Well, I'm starting this one even later than last year as I've been preoccupied by some recent personal issues like a really bad ankle sprain 2 weeks ago: Never a good thing missing two or three steps on a step ladder and landing on one ankle that sort of bent sideways ..... OUCH.

So, basically I've been doing a lot of resting and I wasn't quite in the mood to post anything. ;) :(

( Note: Nothing broken, and I can walk on the ankle, but at about 1/4 my normal walking speed, very frustrating and I'm getting " Cabin Fever " )

So I assume that Nathan probably already paid the servor hosting fee out of his own pocket like last year before the start of the Fund Drive ???

As said every year, we enjoy this great site that is a great resource of quality information about arms and armour as well as being a place where we have a culture of respectful exchanges of opinion with little to none of the " drama " of on-line media: This is because Nathan does a lot of regular " Unpaid Work " making sure that this site is a nice welcoming place to visit and probably does a lot of behind the scenes cleaning up spam and any people who might be tempted to be " impolite " .... ;) :lol:

So, if you can afford to make a donation please do so and not let Nathan do all the heavy lifting: A $5 or $10 donation can help, but there is no " limit " on how much one might wish to give ...... :D

Some large donations last year did jump start the fund drive, but as I mention each year having many many people giving a small contribution is appreciated as it shows that many people appreciate the site's content, camaraderie and all of Nathan's continuing work .... remember that he also has a life to live and bills to pay and a lot of the time he devotes to this site he might have been working to earn a living.

Anyway, hope that this gets things started.

Thanks to the people during the year do make spontaneous and generous donations without being asked, but to pay for the server costs it helps to have a more concentrated period of contributions.

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Thanks, Jean. Your timing is great. As you mention, I've already paid the server bill and sure would like to get some of that money back.

I don't have a steady job these days, having returned back to freelance over a year ago. Things are pretty unpredictable as far as income goes. I'm getting up there in age and I'm ready to move onto other things while I'm still able to enjoy them. This site is a big chunk of money and effort each year and I've been starting to consider all the things that go along with that. There's no big decisions looming in the near future, but this stuff is on my mind.

Member donations go a long way to alleviate these concerns. Anything helps, really. If you guys enjoy the site and have gotten some value out of it, please share if you're able.

I threw something into the pot in late August.

I think my auto-donate is set for late-October, but I threw a little extra money in now.

Good to see you still around Nathan :) I'm going to send in some money now to help you out as well. Keep up the good work as always :)

I just chipped in a little bit. Thanks to Nathan for keeping this site up and running all these years. Most of what I've learned about arms and armour has been from reading myArmoury. If you've learned things of interest or value, I'd encourage you to make a donation, too.

I'm glad that others have written posts and kept this Topic up on the home page and also encouraged others to make a donation.

I'm " Bumping up " the Topic to make sure that enough people view the Topic and know about the donation drive.

As I do every year I remind people that if they get a lot of pleasure, education, camaraderie and entertainment value from this site that they should at least consider helping in keeping the site active and not Have Nathan pay out of pocket for the hosting charges: He puts in a huge amount of " unpaid " time keeping the site functioning as there is a lot of unseen work behind the scenes just dealing with administrative stuff and technical issues that needs to be done, otherwise the site, I imagine, would be drowning in spam, hacking and trolls.

This is a quality site because of all the attention Nathan pays to keep is running smoothly.

For those who may be new to the site, this site only exists because Nathan created it, and with only a few moderators to help him checking up on posts content.

Well, again, small donations by many people can go a long way: An average donation of $20 by 120 people would be enough to attain the goal of $2400 ...... ;)

Now smaller donation are quite welcome and they all add to the objective. Each year a few people do make some much bigger donations, and this is greatly appreciated, so a special thanks to them.

I also encourage people to post their reasons why they enjoy the site. :D

Well, we where stalled for a little while but " ANONYMOUS " got things moving again: So thanks to Anonymous or to all the " Anonymouses " if they are more than one ..... who know who your are even if we don't, so again thanks.

So we are over $1400 and past half way to the donation objective of $2400.



Note: I would also encourage donations from those here that get some personal advantages from the existence of this site like makers who get some useful buzz to sell their products or just the feedback from people who know enough to really appreciate their work and discuss it intelligently.

The Market Place Forum is also a valuable resource to buy or sell parts of one's collection.

There are also some historians and HEMA scholars/practitionners who probably like the existence of a site where there are people where they can have interesting exchanges of opinion and/or facts and that the existence of this site is a positive thing.

For us who are not professional historians the presence and post from these adds credibility to the site and it's a real plus to be able to learn from them, or even have polite questions or even polite disagreements with them.

Just another bumping post, we are over half way to the objective and less than $1000 from it.

Remember that I usually like the idea of exceeding the minimum objective as it gives Nathan some wiggle room if he has unexpected expenses running the site, Nathan also uses extra cash for enhancements or giving prizes as he has done whenever he can afford to do so ..... Nathan seems to feel sort of guilty even asking for help in paying for the site so I usually do " The Dirty Work " for him ..... ;) :lol:

Also keep in mind that even with some extra cash it probably means that it averages out over the number of hours annually that Nathan spends working for the site to probably a few pennies an hour of work :!: :wtf:

So don't think of any supposed profit as anywhere near making a living with this site, so it's a project of love and dedications and not a viable way for him to pay the rent.

So basically we who are contributing are just wanting to help keep the site alive and functioning and in part show some support and appreciation of all the work Nathan puts into the site.

If you are not in a comfortable financial situation or only looka at the site very occasionally don't feel pressured or guilted into making a donation, but if you visit the site weekly or daily and you enjoy the site wanting to keep it running is in your own best interest in addition to being a nice thing to do.

I am going to add my thoughts from a makers point of view targeted at all those makers, manufacturers and sellers out there, but also a small nag to everyone else.

If you post up your own work - this place is a massive showroom for you. Your work will be better for seeing what the other makers are doing and for the great exposure to modern and original artefacts and the thought and discussion around them. Better work means more customers and higher prices.

So because Nathan has seen fit to bring MA to the world and pay for it, your work is better and worth more than it would otherwise be. Please pay back just a little of this by helping him out.

If others post up your work, most of the above is still true and at the very least it is still free advertising.

Anyway to finish off my not very articulate rant, please dig into your pockets. If you think this site is worth only 5cents a day, then that is still only $18 for the year -so come on.

If you don't think this site is worth 5cents a day then I think you have an odd sense of value.

Every last one of us can afford 5cents a day and if you want to make it 10cents a day - even better!

Tod

Thanks Jean and Tod.

Tod, I don't know why, but very few of the Industry Professionals people who have benefited from this site over the last 13 years have really given much back.

I've considered making the group require a quarterly payment to participate, but that would limit the value to the members here and somewhat open the can of worms of bias.

Just curious, but does a premier membership count as a donation? (I think mine kicks in this month). I'm between jobs, and pinching pennies, but more than happy to have saved-up for the low premier cost. $45/year is less than a Hulu or Netflix membership (it's under <$4/mo.) but consider myArmoury.com more valuable and entertaining than both of those combined. If Hulu or Netflix disappeared, I'd be a little irritated, but if myArmoury.com disappeared, that would very seriously suck eggs.
I don't even want to imagine how bad that would be.

If the premier membership were just a standard "membership fee", it would be worth every penny. But you get the additional album drive space and potentially a cool forwarding email address. I highly recommend becoming a Premier member if you're not already. Not only do you get the extras, but when other members meet you and say "Haven't I seen you post on myArmoury.com?" You get to make a cool reply of in an entitled Thurston Howell voice "Why yes! I'm a premier member, in fact!" and hopefully they will not reply "I thought I recognized your name! I'm Nathan, I own myArmoury.com and you're now banned for life." :)
-Terry

It all helps, Terry! I couldn't afford the annual server fee this year so I switched to a monthly payment instead. It costs more annually but it was what I could manage. Still, every month when they take that money out is like a thorn in my side.

Another small donation. Thank you Nathan for all of the work you put in to this site, that so many of us visit multiple times daily.

Nathan Robinson wrote

Quote:

Tod, I don't know why, but very few of the Industry Professionals people who have benefited from this site over the last 13 years have really given much back.

I am not wanting to turn this into some huge gripe or be confrontational, but you are right and I challenge any of you people out there to look at the list of donors and compare it with the people who actually financially benefit from this site and I can tell you there are shockingly few.

Come on making and selling community; pull your fingers out and do the right thing because I can think of at least 15 of us without any effort, who should be contributing here and currently are not.

I think it is neither fair, nor decent and as a community we should be doing better.

Tod

And another BUMP to the Topic: Now there have been about 715 views of this Topic, but that doesn't mean that 715 different people have read the Topic and one can't expect donations from members of this site who haven't read the Topic or paid attention to the donation request at the bottom of the Forums page ..... many people become sort of blind about reading that and they go strait to whatever Forum Topic they want to read.

So the Topic has to be re-BUMPED when it leaves the home page list of most recent posts.


Now things have slowed down a bit after a good start with donations, still little to no presence from people in the Industry who get a lot of free buzz and publicity from this site ...... :!: :?:

I find it funny, but a bit sad and illogical that business people who are ready to pay some serious coin buying publicity in various media, don't feel the need to give some minimal support to a site that has helped them become known by their target market of collectors of arms and armour ? Maybe a lot of them haven't visited the site recently and haven't even clued into that there is a fund drive here ? Maybe, some of their regular customers on this who come here might want to give them a heads up. ;)

Now, we have about 30,000 registered members, not all I assume still visiting the site on a regular basis, but there are at least many hundred or even a few thousand people who do visit the site on a regular basis and find the site useful, entertaining, educational and would like it to continue to be around .... so even a very small donation by many people would get us to the objective ..... we are 2/3 of the way there.

So if 300 or 1% of the registered membership just gave $5 we would comfortably raise a bit more money than the objective

I don't think that it would be a hardship to anyone not in a financial crisis to donate $5 to $10, that would be the cost of a couple of lattes or a fast food meal and less than a night at the movies with movie overpriced popcorn.

Nathan also has had to go to a monthly payment plan because paying the full $2400 yearly hosting costs where too much for him this year ....... If you value the site, it seems short sighted having Nathan have to pay out of pocket to keep the site running considering all the unpaid work he put into the site every year.

So a bit of " nagging " from me, but somebody has to do it. ;) :lol:

Even people who are just enjoying the site without joining as registered members ( Which is free for an un-enhanced membership ) can make a donation using Paypal by clicking the link .... some people just enjoy reading the posts and don't want to officially join, but that's O.K., I lurked on this site for about 6 months before I joined some time in 2004 .