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Posted by: djellison Apr 21 2005, 11:44 AM

People have asked if they can donate to help payfor hosting (I've spent about £200 in total on hosting fees and buying a licence for the Invision board - and no doubt popularity will increase hosting fees)

So - in response to that - if you look at the bottom left of the portal page...

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?act=home

You'll see a paypal donate button.

This is by no means a plea for cash - simply a response to people who asked if they could contribute in some way. In the message section of the donation process, if you leave a note telling me your username then I will change your user 'title' ( the bit under your name on each post ) to 'Contributing Member' or something similar. If you wish your donation to go un-noticed, just say so and I'll leave your title untouched.

For people who'd like to contibute without donating, I will soon be opening two stores. One will be at www.photobox.co.uk for some of the more popular mosaics. The rules there are that every penny over and above the price of printing goes to me - so I'll be doing something like a 25% markup. Similarly - I will open a Cafepress store with all the usual things like shirts, mousemats, mugs etc with the URL and logo on, hopefully in a stylish way

I hope that between these three things - I can avoid using onsite adverts to bankroll the cost of running the forum. And believe me - I will stick pins in my eyes and walk barefoot on broken glass before I have any pop-up, or animated adverts!

The only other thing I'm thinking of doing is taking my favorite mosaic of all (which many of you havnt seen here ) - and doing a limited print run of 10, which will be framed, numbered and signed - which will then go on Ebay - the revenue from the last of these will go toward my Comic Relief fund!

The store and the gallery will probably launch next week with a few items, and the range of items will increase over time as I re-edit and prepare imagery and graphics for the different sizes available.

I'll keep you all posted about how well all this does. I dont want to forum to be a profit making exercise - thats not why I do it - and I dont mind spending many many hours of my time making sure everything is running smoothly - but it'd be nice if it didnt cost me any money to run, and perhaps build up a small contingency for bigger, better hosting in the future.

I'd welcome feedback / comments on the whole issue in this thread of via http://mailto:doug@rlproject.com


Doug

Posted by: David Apr 22 2005, 05:53 AM

Posted by: djellison Apr 22 2005, 07:42 AM

You will But not quite yet

A mug is the first on my list - the big pioneer logo with unmannedspaceflight.com underneath

Doug

Posted by: djellison May 30 2005, 05:05 PM

Just a quick note - I've been AMAZED at the response. Not in terms of numbers (half a dozen people or so) but in terms of generosity!

In total - I've recieved £96.90 of donations, which equated to aout £85 once Mr Paypal's taken his bite. Just amazing - I wasnt expecting 1/4 of that !! A big thankyou to everybody.

A heads up to the Cafepress store ( http://www.cafepress.co.uk/unmannedspace ) - the clothing has been a bit dissapointing ( we got a couple of pieces here ) but the Mugs, Clock, Coaster and keyring look fab

Doug

Posted by: PhilCo126 Dec 28 2005, 04:14 PM

Doug, any progress on the T-shirt with Pioneer 10 plaque logo

Posted by: djellison Dec 28 2005, 04:30 PM

http://www.cafepress.com/unmannedspace

I'm going to take some items down and replace them soon - the logo comes out a bad colour at the moment. The Mugs, Keyring, Badge and coaster are all good though

Doug

Posted by: PhilCo126 Dec 28 2005, 05:01 PM

O.K. Doug ... an unmistakenly recognizible polo shirt is a must when we want to meet up next year some place in Europe !
The Pioneer 10 plaque could be on the backside ...