav240z Posted June 10, 2010 Administrators Share Posted June 10, 2010 I like the idea of having some sort of Balance Sheet to show donations versus expenses each month. Gav I reckon you would get a lot more people throwing in when a short fall occurs. Obviously it's not at the forfront of the members minds and if they don't know you are short then you might miss out. Cheers Done, the homepage now has a widget that shows how much we have raised toward hosting costs each month. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sexual_sushi Posted June 10, 2010 Author Share Posted June 10, 2010 Excellent I just chipped in $10 (USD apparently) Now I'll see how quickly it updates Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sexual_sushi Posted June 10, 2010 Author Share Posted June 10, 2010 About that quickly apparently Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reverendzed Posted June 10, 2010 Share Posted June 10, 2010 I can't see it, am I looking in the right place? the homepage doesn't seem to show anything different. Rev Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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