SoucekFan wrote:

SoucekFan wrote:

As far as what to do going forward: At the current hosting rate pricing, I would keep the forum exactly the way it is and do a yearly donation thread. I believe it will easily cover the cost.

...the goal amount being one year's hosting, and the donation amount being open-ended. There should be a deadline for donations, and a periodic update on how far we are toward the goal, and we should collect more than the goal, that can go toward next year.
 

Sorry to bombard this thread. I think we should just keep it simple and do a yearly GoFundMe.

Pete, that was a great list of suggestions. And thanks to everyone else for the positive feedback and offers to help out. I particularly like the idea of an annual fundraising month as it would be a yearly check-in to see if the interest is still there. I also thought the selling of a typewriter and donating that money to pay for the forum was a great idea. I'm on the cusp of having to sell off a lot of my collection, and donating a machine or two is definitely an option.

I'm also very encouraged that the regulars here are willing to help out in some way.

USD$14.42/month would be the actual cost to keep the forum's lights on based on yearly payments. 

There were some good ideas on how to raise that money, but another problem is who will administrate and implement those ideas? As you all know, skywatcher has graciously been moderating here during my very extended absence, and I can't ask him to take on the work that might be required to look after collecting money etc.

I don't know if we need a committee of some kind? A small group that looks after the fundraising portion of the forum? I don't have any experience with any of the 'fund me' type methods, but they do seem to be very popular.

Thankfully, we have a little time left to decide and put a plan in place. 

Hi, Uwe. It is good to see you. I do not believe it is Google just being a bad engine; something caused it to stop indexing the site some time in 2024. Using any combination of keywords will not work as it should. We remain at the top of other search engines, such as DuckDuckGo, Bing, and Qwant just searching ‘typewriter forum’, which was how it always was on Google until sometime a couple years ago. While I am not a fan of Google, it is still 90% of search traffic and it saddens me that as things are, the majority people seeking typewriter info or typewriter forums will never find us. The only thing that has changed since months back is that now Google AI (I hate AI) knows the forum is active, where when I last argued with it, it thought both Boardhost and our forum shut down in 2024. I first noticed this in fall of 2024, but thought it was an anomaly. When it happened again in March of 2025, I realized it was an ongoing issue and brought it up, the full discussion of which can be found here.

I apologize to other forum members who have to hear me go on about this for the twentieth time. I have been waiting for Uwe to pop in so I could bring this to his attention, because it may be a technical issue with the forum or the host.

Here is an information link on how "Buy Me A Coffee" works :

https://coffeeplusthree.com/what-is-buy-me-a-coffee/

The only correction is that there is, now, a 5% fee to BMAC with each donation made.

In the registration process, one needs to illustrate how you might be a "creator or artist" before you can complete your account registration and to start setting up your BMAC donation page.  They also ask for your web-page link so they can see your business, model, etc.
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