notices OWTB - What's it worth?

[Stevie_J]

1 hour ago, jorvik_latic said:

 

How about using something like this? https://gocardless.com/pricing/

Thanks.  Another one I've not seen and I'll need to have a proper look at.  It refers to direct debit though and I'm not overly comfortable with having people's money in my account - the one good thing about Paypal is it allows me to keep it very much at arm's length.

[Ackey]

Afternoon Everyone,

 

It's the time we've all come to know and love loathe; we're almost out of cash!  If anyone's in a position to make a donation then now's the time - we'll not be able to make the end of 2018 with the money we have in the donation pot.

 

Further, it's becoming increasingly clear that as a Moderation team we are not really capable of supporting the site through the current model; this site is expensive to maintain and run, and coming to you all cap-in-hand every few months is both demoralising and time consuming. What this means is that once again we may have to look at the models in play and how we can better support the site. 

 

We want to be open; we have had people offer to buy the site lock-stock from us and take on the cost from there. That's not agreeable to us, as we've invested too much emotionally to do that. If someone wanted to establish their own supporters forum and make efforts to migrate users we'd welcome that and support it in any possible way.  Equally if we've anyone looking to partner in a 'back seat' way, such as promotional material on the site for a funding period, we'd welcome that too.

 

We're all-ears, folks.

 

OWTB!

Ackey

[lookersstandandy]

5 minutes ago, Ackey said:

Afternoon Everyone,

 

It's the time we've all come to know and love loathe; we're almost out of cash!  If anyone's in a position to make a donation then now's the time - we'll not be able to make the end of 2018 with the money we have in the donation pot.

 

Further, it's becoming increasingly clear that as a Moderation team we are not really capable of supporting the site through the current model; this site is expensive to maintain and run, and coming to you all cap-in-hand every few months is both demoralising and time consuming. What this means is that once again we may have to look at the models in play and how we can better support the site. 

 

We want to be open; we have had people offer to buy the site lock-stock from us and take on the cost from there. That's not agreeable to us, as we've invested too much emotionally to do that. If someone wanted to establish their own supporters forum and make efforts to migrate users we'd welcome that and support it in any possible way.  Equally if we've anyone looking to partner in a 'back seat' way, such as promotional material on the site for a funding period, we'd welcome that too.

 

We're all-ears, folks.

 

OWTB!

Ackey

 

Send me the donate linky thing and whizz £20 over.....

[BP1960]

1 hour ago, lookersstandandy said:

 

Send me the donate linky thing and whizz £20 over.....

 

 £20 per subscriber per annum sounds reasonable to me, could you push for that aim Ackey?

[Bristolatic]

Ackey, could you please give us an idea what the annual cost of running the site is? Maybe, if that is split across the board (pun intended), it may not be too daunting a request per person.

[Ackey]

13 hours ago, Bristolatic said:

Ackey, could you please give us an idea what the annual cost of running the site is? Maybe, if that is split across the board (pun intended), it may not be too daunting a request per person.

We're currently talking about our options, one of which could prove to be simply stating the cost per average user and, as you say, charging to that model.  There's pros and cons to that, not least of all we've always tried to keep this place completely free-to-air.

 

For now anyone who can chuck a quid in, it'll help...

[oafcmetty]

What exactly drives the cost? Is it bandwidth served for all the visits/clicks? Or storage for all the content? Something else?

[trickyrickyholden]

I've sent some cash. Keep up the good work guys. 

[stevesidg]

Have sent some money 

please keep OWTB going and let us know when you have a funding model, happy to contribute 

[Stevie_J]

On 10/18/2018 at 7:10 PM, Bristolatic said:

Ackey, could you please give us an idea what the annual cost of running the site is? Maybe, if that is split across the board (pun intended), it may not be too daunting a request per person.

Annual cost is now close to £1,500, Pete. 

[Bristolatic]

Hmm, it's getting expensive. I'll pop a small donation over in a day or two.

[astottie]

Sent a tenner. Thanks

[rudemedic]

I’ve sent some money over using the paypal.me/owtb link, which I hope is the correct one

[Matt]

We're going to review the whole kaboodle in the close season.

 

Thanks for everyone's ongoing support, really - it's been a difficult couple of years in every respect.

[yarddog73]

On 10/20/2018 at 10:45 AM, Stevie_J said:

Annual cost is now close to £1,500, Pete. 

Out of interest is that being covered? 

[Ackey]

1 hour ago, yarddog73 said:

Out of interest is that being covered? 

Genuine answer is Yes, No and Maybe. It depends on the day you ask really - posts like the above with cap in hand are the times when we're at "no" - today we're back to "yes" thanks to some generous donations above. Sometime soon we'll drift back to "maybe" again and come back out, cap in hand... 

[yarddog73]

That's fair enough,  next time round I will make sure to contribute then.

[disjointed]

40 minutes ago, yarddog73 said:

That's fair enough,  next time round I will make sure to contribute then.

No time like the present. 

[yarddog73]

21 minutes ago, disjointed said:

No time like the present. 

I have donated previously but wasn't aware the running costs were as high as that. I will donate again when I get round to it.

[Ackey]

Thank you for both before and in future, as we've said many times we're incredibly grateful to anyone willing and able to contribute something, no matter how much. 

[Jamie-2012]

On 4/10/2014 at 12:34 PM, Stevie_J said:

UPDATE AND NEW BUTTONS (24/7/17):

 

ANNUAL DONATION

MONTHLY DONATION

ONE-OFF DONATION

If money's tight or you've had enough of reading the depressed ramblings of fellow Latics fans and you want to cancel a monthly/annual donation subscription, you can unsubscirbe through your Paypal account.  If you want to change the amont of your regular donation, you'll need to cancel the existing one before signing up to the new amount.

 

Much has changed since the original message below was posted.  Thanks to members' generous donations and the pennies generated by the ads on the site, we have been able to cover costs without dipping into our pockets for some time.  The bills however have continued to rise.  There's still money in the pot but I worry that we'll be cutting it pretty fine in a few months' time based on current donations and the current costs.  As Ackey has mentioned, we have looked at what, if anything, could be scaled back to reduce costs but unfortunately there isn't really anything we can do on that front.

 

I have upgraded our Paypal account to a 'Business' account which means we'll pay more fees to Paypal but this was the only way to host the buttons I've posted above and for us to receive any new recurring payments (such as monthly or annual payments) which has played a big part in making the financial side a lot easier since the original post.  This change means we'll pay a % of all donations received to Paypal + a flat 20p per payment, which means more will go to Paypal based on the frequency of payments.  People may wish to consider switching to an annual payment, rather than monthly, so I have added that option above.  I appreciate that won't suit some as well as a monthly payment, however.

 

There is one-off donation button too or you can go simply to paypal.me/owtb

 

If the particular donation option you'd like to isn't available from the buttons above, give me a shout and I'l try to accomodate that.

 

Thanks as ever to everyone who's donated!  Cheers. 

 

 

--

This is a reluctant appeal to you, the OWTB members, for help with the financial burden of keeping OWTB going, with a new option to set up a small monthly donation through PayPal.

 

The OWTB forum was established back in early 2007, when the Rivals network - and with it JKLatics - was going by the wayside.  What started as something pretty small grew rapidly to the point that, seven years on, OWTB has seen almost 5,000 member registrations and has a record of 751 people online at one time.  This growth has made various upgrades to the site, and the package that we buy to support it, essential.  This has meant significant increases in costs and, as many of you already know, paying for the running of OWTB has increasingly become an issue.

 

In the early days the site was funded by the staff team.  Pretty soon, OWTB replaced the club's messageboard to become the official forum.  However, a few years later. when the club expressed concerns about the site's content and their desire for us to moderate in a manner were not comfortable with, we took the decision to take the site independent again, in spite of that meaning that we would assume responsibility for the cost of running the site again.  For a period after that, we had a sponsor to help us cover such costs.

 

Today, though, beyond the very generous donations we have received from many members along the way, we are back to self-funding the site and it doesn't come cheap, I'm afraid. The notion of subscription-based access to OWTB has been discussed in the past, as well as subscription-only content but this not something we are particularly keen on and we would like OWTB, in its entirety, to remain available to all Latics fans. 

 

So, what I'm asking is this: what is OWTB worth to you? Would you be willing to part with a small amount each month to help support the running of the site? If all regular posters on the site signed up to a monthly donation of 50p, we wouldn't have to worry about paying the bills from now on! 

 

Using the link below, you can sign up to donate 50p, £1, £2 or £5 a month via PayPal. If anyone wants to donate a different monthly amount, please let me know and I will add the appropriate option.

[Link Broken - see above]

I'm sorry we have to do this. I wish we didn't have to get the begging bowl out. But any donations, of any amount, really are very much appreciated. Thanks.

 

Edit: New Paypal link for one-off payments is https://www.paypal.me/OWTB.  I'll continue to work on a monthly payment solution.  Thanks again for all of the donations.

 

Can there not be discussions with the club regarding the Latics Player subscription and OWTB being a together subscription and being 5.99 or something similar? 

[disjointed]

7 minutes ago, Jamie-2012 said:

Can there not be discussions with the club regarding the Latics Player subscription and OWTB being a together subscription and being 5.99 or something similar? 

I may be wrong but I don't think the club see eye to eye with this board. 

[Ackey]

11 hours ago, disjointed said:

I may be wrong but I don't think the club see eye to eye with this board. 

It's been a long time, and things have notably changed, though they don't exactly seem flush with cash, since those days - in the past it was a tense relationship and those who've been here a long time will remember we were actually "official" for a while but that didn't last.

[rosa]

Do the buttons for monthly donation etc in the original post still work? Can't seem to work them on my phone. 

[Ackey]

I think there were issues.... @Stevie_J can you help?