[theforum] Update on evolt finances (and tin cup rattling)
David Kaufman
david at gigawatt.com
Mon Aug 1 01:03:52 CDT 2011
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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