[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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