Donations & Feedback

[Tay]

Hey everybody,

After a long and exhausting weekend of RL studying and working on really stupid behind-the-scenes stuff here on the site (I promise I'm not avoiding you, maef...) (), I've finally fixed our donations app. Thus! I'd like to explain the way I've been handling the donation system and get your feedback. (And, yes, this does mean the "Donate" button on the menu finally works : P)

Here's an in-depth breakdown of the development fund. The floor is open to discussing anything on the topic, however. It's been a few months since I opened the floor to feedback, so I thought this was a good time to do so.

 

Why accept donations?

• I'm committed to keeping the community up and running. I want to make sure Fuwanovel is here tomorrow, in six months, in a year, and more. While I am able to budget my RL funds in such a way to carry the cost, alone, enough people contacted me this spring about opening donations that I decided to give it a go.
• Right now the donations system will only exist until I can make the site self-sufficient through other ways (affiliate links, mostly -- I don't have any intentions at this time to try ads again)
• All the money donated goes back into the site. Funds first go to the current month's hosting bills, then to a “rainy day” fund, and then towards other site development per our site financial plan (which includes stuff like licensing fees, an eventual makeover for the Reviews Hub, and developing the new front site). 

How the Program is Currently Run

• People can choose to donate to the site through Paypal, and in exchange they are given "goodies" on the forums as a token of thanks.
• Up until now users had to donate directly through paypal and had to wait for me to manually grant their goodies. That's still an option, but I've finally finished setting up a way to auto-apply goodies by starting the donation within our forums' commerce app. Either way, Paypal is handling the donations from start to finish and I'm not seeing any of the details. The advantage of the new app, however, is that it auto-applies your goodies and doesn't auto-charge you each month.

Current "Goodies" For Backers (Updated 11/02/15)

• PM allowance increased to 700
• More than twice as much rep allowance (up to 25 “Likes” per day)
• You can customize your profile page with backgrounds and colors (see mine for an example)
• If you can gather enough of you together to discuss it, we can change the "Backer" badge whenever you want! 
• After 6 continuous months of support, you may PM Tay and inquire about "The Order". Should you prove worthy, you will be inducted into The Great Secret. Which doesn’t exist. Just ask Flutterz. These aren't the droids you're looking for. Move along, now. Move along.

Ideology About Goodies

• I realize that not everyone is in a position to contribute to the development fund. That’s absolutely okay. The goal with the Development Fund isn't to raise a ton of money or create an elite race of Backers, it's meant to help raise funds to alleviate the site's cost. I tried my best to make sure these “goodies” weren’t granting some users exclusive site features while denying them to others. AKA: a regular user and a Backer are going to have access to all the same features and options on Fuwanovel -- there aren't any elite boards or secret Backer clubs.

For our current Backers

• Short version: nothing changes for you (you don't need to cancel your paypal donation and re-sign up through the forums app)
• If you decide you do want to switch to managing your donations through the forums app, then I put instructions for cancelling your manual paypal subscription in the donate page.

Edited November 2, 2015 by Tay

[Guest]

What's the exact cost of all of this?

You could add a bar to show the "amount still needed to keep fuwanovel.net running" per month. Then, again, that requires total transparency,.

Some people will happily throw money at you without knowing how it's spent, some other people won't.

Edited November 2, 2015 by Guest

[Fiddle]

If you can gather enough of you together to discuss it, we can change the "Backer" badge whenever you want! 

And you can watch as I filibuster all attempts!

[Darbury]

Any hope of adding more payment methods in the future — e.g., Google Wallet or Amazon Payments? While I'd love to contribute, I tend to avoid PayPal on general principle.