i`ve watched this site grow alot over the last 7/8months, am very impressed with it as i`m sure other people are too.
you dont have to say, but.....
does it make any money?
what sort of costs is there is running a site like this?
would it be a idea to sell shares in the site, course you couldnt do it to anyone and everyone who comes along, that would have to be sorted..
just a idea. sorry if it causes trouble :)
:NGaugeForum:
Nosey aren't ya! ;D
I've had a few members give contributions to me, which has been great, and a handful of mug/shirt sales. I haven't made any money yet, or broken even. I think it's just an extension of the hobby, so I'm not that fussed. Hopefully if I can get some more advertisers on board then I can make some profit for some time, and maybe afford a gift for the Mods at Christmas.
I must admit,
I spend more time on here than on the other sites 8)
And was well shocked to see an ad in this edition of the N gauge socitey journal :thumbsup:
Well done tank and the gang :beers:
WE ALL STAND TOGETHER :NGaugeForum:
So much so that I would like to donate £ 5 to the up-keep/running of the site.
Please Tank/Mods send me a PM of how to donate (via-pay-pal).
My only reason is that Tank and crew (Lawrence, OldRailbug and JonClox + plus others) do such a sterling job behind the scenes 24/7
May :NGaugeForum: continue.............
Hi gang
I`m new to the site. Who ever decided to put the add in the N-Gauge Society deserves a medal, i never knew you existed despite being on both the n-gauge and n-gauge modern groups on yahoo.
Theres some fantastic stuff on here and its easy to find too, wish i had found you before.
Stuart
welcome aboard Stuart, your testimony about the ad is evident: the day after the ad ran 'users on line' at any given moment jumped from an average of 10 to around 30.
Ill second the request for a "DONATE" here Paypal button.
Thanks for your kind words Stuart. I spent a lot of money on the advert, but I feel it's beneficial for N Gaugers to have somewhere of their own online, and beneficial to the forum. Maybe I'll earn a living from it one day?! :D
Owl - I'm more than happy to accept donations. I feel it too cheeky to put a donation button on here, but feel free to PM me for the email address. Thanks!
JC - Thanks very much as well. Again, I don't know if people would think of it as a cheek to have a paypal button. :-\
Put the donate button on mate, no reason you should keep forking out from your own pocket.
voluntary-pay-to-use is perfectly acceptable. see it everywhere nowadays. not cheek at all.
I could list half a dozen sites Ive given a 5 to over the last year, just because.
OK, thanks everyone. I've made a Paypal link in the Notices section. I'll try to work out a better way to incorporate it into the forum.
Cheers!
Great suggestion and enough to make me open a Paypal Account. :thumbsup:
£5 coming your way via pay-pal, let me know when it lands your end :thumbsup:
Keep up the good work :)
I've absolutely no problem with a PayPal donation button (I've used it, and will again). It is unfair that Tank bears the financial brunt of running it, as hosting, bandwidth etc. is not cheap.
This is one of the friendliest forums I've ever been a member of, the level of help and almost total lack of slabbering (a wonderful term for mouthing off, well used here in Belfast - "quit yer slabberin' wee lad") is a joy.
Many thanks to Tank and all of the mods, who have been very gracious when I've sailed a bit too close to the wind (you know who you are!)
Long live the :NGF:
It can be cheap. I don't pay a penny for my forum.
Fair enough. My site hosting & associated costs are under £20 pa, but it's still an expense.
little tip for those who donate, when I did I ticked it as being and gift and tank recived the full amount rather than losing loads of it in paypal fees
Quote from: poliss on June 17, 2011, 12:46:38 AM
It can be cheap. I don't pay a penny for my forum.
Quite right, it can be cheap. The first version of this forum was on a server with free hosting. For those who remember, the forum became unavailable quite a lot, at at certain times could take a whole minute to download a page. More than likely that was a problem with 110mb (company name), but they said that if I paid for a years subsciption then those problems would disappear. Nothing happened in a positive way, and I lost that money! So, I went back to a company I've always used, slightly more expensive, but they have superb service, allow a large amount of bandwidth, and most importantly they have the latest versions of MySQL for running the forum properly.
A large expense is having a technician that I pay to update the forum, and add a lot of modifications to it. I can do a lot of background modifications, but some of the coding is beyond my knowledge. I need someone who knows what they're doing, and won't mess up the forum.
Once the forum pays for itself I'll allow attachments to be added - as I know it annoys some people having to use 3rd party sites to upload them.
I suppose it's a question of which free host you use. With mine I can host photos and embed large size (853x510) Youtube videos using the iframe tag. It's also extremely rare for it to be unavailable.