So after Mark’s bleg yesterday, I decided to set up both a donation and a subscribe option for readers in the sidebar. You can donate whatever amount you’d like to the site on a one-time (or however-many-times) basis, or sign up for a $5 monthly subscription. If you think that’s not a good subscription amount, let me know and I can tweak it down a bit. These are new waters we’re treading into.
As you all know, we run this site for free. We don’t get paid, nor do we intend to make money off our writing. We do, however, have a good deal of traffic and would like to take the site to a better host which will cost significantly more than we pay now. We also want to keep the site ad-free. Hence the donation/subscription option for readers. We’ll base our hosting service on how much we make via donations. Money that comes in will go back into the site, hopefully making the user experience that much better.
Right now we’re leaning toward Media Temple as our host, so if anyone has thoughts on that let us know. If we make enough we’ll quite possibly bring someone in to help set up the site and check for bugs, programming issues, etc. on a one-time basis. My technical skills only go so far.
Any other thoughts, ideas, etc. are always welcome. And thanks very much for your readership, your constant high-quality feedback, and now your financial assistance. The League has been successful beyond our hopes, and we owe it largely to you….
Cheers!
P.S. We will not sprinkle our posts with calls to “hit the tip jar” or endlessly beg for your support. Think of this as an annual reminder….an NPR-esque fundraising drive, if you will….
I suppose this is best done through PayPal. Is a credit card doable? Probably not?Report
Yes – credit cards are accepted. Just click over to the sidebar and you’ll see the donate button. Click there and follow the steps. Bottom left corner you can use your credit card instead of paypal account.Report
I tried that, and got a message saying please enter an amount greater than zero. I assume that referred to the portion of the page where you put in the amount you want to contribute, though the message was actually below that, in the portion where you put in credit card info. I had entered a dollar value, but I did it again, wondering if I would be charged twice, and got the same message.Report
I’m sorry that’s very confusing. You have to hit “Update Total” beneath the dollar amount. So enter $XX.00 and hit “Update Total” and then hit “Continue” by the Credit Card info at the bottom.Report
If anyone is having trouble with the buttons or navigating paypal please feel free to email me or leave a comment.Report
The timing of this is somewhat amusing, given that the local NPR affiliate is right in the middle of its pledge drive, too….Report
Well my c-note is in the pal as promised. Congrats, you have the distinction of being my first sponsored political web page.
Though for all the reading there that I do I should probably buy an Atlantic subscription.Report
Thanks to everyone so far who has taken the time to donate. We’re on track to getting enough funding to bump the site on to a decent host, which is fantastic!Report