Donate to SBAF

Discussion in 'Tales from the Bully Pulpit' started by purr1n, Nov 30, 2022.

  1. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    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.
     
    Last edited: Nov 30, 2022
  2. Madaboutaudio

    Madaboutaudio Friend

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    Hmm.. who's that guy on the right.. He looks very very familiar?
     
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  3. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    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:
    upload_2022-11-30_22-53-52.png
     
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    Last edited: Nov 30, 2022
  4. MellowVelo

    MellowVelo Friend

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    Thanks for restoring this thread, @purr1n. I need a contributor tag. I’m a regular giver on Patreon.
     
  5. Philimon

    Philimon Friend

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    x2 but me instead

    Where can we see this?
     
  6. ecline56

    ecline56 Almost "Made"

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    Donated $25 Date 09/11/22 by paypal. Please give me a contributor tag. I either donated as ecline56 or ECline 77.

    Note I tried to join as ECline77 but your system would never send the confirmation email.
    I tried again using my work email and ecline 56. Once again the system would not send the confirmation email.
    But several months later I was somehow confirmed as ecline 56 and have been able to post ever since. I use the other account to browse.
     
    Last edited: Nov 30, 2022
  7. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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

    joch Friend

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    The PayPal link is not set up for taking donations outside of the US. Is there another way to make a one-off giving?
     
  9. Gazny

    Gazny MOT: ETA Audio

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    I would like my tag.
    I lost it since becoming a friend.
     
  10. elwappo99

    elwappo99 Friend

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    I never got my contributor tag
     
  11. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    Why would you want even _more_ tags appended? The single blue banner looks so elegant (it _is_ a nice shade of blue) :p

    Could sign up for Patreon and enter a custom amount? Just make sure to cancel because IIRC it defaults to setting you up for recurring payments.
     
  12. GuySmiley'sMonkey

    GuySmiley'sMonkey Almost "Made"

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    Quote:
    "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." (Marv)

    You don't need a "Friend" tag to know when you've got friends here.
     
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    Last edited: Nov 30, 2022
  13. JeremiahS

    JeremiahS Almost "Made"

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    Thanks for writing this @purr1n. When I tried to make donation I was really confused because I was not familiar with the procedure and Patreon… I guess my age is showing haha…
     
  14. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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  15. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    Speaking as someone who's biased in favour of electrodynamic headphones by a fair bit... this one is exciting. Hyped to read impressions! This one's been a curious thing.
     
  17. miter53

    miter53 Friend

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    I've been doing Patreon monthly for a while. Please make me a contributor.
     
  18. Pyruvate

    Pyruvate Friend

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    Just subscribed to the patreon
     
  19. Erroneous

    Erroneous Friend

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    "Friend" essentially means that you're vetted. If anyone has a transaction that is fucked with a Friend then that Friend should lose their Friend status. To me, Friend means that I can trust you without PayPal G&S. Friend status means I don't have to worry.
     
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  20. GuySmiley'sMonkey

    GuySmiley'sMonkey Almost "Made"

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    On an entirely unrelated matter, could a mod please ban me for a week? I have a strong urge to delete all my recent content on SBAF and I think I'll regret it later. Sorry and thank you.
     
    Last edited: Nov 30, 2022

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