[theforum] Update on evolt finances (and tin cup rattling)

[David Kaufman]

Hello Forum (I know you're out there -- I can hear you breathing!)

I said...
 > So hopefully the next sound you hear will be me bragging that evolt
 > is fully solvent again, for the foreseeable future [...]

Well, perhaps not *fully* solvent... I did manage to get ads on the list 
archives:

   Here's an example:
   http://lists.evolt.org/archive/Week-of-Mon-20110815/131624.html

but after just a few days, they are not doing nearly as well as I'd 
hoped.  A couple of years ago, the list archives got ten times _more_ 
traffic than the browser archive, now it appears leo is garnering just 
about a *tenth* of the traffic that beo is getting.

That's right -- the list archives went from serving like 100,000 page 
views a month to just a couple *hundred* a *day*, right now its on track 
for less than three thousand a month.

So, not a lot of new revenue there...

On the bright side though, my previous email inspired total donations to 
be twice as high this month than last month :-) so we're okay for the 
time being -- unfortunately we did not get commitments for any new 
*recurring* donations, but we can probably now coast through September 
and October.

After that... barring the emergence of a couple new monthly donors... 
the only thing left I can think of is putting ads on weo as well.

-dave, masking his horror


On 8/1/2011 2:03 AM, David Kaufman wrote:
> Hi Forum,
>
> Just to let everyone know officially, evolt has been essentially broke
> for a few months now. We ran through the $2000 or so of savings that
> we'd held for years because:
>
> a) our advertising revenue dried up
>
> The Google ads on the browser archive that used to pay around $100 a
> month, have slowly decreased (over a couple of years) to the point
> where, over the last 12 months they paid just $128.63, or $10.71 per
> month, average.
>
> b) for over 2 years, until October 2010, our hosting costs were $113 per
> month while we rented two dedicated servers instead of one, during our
> migration from the old $69/month server to the new $44/month one.
>
> Since we finally completed that cut-over last year, our expenses are now
> just the $44, and our revenue is the $13/month avg from google (paid
> occasionally, when unpaid earnings reach $100) and $20/month from two
> donors who have signed up to make monthly donations via PayPal.
>
> I've been chipping in the difference, and also paying the overdraft fees
> whenever I forget to chip in quickly enough -- you see, our bank is kind
> enough to pay the hosting company when they charge our debit card even
> if we don't have the funds to cover it, and then charge us $36 for the
> kindness.
>
> Anyway, it was decided a long time ago to add google ads to the list
> archives, to increase revenue, but I never did it.
>
> So now i am going to do it because I don't want evolt to always be so
> broke it's bank account is negative half the time, and i am responsible
> for the overdraft charges -- it's almost as annoying as having an
> irresponsible teenager on your mobile phone family plan. Wait, no -- I
> take that back. Nothing is that annoying :-)
>
> So hopefully the next sound you hear will be me bragging that evolt is
> fully solvent again, for the foreseeable future, and then going dark
> again for another decade (and then emerging again with three or four
> more kids -- funny things tend to happen around here in the dark!)
>
> Also, if anyone else wants to help support evolt by making a small
> monthly (or one-time!) donation via PayPal, those handy links that help
> you do so are right here:
>
> http://evolt.org/help_support_evolt#donations
>
> And many thanks to to those of you who already do!
>
> -dave
> --
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>
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>