Funds to keep 3geez on-line

[88Accord-DX]

(I would like to put this thread here for people to see that don't log on.)

I hope to keep this board on-line for the sake of the 86-89 Accord. I understand that we need help from advertisement now to keep funds sufficient from lack of it. This board has grown by far with new members over the years. Bandwith & hits to pages cost the Director money to keep it on-line.
I'm just letting everyone know that this site isn't free & everyone that would like to appreciate the site should contribute something if they could. The people that sell stuff on here should think about that. I've went out of my way to donate because of my selling and information I've put into this board.

Bottom line -If we don't have the funds to keep this site, it will be gone without more help from the outside.....

[smufguy]

i wish we could do a creditcard transaction. Cause that way its a lot easier for members (including me) who do not have a paypal account and neither am i willing to get one. I have to talk to mark in regards to mailing the money order.

[bobafett]

i agree.. HOWEVER. bottom line is, we dont know how much it needs to stay up, and marc will never tell us (its sort of our business, sort of not, so i dont know if he should) but i agree that we need to help him out more..

i still have never heard what he actually pays in hosting costs, but i imagine is pretty high... if someone knows i would appreciate the figure, it will make a difference in how much i donate... if he pays $25/ a month im not gonna donate as much as if he pays $250/ a month... ya know?

[Justin86]

yea and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be hard for members to drop at least $10-20 a year, it will add up fast with all the people here. I'd be more then willing to drop in a yearly membership fee to help keep the board going for everyone else.

[Helix]

Just make a paypal account smufguy. It takes all of 3 minutes to set up.

[Vanilla Sky]

helix, he's in a situation where he can't. something about he's in a group that's protesting thier business practices. honestly, i only use paypal when i have no other option.

and bobafett, i don't think this place costs much at all to run. at least not $250/month. the $25/month sounds closer to how much it costs. i would hope that our nopi sponsorship pays that much. if not, i'd give them the boot.

we could always use a system like honda tech does with thier rotating banner ads. pretty unobtrusive, and i'm sure it pays for thier site plenty well enough.

[smufguy]

Thanks for mentioning it Derick. Helix, im part of United States Officer Relief which is currently under a lawsuit suing Paypal for fradulant transactions and thus i am not willing to make any accounts with them.

I can sure as hell pay $5 or $10 a month towards 3geez and its not a big deal. I just cant dump lets say, like 35 bux right now. Nor will i. This is not the reason to be a foundation member status seeking, but more like helping out the board cause its ours. Not just Mark's. He does not have to pay for everything. But again, he is the director cause he brought this here and he keeps it alive in any means possible.

this has been debated once or twice before, and like Derick mentioned, its not $250 a month. the most expensive Business transaction webhosting i have come acorss with MS server database was like $60 a month.

If im not mistaken, 3geez runs on 'A small orange' webhosting service whose expensive hosting serivce costs $30 a month for 4.5Gb storage and 100GB bandwidth

Unless mark is running a Full managed Dedicated server thru 's small orange' he is not gonna be paying $250 a month. but instead he could be just building and running his own server free of cost.

netfirms charges $15/month for a 3gig storage and a 150gig transaction.

[87accordlxi]

i wish we could do a creditcard transaction. Cause that way its a lot easier for members (including me) who do not have a paypal account and neither am i willing to get one. I have to talk to mark in regards to mailing the money order.

Praveen, you don't need a Paypal account to donate using credit card. Yes, you do have to use Paypal, but there is an option use Paypal without signing in. Choose the amount you want to donate, click "order." Then on the next page, click "order using paypal." On the page that comes up, there is an option for secure checkout without using a Paypal account.

[lostforawhile]

i know a little about hosting sites and believe me it costs more then 20 dollars a month for this much bandwidth.

[smufguy]

Is there anyway i can just choose however much i want? or should i just choose the ones that is listed? And another noob question. What if lets say, i pay $35 in three instalments, like 10 bux today, 10 bux next month and like 15 bux the month after. would i still get the golden 25 years?

[Helix]

I have an idea. Let's hire some prositutes to strip on the hoods of our 3G's. Take plenty of pics, and then we can have a pay section to the site to help bring in funds.

[frantik]

i doubt 3geez sees more than 100gb of bandwidth, and it probably isn't over 4gb in HD space...

you can get those specs for $20/mo over at 1and1.com

[88Accord-DX]

Any founder/director of a site isn't going to discuss what the site costs on the board. That isn't any of our buisiness, but lets say the site cost roughly $20 a month. Lets do some math now, 3geez hit it's 5th year on-line ok. 12 x 5 =60 months. 60 x $20 = $1200.. I know how many foundation members there are & I don't think it meets the cost..
I personally don't think Nopi pays out what this board cost. One of the directors (marc49) has a baby like myself, & babies cost money! Where I'm going, is that he would be digging in his own pocket when he could saving money for his kids college. I'm sure he keeps all the money that people donate to pay for this site in "3 geez account"...
If no-one feels they can help this site any with a little something, (especially you everyday posters) than you must not appreciate it. Don't get me wrong & don't want no arguments over it, but just think about it.
All I'm asking guys, without any reply towards my comments, is how hard would it be to $15 a year to keep the site going?????
Justin86 & I feel the same way.

[bobafett]

ill throw some money towards the site.. i guess ill sign up for the annual member every year... so i keep supporting 3geez.. ;-)

[Cheeseburger]

in not to sure what i would if 3geez.com would die, i wish i could be a foundation member but i have so many hospital bills, and medicine that i have to buy,and im not working full time, im trying to save up money to donate, this site is great, and i dont know what i would do with out it, this site deservs to last more than five more years, it should last for ever

[smufguy]

3geez will go for a long long time. considering we dont have much members, we are still less than 7K members, even tho for us it sounds amazingly high, we are still young when it comes to member counts. So with the regular members and such willing to support this forum every year and the mods working hard to take care of the bandwith and storage space and archiving and organizing, we should be good to go with the forum's longetivity.

[Ace]

I think it would be a good idea to find other ways of paymentsI do not trust pay pal I had my pay pal account hacked into and almost lost close to 2 grand but paypal saw the funds were being tooken out from london and stop the process I really do not trust pay pal and I have wanted to be a foundation memeber but I will not send pay pal you guys should work on finding alternate ways to pay the cost just like smufguy I really do not trust paypal

[Helix]

I think it would be a good idea to find other ways of paymentsI do not trust pay pal I had my pay pal account hacked into and almost lost close to 2 grand but paypal saw the funds were being tooken out from london and stop the process I really do not trust pay pal and I have wanted to be a foundation memeber but I will not send pay pal you guys should work on finding alternate ways to pay the cost just like smufguy I really do not trust paypal

I've had no problems with paypal, but I'm sure they would accept a money order somehow.

[phrenology]

All very valid points. I vow to pay and become a foundation member as soon I get situated in CA and I have a steady income. Every dollar counts for me right now. I've been eating the same pizza for 3 days...hahaha, no joke. Once I get set up in CA. We will work on the site and have more $$$ for R&D with Applied Engine Technology. I'd also be willing to work in some future profit share with 3Geez for items sold to users through the site. But right now stuff is real tight and I owe every penny to the car, billz and moving. So I hope you guys can understand.

[87accordlxi]

Is there anyway i can just choose however much i want? or should i just choose the ones that is listed? And another noob question. What if lets say, i pay $35 in three instalments, like 10 bux today, 10 bux next month and like 15 bux the month after. would i still get the golden 25 years?

No, we won’t do installments on the donations. The whole point of setting prices and creating an automated process was so that we didn’t have to go through the headaches of treating each case individually and keeping track of how long people’s terms will be. When we first started taking contributions, there was no set amount or procedure and it was a mess. I realized that some donators literally scrape whatever money they have to donate, which is why I introduced less expensive foundation options.

As for using Paypal, I’ll reiterate that nobody needs to create an account with them to donate. We are restricted by Vbulletin software to a handful of Paypal-like services in order to do the automated donation service. We use Paypal because it is the most popular. It would be up to Marc to decide whether or not to add a different payment option, but it would be my estimation that the risk of identity theft or fraud would be no less with a different company. We understand that money orders may be the only option for some, and we do accept them. However, a M.O. would have to be sent to Marc, and you would need to contact him beforehand. Because it has nothing to do with me, I can’t give an estimate on how long that process would take.

Now, I want to assure everyone that 3geez isn’t going anywhere. Our Foundation Members are a great help, and large-scale funding drives resulting from the few crises we’ve had in the past have gone a long way, but donations are an unpredictable source of funding and much of the site costs still come out of Marc’s pocket. This has prompted me to pursue other avenues of funding, most notably advertising. Nopi was a stroke of luck that landed on our lap, and I look forward to future opportunities with them. When in between advertising agreements, we’ll probably use an advertising medium that can be put up and taken down at will (think Google). Other methods of funding that may come further down the line are official apparel or 3geez gifts (sorry to you folks who sell that stuff on your own).

Increases in revenue will be met with new methods of reducing our disk space and bandwidth load. As long as it does not affect usability, I will be shifting excess weight from the board server when possible. We are not in any danger of coming close to our bandwidth and space limits, but cramming as much information into as small of a footprint as possible now will ensure that we will not be approaching our limits in the conceivable future. We are still gaining members at an impressive rate, but people come and go, and the overall bandwidth load has remained relatively static for the past 9 months.

[acessence]

I'd be willing to contribute hosting for the board, what kind of bandwidth you looking for, In return just like a few references to my business, and maybe help host a few guys with some personal 3geez sites, i am very cheap i am about $4.25 candian a month for hosting that most of you would be looking for. Ill even do some custom designs up for you guys. The hosting pacakge comes with a free domain .com or net, if you purchase for the year. So in turn get a few people to sign up , ill donate hosting for the 3 geez site for free.

feel free to contact me
[email protected]

acessence.com(currently under construction, services links to online ordering for paypal at the moment, and credit card through 2checkout within a few weeks as i finish my complete site setup)

[carotman]

Well Joe, if there is some "3geez" merchandise we can buy to help the board, I will gladly buy some. I already helped in the past with the domain name fees (which are paid until 2010) and I will gladly contribute again.

[smufguy]

exactly. I see buncha 3geez t-shit sales going up here and there, but i would like to see a good quality shirt popping up with a nice graphic and a tag of around $20 or stickers. or whatever it is possible, i can do it too, this week ill get the money in via a CreditCard, i just gotta get done with some payments and once i get paid this friday, ill get the stuff in. .

[acessence]

Does any 1 want help with makign the quality products, i can offer tshirts, decals. If i know what the demand is, and we can distribute the funds from the sales of ther shirts, minus the cost, from that to the 3geez, also i was wondering i wanted to put a team together if some of the founders of this, and make a nice professionial site for the bulletin rather then just the bulletin, so we can portray a good professional image. Having like a weekly newsletter put out by members of the board, and selling products online. So that the board can be self sustaining rather then every 1 just donating money all the time. If we market 3geez, as more of a brand then just a club.
as an example check out www.gongshowhockey.com, that is a well established community that is running thoroughly with the sales of there products.


Just a few ideas i have, appriciate thoughts, and if any of the admins can contact me i would appreciate that

[email protected]

[87accordlxi]

Does any 1 want help with makign the quality products, i can offer tshirts, decals. If i know what the demand is, and we can distribute the funds from the sales of ther shirts, minus the cost, from that to the 3geez, also i was wondering i wanted to put a team together if some of the founders of this, and make a nice professionial site for the bulletin rather then just the bulletin, so we can portray a good professional image. Having like a weekly newsletter put out by members of the board, and selling products online. So that the board can be self sustaining rather then every 1 just donating money all the time. If we market 3geez, as more of a brand then just a club.
as an example check out www.gongshowhockey.com, that is a well established community that is running thoroughly with the sales of there products.


Just a few ideas i have, appriciate thoughts, and if any of the admins can contact me i would appreciate that

[email protected]

Thanks, but 3geez staff will be discussing and coordinating any new features.