[William Goodwin]

I've noticed lately that Nathan is having to sell off more his wonderful collection to help with funding the
up-keep & operation of this site, which is a shame. He has such grand pieces (which alot of us envy).

So, I'd like to ask and challenge others to help out this site by peldging to ease the burden of the cost of running this site that
so many are fortunate to enjoy the fruits of.

I have a Hanwei Dagger up for sale on the marketplace forum, so I will pledge 1/2 of the sale of that piece back to
myArmoury. Wish I was able to to do more, but I believe that every little bit will be a blessing.

What say you?


Bill

aka the other Bill G.

[Gordon Clark]

I think that is a great idea Bill!
A percentage might be sent by buyers or sellers.
Also people should remember that they can contribute : http://www.myArmoury.com/contribute/

Gordon

[Nathan Robinson]

I haven't felt very good today and this is the first time I've seen this post. Bill, thanks for this. Really. Your timing is more perfect than you could know.

[Pamela Muir]

[William Goodwin]

[Russ Ellis]

You know what? Nathan shouldn't have to sell off his stuff to pay for a site that EVERYONE here benefits from. I can guarantee you that there's no other site like this one on the web. (Yeah I'm predjudiced so what I'm also right. ) I just sent a paypal for 20 bucks. I challenge every one of you to send something. 20 dollars seems like a nice round number but send what you can. I think everyone here can afford SOMETHING. Note that I'm just saying this as a guy that loves this place not in any official capacity or anything.

[Thomas McDonald]

I recently mailed Nathan a site donation as well !

The financial burden should be shared by all of us here (who are able), no one person should have to foot the bill alone !
Whatever small contribution each of us can give will certainly come back 100 fold, no doubt about it !

Many thanks to Nathan & the team for all that they do !

And thanks to all our members here who make this place so very special !

myArmoury gu brath , Mac

[Chad Arnow]

I just sent in a donation as well. I also want to extend heartfelt thanks to Nathan for his dedication to the site, both personal and financial.

[Chad Arnow]

Please note that Russ, Mac , and I are talking only as fellow readers and lovers of the site, not in any official capacity. In fact, Nathan probably would shy away from all the attention.

[Russ Ellis]

Chad, Mac, well done gentlemen! I really love it when people step up and put a real concrete commitment behind what they believe in. Both of you have contributed enormously in other ways to this site as well so this is really above and beyond the call of duty.

Alright who's next? Skip lunch today and send Nathan 10 bucks you guys. You can afford to drop some Holiday pounds anyway.

[William Goodwin]

A pant load of thanks to all who have contributed so far. My check is in the mail soon, even though the dagger I have up for sale is still available (nudge, nudge, wink, wink)

Bill

[Konstantin Tsvetkov]

[Gordon Clark]

I was not going to "say" anything, but in retrospect, I think it might be a good idea - I sent a small donation ($10) last night.
Come on people - send in something if you can and then post to this thread. Posting about it feels a little strange, I know, but I think it will encourage others as well. I am very uncomfortable with the thought that Nathan is selling off his collection to provide me with this resource - pretty sure there are lots more people out there who are as well.

Maybe we can make this an annual event - the first of the year myArmoury pledge drive -

Gordon

[Russ Ellis]

Bill, good job and I hope someone takes that dagger off your hands soon!

Thanks Konstantin! I have to say it says good things about a guy whose second post is a pledge of support for the site...

Gordon, I know what you mean, but I don't see it as blowing your own horn as much as telling people that you are willing to put your support on the line in a very concrete way. The thing is that we don't individually have to contribute all that much if we are willing to all contribute. I'd hate to be in the position of selling off my collection piece by piece to handle expenses.

[Nathan Robinson]

Hi Everybody.

I'm a bit shocked by all of this. I want to thank you guys for putting this forward. It means a lot to me.

I'm really shy about this sort of thing. I didn't feel very well yesterday and also sort of kept away from the site because I was a bit uncomfortable with all the attention. So when I came back today to read the site, I found this outpouring and it really is quite touching.

I'm honestly not sure how to respond to all of this. I guess the appropriate thing to do is be blunt and open about the financial stuff, even though I feel really a bit silly doing it. I’ll probably be accused of a case of “too much information” but here goes.

Okay. Deep breath. Let me ramble now I guess.

The fact is that this site is quite expensive to operate. We have an outrageous amount of traffic and use a lot of disk space and technical resources. All of these things combined really make the hosting needs go well beyond those cheap hosting services that are available all over the 'net. The site really has to be sitting on a server that isn't shared with dozens, or even hundreds, of other sites. So this means the thing sucks a whole lot of money just to sit on the 'net. As one example, my recent race to get cash is to pay a $460 hosting bill and this is only one-third of that particular bill. If things keep going as they are, we’ll outgrow out current hosting situation in 6-8 months to boot.

But you know what? For me to cry about the money drain would be ridiculous and inappropriate. Nobody is forcing me to put up this site. This has been a choice of my own and, well, let's face it: this is a hobby that I choose. We don't see homeless people playing golf on the weekends or unemployed people collecting muscle cars. These things aren't financially feasible for them. So really, I put the burden on myself because I enjoy this hobby. I learn a lot by doing this. I get to be creative and technical. I really dig the whole idea of community building. I've met a great number of cool people like those posting in this topic. Bottom line is that I really get a whole lot out of this project and find a lot of passion keeping it going. This is a hobby I've chosen and, well, like any hobby it's a luxury item.

Now having said all of that, there's this other thing to consider and it's called reality. Well, really, my reality. Right now my income isn't very high. I'm an old dot-com guy who did pretty well back when things were going well, but a lot of that has drained up. Most of my clients have gone out of business, and many went under owing me quite a lot of money. I'll never see that cash, but that's my problem because well, it goes down to that word again: choice. I made the choice to work with these companies and that's the risk, I guess.

So, I really don't know where this all bottoms out. I feel weird taking money from you guys to pay for the bills for this hobby when it all boils down to the fact that I've chosen this hobby myself as a past-time. I feel guilty about putting up a site, building a community as it is, and then getting my sorry ass into a financial situation that jeopardizes that whole thing. There, I said it. Truthfully, it's this fact that really makes me feel pretty small. I don't want to let anybody down and that's exactly what it seems like might happen here. And I hate that.

Every time somebody buys an enhanced membership or donates cash to the site, it makes me feel like I need to step things up and hustle to get out better content, a cool contest, a new feature: something to show that I'm working my butt off to earn that money. This isn't a bad thing. This is how it is supposed to be. Then that brings me to the whole catch-22 situation. The reality is that I need to go find me a full-time job because this contract work thing isn’t doing so well for me any longer. But doing that means I’ll have less time for this site, and then having less time for the site means I’ll have less time to earn back the cash that I receive from the members. I feel responsible to you guys. I owe you. The whole thing makes me put a lot of pressure on myself.

You can ask the myArmoury.com contributing team guys how much pressure I've felt lately. They'll all tell you that I've been hustling like crazy to get out good articles and bring us to the next level. They'll also tell you I've been stressed and a bit of a jerk lately because of it. (Thanks for your patience, guys, honestly.)

Let’s talk about the team now. I owe these guys a lot. Not a single one of them has earned a single dollar for the efforts. To boot, they’ve all given to the site. They give constantly to this site and the community and I owe them all dearly for their efforts. I wish I was in a position to pay them for their efforts, but that’s not likely to happen. Instead, I light a fire under my own butt to work harder. I don’t want to be the guy who’s sitting back watching everybody else work. I can’t do that. I have to at least work as hard as anybody else, and really, I’m supposed to be working twice as hard as anyone. That’s my rule. That’s my goal, at least.

Recently I put up a post in our contributor forum (the private forum where we brainstorm ideas and write articles and whatnot) that talks about the site. I might share some of this with all of you guys in my post saying that we hit our 500th day for the forum. It’s sort of a New Year’s retrospective thing. Anyway. I mentioned that the whole myArmoury.com project has gone well beyond me and is much bigger than anything I had hoped to build before. It’s now something that belongs to the whole team. I’m going to amend that now and say that this whole project belongs to all of us. We’re a community here and if you go back to the About Page you’ll see the text that Patrick Kelly and I wrote a couple years ago when the site had just launched. Those words have never been edited since that first day and they seem so prolific now. This has truly turned into a community of like-minded people who help make this whole thing what it’s become.

I know I need to open my mind up a bit about this whole thing and be okay with everybody giving something to this project. I just want you all to know that I have a serious problem receiving that sort of thing. I’m not very good at it and always feel like I have to compensate by giving back more when it happens. I always try to make things balance out and pledge to keep trying to keep that balance. But I guess like any balancing act, some stress and a sense of urgency comes with it.

I’d be open and eager to hear any of your thoughts on any of this, even though I’m a little afraid what some of it might be. I’m also inviting you guys to brainstorm any ideas you have to help keep this project going, growing, and evolving without killing any of us.

Maybe it’s time I both reach out, and chill out, a bit.

Thanks for reading.
Cheers.

[Gordon Clark]

Hi Nathan,

I don't know about everyone, but I can tell you that I visit myArmoury more than any site on the web, and that I'm sure I have benefited WAY more than my memebership or any paltry sum that I have donated would come to.

Just the chance to read Peter Johnsson's posts over the last year or so about the development of the Albion next gen swords alone, for example, is worth more than has come out of my pocket, and that is a small part of what you and your team have offered all of us.

I don't expect that you will ever be in a position to offer pay to the "team", but like you said, it is a hobby for them too.
What I would encourage is to let us know when things get tight financially - give us all a chance to help out.

I would be really sad if this place went away, or was reduced substantially - but I can say that I'm sure that it would not be YOUR fault - the rest of us need to step up and help out - financially or otherwise.

Gordon

[Nathan Robinson]

A couple other things:

I'll be putting up a system in the next couple days that will automate donations and let me define a "goal" to achieve. Everybody will be able to see how we're doing in terms of meeting that goal. It will then put everybody in the donators group automatically (a little recognition doesn't hurt anyone) or allow them to be anonymous. This will make the whole notion of donations a bit more "legit" in my eyes and make me more comfortable with the whole thing.

Regarding me selling off items in my own collection to pay for some of this stuff: Well, that's going to have to continue. I'll be running out of stuff, though, and so it'll slow down. And really, I know that it might seem like it sucks, but like the previous post (novel) says, this hobby is a choice. It's an expensive hobby and I can't justify having a bunch of this stuff sitting here. It's about putting my money where my mouth is. I'm definitely going to open my mind up to letting you all help me with the financial stuff, but I have to do my part, too. So, right now things being what they are, I have to sell things to get the cash and that's what I'm doing. I've got no new money for this hobby, but am willing to recycle the old money.

[Björn Hellqvist]

We are so used to web resources being free that we tend forget the many man-hours put into the sites and their content. As people had said before: think of what all the sword books would've cost you. Or the money for a sword that would've been mis-spent if there hadn't been a review of it here. This site saves you money, and gives you that priceless thing: knowledge. As a member of the myArmoury team, I've contributed some $90 the past year, so if the "ordinary" members chip in $10 each, it would reduce the strain quite a bit.

[William Goodwin]

Ift'sbeen said many times but, here goes again. Thank you Nathan. To share like that was a hard thing to do. I know,
I'm very shy and stand-off ish in my own right.

You and the other team members have given so much to this site, I just felt it was time WE ALL step up and give back. In the short time I've been coming here, the amount of knowledge,insight and just all-around good times from meeting new people and sharing in this highly addictive and high expensive hobby we (as a community and indidviduals) obsessively enjoy has been a blessing.

Reality. Now there's a thing we all can relate to as well. I'll probably never be able to own a Vince Evans , Albion or Arms & Armour piece due to my limitations of realty, but I love this hobby so much, those factors don't bother me.
The rewards from this site far out weigh the small amount that I am able pledge, but, as a community, I feel that just pulling together, we can continue to make this site grow.

I think Gordon C. may have hit on something too. A annual fund drive could be a great way to start. Yea, it's kinda NPRish sounding, but hey, gotta start some where.


My best regards to you all...

Bill

[Jeremy Scott Steimel]

I also finally got around to upgrading my membership today, and I have a Trafalgar posted in the classifieds which I will join Bill in pledging 1/2 of post-shipping proceeds to MA (posting has been updated as such).

Just one more thanks.
-JS