The most important Forum Post ever

fats wrote:

deathgeonous wrote: Ok, I'm glad to hear that if/when the pay stuff comes, us cheep and or broke guys will still be welcomed. That said, I like the idea of ads and pay for guys get to have them removed, and I also liked the idea of a yearly subscription to the site. As weird as it may sound, if you accept a yearly payment plan, I, personally, am more likely to be able to pay. It's the one lump sum thing. Since I have so very little left in a month after making all my necessary to live and not be homeless payments, taking another five out of that seems bad. But... I could maybe afford a one lump sum once a year better. Weird but true.

the $5 per month was a idea, if someone wants to put in say $50 as a one off payment at say xmas, then go for it.

btw the $50 is suggested amount if someone wants to put in a ^larger or _smaller amount then go for it

fats

Maybe we should consider a Kickstarter style contribution.

BTW, Dru's idea of using DA style adds isn't bad either.

shadar wrote: To stay ad free for $5 a month is well worth it in my mind. Ads are the scourge of the Net. A plague. SWM today reminds me of the glorious days of the Net before advertising crawled out of its slime pit and stunk up the neighborhood.

Say hello to my friend: AdBlock

Thanks for the posts and support guys! We're looking at options which includes everything from a Paypal button to a Patreon type of contribution model. Fats and I just wanted to test the waters and see what people's general reaction was/is. As he said, 100% of the contributions will go to the site hosting and enhanced content. I have some content ideas for contests and would like to lure some "big guns" (artists, producers) with the carrot of bigger cash prizes, as I cannot simply continue to shell out the money needed for commission prizes and such.

There is NO WAY (while Fats and I are running it) that the site will be for paying/contributing members only. All contributions are welcome, and I understand budgetary constraints as much as anyone, which is kinda why we're going this route... There will be no backlash or bad feelings for anyone unable to contribute!

We just wanna keep our little corner of the interweb going, and with maybe some more cash, make it even more satble from a hosting perspective and content-enriched......

Peace!
ElF

oogber wrote: if SWM does run ads, please don't run adblock

Okay, that's a fair point.

oogber wrote: Well, if they are flash ads, I would block them. So I guess I have my limits too.

While I never say never, I would say that ads are probably not in SWM's future, unless they are specific ads/links to pre-selected genre content (e.g. PSW, Cult Retro, AC Comics, KAK, etc) meant to help facilitate the genre

ElF

hi all,

An update on what has been going on.

Lfan and I welcome all the comments that have been posted in this thread, the offers to support the site has been gratifying to say the least. Lfan has been looking at how we work the money side of things and he is currently looking at Patreon as the means of collecting the donations but that might change if he finds something better to our needs.

I've been looking at the options for the server and the costs attached.

At the moment there are a number of server packages out there that will fulfil our needs, I’m working on whittling them down to the best for us, the biggest issue that we are having is most hosts have a AUP (acceptable usage policy). The AUP for most of the host would not allow our site this is due to the content of the material and I’m not talking about the nude pics that have been posted, but the stories as well, some would ban us for the violent content of the stories and others for the sexual content of them as well, so the number of hosts that I can look at is small to say the least.

The new host is going to be either a traditional VPS or a Cloud VPS. My preference would be with the Cloud VPS as it gives us a lot more bang for our buck and also it would allow us to be able to change the server specs quickly allow me to shape the server to best suit the site needs.

I'm not anticipating that we will be moving to the new server until the end of July, this is to allow me to find the best package , for Lfan to get the donation system up and running.

There is a lot going on in the background at the moment and it's important that we get this right, to rush it and go with the wrong package could be a disaster for the site and it's one that I don’t want to do.

If anyone has a host that they feel could be good for our site or have come ideas on hosting, or any questions please feel free to post them here.

Fats