Donate to SBAF

MODERATOR EDIT: restoring from hacker deleted post. This first two posts are historical.

GO HERE FOR THE MOST UP TO DATE INFO: https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/donate-to-sbaf.12931/#post-396830



-----original post starts here-----

Donations to SuperBAF

As of June 28, 2016, we're going to donations via PayPal. GFM was taking too much of a cut, especially for high dollar donations. The PayPal donate button is on the right-bottom of the home page.

Members who donate at least $20 may request "Friend" status*. After donating, please post in this thread (http://www.superbestaudiofriends.or...embers-from-changstar-or-donators-to-sbaf.11/), that you have donated. If we haven't responded in three business days, send @Marvey a private message (conversation). Be sure to include "donation" in the a topic of the message.

Friends will be able see the monthly donation / gear usage statements. Donations are used for buying gear, organizing meets, shipping and handling, keeping this site up and running, gifts for moderators, and miscellaneous SuperBAF related expenses. Friends will be able to see monthly financial statements - how the money is used. Friends will also be able to participate in the gear loaner program and bid on gear once the loaner program is done.

Finally, donate not for any of the above reasons, but to help keep alive an alternate voice in the personal audio world. Thank you.

*I should add that is is possible to obtain Friend status over time with content contributions. There are many such people we have given Friend status to who have never donated (many of them donated later anyway). I know there is concern that people can buy their way into Friend status, but the fact is, $20 is still a good amount of money. Anyone who would put $20 into a cause as silly as ours is putting some skin into the game. That does count for something.

*Friend status is no longer guaranteed with the $20 donation. There will be an undetermined waiting period, evaluation, and background check before Friend status is granted. You will receive a Contributor title to remind us that you've helped us succeed. Contributors will be allowed to post in the For Sale forum. We will extend some loaner programs to a broader group that includes Contributors.



https://www.gofundme.com/3b4fwr8s

This was the original donation page for Changstar / SBAF. It still works. Some people have asked me how they can contribute. I know, I am horrible about these things.


ORIGINAL POST ON GFM PAGE (September 2015):

Changstar officially started on November 28, 2011. There were 225 pageviews through 25 sessions that day. Since then, there has been slow overall growth, except with a recent upshoot in the last several months. Several silent bannings of CS members on Head-Fi lately seemed to have fueled popularity of this site.

Last week, there were over 14,000 sessions with near 90,000 pageviews. Coupled with a low bounce rate of 33% and high average session duration of almost 9 minutes, that's a lot of activity, at least for us. What it comes down to is that keeping this site up and running smoothly with good content costs money.

As usual, I will lay out the points:

#1) I pay for running this site out of my own pocket. A lot of gear we have measured and talked about is paid for out of my pocket (and other members' pockets). The loaner programs that I've initiated have cost me money. Stupid things I've done for science such as taking apart HD800s cost me money. Measurement equipment costs money. Organizing meets has cost me money (lots of hidden costs such as hotel, travel, extra power strips, lost items, etc.) You may have heard of some people at HF saying I was making a killing off Light Harmonic with the Premium Sponsor banner at the top. Light Harmonic got that banner for securing a location for one of our meets. I received no money from them.

#2) I make squat from the ads. Those ads are from Google Adsense. I have done zero optimization on getting maximum revenue from them. That's why you see ads for Russian and Chinese brides. No one clicks on them. We take no money from sponsors. We don't have any real sponsors.

#3) We are running out of capacity. This site has already briefly gone down twice this year because it hit certain capacity limits. A higher capacity more cost effective hosting solution will be needed before the end of the year.

#4) The forum software generally sucks and has certain limitations. A phpBB or vBulletin solution would be superior.

#5) I feel that a fresh start will be necessary. TheGame, has volunteered as a serious moderator (he's quite good) for the new forum. I would like to compensate his duties a little bit. Moderating is difficult work, especially for people like us. I do not plan to migrate existing Changstar articles to the new site. After the new forum is up, I plan on running this site in read-only mode for a period of time until I can transfer its contents to an archive server running in my house. This will cost money in the immediate term and a little bit less money in the long term. The data migration will require expertise and this will also cost some money. I may take some good threads here and distill them into nice articles. Any recommendations on good threads to distill would be appreciated.

The bottom line is that I am tired. At some point, a hobby isn't so much fun when you realize that you keep putting your own money, blood, and sweat into it. And I don't want to take money from manufacturers either because doing so would most definitely ruin the fun.

What I am asking from you now is to help keep Changstar (and whatever the new site will be) alive and running.

Many of my responsibilities for moderating will be offloaded to TheGame. Since we don't suck manufacturers' schlongs, I would be unable to do things like pay him a salary or give him a free Hugo DAC. I would love to give him good quality used gear though. This costs money. And no, I don't believe in Communist crap that people should work for free for the benefit of all mankind. I believe that people should be compensated in whatever way I can best manage. Having TheGame as the primary moderator would make me less tired and make things more fun for me again.

I would also like you to pay for the new site for the next 15 months. I am looking at plans that probably would not cost much more than what is currently paid, but I need to look into the fine print. Bandwidth costs money. Storage costs money. I would love to have the option where most users can upload their images. We might also be able to support a feature where people who donate a certain amount won't see any ads. Not having to see my credit card charged every month for keeping this site up and running for the next year or so will make me less tired and make things more fun for me again.

I would also like you to pay for keeping this existing site up and running for 6 months, and then for migrating the content to an archive server (laptop) to be located inside my house. I will cover the costs of the business class Internet connection myself, although I plan on outsourcing the server migration. This costs money.

In all, off the top of my head, I figure we will need $3000 for the next 15-20 months. If we don't meet the full amount, I can always leave out things like the archive server.

If we exceed the amount, we can buy cool stuff, measure it, and then burn it if it sucked. Or maybe put it on a permanent Changstar loaner program. Or maybe sock the excess away for keeping the site running in longer term.

 

UPDATE Dec 2022:

Contributor tags - how to receive them
Friend tag update and clarification


Donating via paypal directly via Patreon gets you a Contributor Tag. As a Contributor, you will have access to post items for sale in the For Sale forum and secret parts of the site that no one should have access to unless you don't mind going insane.

It used to be that "Friend" tag may have meant that you already donated and thus did not receive a Contributor Tag. The "Friend" tag is actually legacy tag and doesn't mean much anymore today. Going forward, the Contributor and Friend tags will not be mutually exclusion. If you have given, then you should receive a Contributor tag. Let me know via PM post in this thread if if you need a Contributor tag.

• All donations are kept in a separate account and go to the loaner program and associated expenses.
• Paid sponsorships and Google ads go toward site upkeep, maintenance, bandwidth, a few beers every month, etc.

How to donate? See bottom right of the Home Page:

 

Took care of everyone's tags here. Let me know if more need a tag update.

 

Lots of people haven't been able to figure out how to donate. It's not I've made it easy or obvious. I don't remind people in every post. Instructions are in the third post of this thread: https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/donate-to-sbaf.12931/#post-396830

If anyone wants to make a big donate graphic that is 250x100px, I will slap it on the bottom right of the screen.

 

BTW, we've been saving up the warchest... for the TOTL Yamaha planar.