Support the Bort

[James]

@ass

I have lots of monthly subs so I have to carefully consider each new one.

+1. I’m cheap but would sub to $1/month.

[root]

That is totally valid @ass , I will calculate all current donations and expenses. I think I am about 150 in the hole or so, but I will tally it up. Give me a few days. I will also check on a dollar per month setting. That would cover our DNS!

Operating Cost Estimates:

These are educated guesses based on my memory, but I will get exact numbers.

• Docker droplet on cloud servers. ~$10 a week

• Email servers are cheap. < $2 a week (could change if traffic changes)

• DNS servers cost ~ $0.25 a week

• the-bort.com domain costed ~$20.

• the-bort.com v1…heroku mistakes were made with our database upgrade, so for ~3 months the previous iteration was costing like 75 bucks a month…I ultimately decided that paying the extra money in the meanwhile was more worth it, rather than going backwards trying to move the postgres twice. That was a costly mistake. I think some dude reminded me about not buying more than we need, but when the hobby DB went down at 10k rows, I kind of panicked and bought the standard DB without realizing there was a tier in the middle.

• I’ve probably received ~$150.00 bucks total via Venmo since thebort.com was destroyed, but this could be off by ~$50.00 or so not sure. I will figure it out.

Reasons for money shilling:

1. 20 bronze subscriptions will cover all bills for the Bort. Not losing money is priority 1.

2. I think buying back the old thebort.com is a worthy venture, and that we can get it for less than 1K…which isn’t that much in the grand scheme given longterm profit and community traffic. That way we can have both domains. This would be tite ( if we had the community support )

3. I think implementing a Mattermost chat server could be really cool down the line. Spam the velociraptors and build lasting community networks for those who don’t use a lot of social media…that’d be like 2.50 a week or so i think.

Ultimately I think about 15 bucks a week would be enough to sustain us indefinitely.

[root]

$1 a month membership available with more reasonable tiers than the patreon default

[ass]

Awesome. Thanks!

I’m in at $1 for now. Will signup later.

Maybe at the end of the month post any losses and ask for help covering them until we, hopefully, have enough subscriptions to cover it all. I won’t mind some one-off donations as needed. I’m just always extra wary of subscription costs piling up. It’s like death by a thousand cuts out there.

Would be awesome to see enough subs to also cover a tip for your time, as time is money.

Thanks again for doing this!

[jachapman]

supported, and you should too.

As far as purchasing thebort.com let’s get a couple months under our belt and hopefully there are enough subscribers that we can come up with a plan to put excess contributions toward that, or do a couple t-shirt runs or something. Do people still buy pins? The margins on those is pretty huge.

[root]

Well I finally did the book keeping, and turns out I am a better at programming than accounting. Net loss to date is a little over 250

There’s no argument for wasting time on the internet…

https://the-bort.com/t/bort-bookkeeping/2710/2

So I guess the first focus should be getting enough subscribers to keep the lights on

[ass]

Well I’ll subscribe and send you $20 to help with the deficit. Hopefully others will do the same.

[KingCon]

i’d prefer to keep hitting you periodically on venmo when i’m up rather than the sub platform so i’ll get you on there again in a couple weeks if it’s all the same

cheers buddy

[root]

Totally cool with me. I added a disclaimer that people can DM me as well to figure out other forms of payment. Thanks for your support.

[RedBirdBath]

Happily supported!

[James]

@root Also let us know when you figure out what kind of cut/fees Patreon takes. If the dollar goes further by just venmoing then happy to cancel the sub and go that route in the future. If fees are minimal than the monthly sub is good with me.

[root]

Patreon takes a fee, more than venmo…but it offers the flexibility of small payments which I think is nice and the subscription model which i think makes sense for sustainability.

Honestly I am down for whatever…but really, like i said in the bookkeeping thread…i think we should have a treasurer but I don’t wanna be it

Patreon also integrates very nicely and automatically here, which i think is a big plus.

[James]

True true. The pros you’ve listed certainly make sense. And the sustainability/consistency aspect would be huge fore sure.

[KingCon]

And there’s the value of the heady flair you get when you become a benefactor!

[stringz]

Really does a good job of conveying the whole “I party, but I also make money” vibe

[root]

@root

For those of you who can’t donate money, I totally understand. The Bort is free. There are tons of things you can still do to help, specifically spreading the word or hitting me up to help with tasks (post things, organize things, etc.)

Thanks!

Updated the OP to include non monetary ways of helping. Please give us some love on social media, or hit me up if you want a job to do cuz i got jobs…

Specifically I think some kind of Bort Marketing & Outreach director and a Bort Treasurer would be really helpful.

FWIW-I know that kind of makes this feel a bit more formal than thebort, but I think decentralizing is a really good idea for longevity. As opposed to one person just running it off a server at their work and owning everything; we have shared ownership of fully backed up cloud instances, modern software, encryption, etc.

[RedBirdBath]

@root

Honestly I am down for whatever…but really, like i said in the bookkeeping thread…i think we should have a treasurer but I don’t wanna be it

I could potentially lend a hand with this. I’m a CPA, for what it’s worth.

[opsopcopolis]

Supported happily. I’d be happy to send a one time bigger payment if it helps with the startup costs.