Again, my thanks to all you guys. Just that you’re willing to sign up for a monthly commitment means a lot to me, regardless of what you can afford. It’s one thing to put something in a tip jar as a sign of gratitude. That’s great and I don’t mean to minimize that. But it’s something else entirely to say, “I’m making a monthly commitment so that you’ll keep doing what you’re doing”. Pre-gratitude, I guess. Thank you all.
And, wumpus, as I told you, I am staggered by your generosity. Like, looking-into-the-sun staggered. And, yeah, that’s more than this site makes from advertising, so you’ve definitely made good on that threat. :) But let me address the Discourse thing in a separate post because I have a few thoughts I want to clarify. Stand by.
Ah, you’re absolutely right. I’d forgotten about that whole thing with Tapatalk not having ads. That is different from an adblocker in terms of intent, but the result is the same. Traffic that doesn’t call up an ad. And by the way, in case it seemed like I was implying otherwise, there’s nothing unique to Qt3 in terms of losing 80% of ad revenue. Our ad guy says that’s pretty much the internet these days. And as instant0 points out, the internet pretty much brought it on themselves. Well, maybe. There is a bit of a vicious circle going. Sites are trying to recover the lost revenue by serving more ads to the fewer people who don’t use adblockers. This leads to aggressive advertising, which leads to adblocking, which leads to aggressive advertising, which leads to adblocking. It’s a fact of the evolving revenue model. The people who don’t use adblockers are being wrung dry to make up for the people who do, which just makes them more likely to use adblockers.
Yes, thanks for this reminder! I need to figure out how to make it visible without making it annoying. For instance:
Fixed. Thanks, Professor Sepulcher!
When it’s smaller amounts, Paypal will take a bigger cut as a fee. Patreon is a blanket 4%. But ultimately, it’s whatever is most convenient for you.
They don’t have any mechanism for one-time pledges. Patreon is built on patronage commitments instead of one-time donations. However, anyone can pledge and then delete his pledge after getting billed on the first of the month. Like rent, Patreon charges on the first of every month.
It took me a moment to parse what you were saying. I briefly thought you were either a Star Citizen believer (hi, Ryan Kelly, we love you!) or you were wishing me ill health. But, yes, I get what you’re saying now! Thank you.
I know just enough from P&R to be appreciate this comment! :)
I’ll look into those, but it might be more trouble than it’s worth. And I would feel weird about having a whole mess of donation nags, even if the goal is convenience. Right now, I’d rather just stick with PayPal and Patreon. By the way, we also get a cut of anyone who buys stuff on Amazon.com using our link on the front page, but that’s a bird-dog fee that no one minds because it doesn’t cost them anything.
Good lord, would you just move out of the boonies already? And not for the purposes of any donation stuff, but because your life sounds like an ongoing nightmare of poor internet connectivity.
Last year, I took a dork vacation by visiting Bruce Geryk for a few days. He had a copy of Starship Troopers. An actual physical hold-it-in-my-hands copy. That’s what brought back all the memories and made me realize that was my first contact with boardgaming that wasn’t something like Life or Monopoly or whatever. Unfortunately, from going through Bruce’s copy and perusing the PDF manual, Starship Troopers doesn’t look like anything I’d ever want to actually play. As I’ve said elsewhere, we didn’t invent boardgames that don’t suck until ten years ago.
Quoted a movie that Starship Troopers purists probably hate? :) But as a Veerhoven apologist, I approve. I watched Starship Troopers and all the sequels – did you know there’s even a cartoon sequel? – last year. They’re all godawful except for Veerhoven’s original, which holds up as his most sly political commentary after Robocop.
-Tom