Donations Options

[Hahninator]

I have something I'd like to get off my chest that I've been thinking about for quite a while.

What do you guys think about donations for LPL? I haven't decided totally on whether to do them or not but I am just asking for your just your honest opinion on them.

I was thinking maybe we could open them up? The site is starting to take a toll on our wallets - I wouldn't even bring this up if we were totally fine but some of our staff members are spending substantial amounts from their personal pockets for the sole benefit of the site and you, the community and fans. Hosting the site (we have around a terrabyte of traffic every month), buying some of our awesome exclusives, etc are quite costly and I'd like to keep bringing you stuff like that.

Let me just say, Sotrix has hosted LPLive essentially cost-free since it's conception and I really would like to start getting him at least a little "something" for all of his efforts in keeping the site up basically 24/7/365.

I don't want to ASK for donations if we decide to do them. It will solely be a matter of, if you like LPLive enough to willingly help us out with a dollar or two, then that would be cool. Just know that if we do, not a SINGLE penny would go towards any personal finances of any staff member (such as a ticket to a show or anything).

What are your thoughts?

[linkin_boss]

i think its a great idea, if you take the right security cautions =D

bcz the money can help to mantain the site, plus getting bought some uncirculated shows, or maybe pay something for tape some shows, or other things. anyway i think you should post a more organizated idea of what do with the money (exclusives-wise). ^^ that would motivate the people to contribute. anyway, choose a trustful person for save the money XD

OFFTOPIC P.S.: what happened with the exclusive from the "series" of exclusives?, it was said that it would come in middle of the tour, XD the tour is almost ending

This post has been edited by linkin_boss: Aug 18 2009, 10:54 PM

[LPxDC]

i think this would be a great idea to implement. I know I can vouch that the money donated would go to help maintain the site running smoothly.
</2 cents>

[SouthernGirlAM]

i think its a great idea, if you take the right security cautions =D

bcz the money can help to mantain the site, plus getting bought some uncirculated shows, or maybe pay something for tape some shows, or other things. anyway i think you should post a more organizated idea of what do with the money (exclusives-wise). ^^ that would motivate the people to contribute. anyway, choose a trustful person for save the money XD

OFFTOPIC P.S.: what happened with the exclusive from the "series" of exclusives?, it was said that it would come in middle of the tour, XD the tour is almost ending

There are more exclusives coming...I can personally vouch for that...the staff is just getting their ducks in a row, organizing stuff and deciding what's coming next...and of course, we want to space things out so you guys and gals don't get bored But know there is certainly more coming

[SpikeMinoda]

i like that idea very much Mark!!! cause you're right the staff and everybody involved in LPL spends alot of money and so we can show them, that we even support this site with a small donation!!!!

[HybridThe0ry97]

There are indeed ways to cut costs, and while I'd trust it, it may be beneficial for those who aren't staff to know exactly how it would be spent.

[Legend]

Sotrix/Mark: PM me with the average monthly cost of LPL. I'll "donate"

Donations sounds like a good idea. Just a small paypal button on the bottom of the site and forum would do the trick

We could give a nice status to those that donate.

[LPPanther]

I totally support this idea and I'd love to donate. But also why not throw some unobtrusive Google Ads on the page? As long as it doesn't cause any problems I don't see why not?

[BaZz]

It wont hurt to have a spot for it, but also have you ever thought about just some google ads and other advertisements. I am sure the site gets some what of decent hits, to bring in some income that way for you guys who run the site.

[vyonizr]

I agree with that. But why don't you place a little piece of an advertisement on this site? It would help this site's life.

[NoSunToday]

Asking for donations would be just fine! I know what it costs to run a website, leave out all the time you put into lpl.
This is one of the greatest sites existing and I believe there are lots of members who are willing to help you guys out for everything you do for us!

But as it is already said: Just try out some pieces of advertisment. Of course, they don't look too nice, but they might help a little.

This post has been edited by NoSunToday: Aug 19 2009, 02:26 AM

[immortalsoul]

But as it is already said: Just try out some pieces of advertisment. Of course, they don't look too nice, but they might help a little.

And since most people use a certain kind of AdBlocker, I'm sure it also wouldn't bother them. They could just click the ads away *laughs*

This post has been edited by immortalsoul: Aug 19 2009, 02:58 AM

[Acodemaster]

I definitely think you should open up donations. I like donating to sites that I support.
Though I don't think ads should be put on this site. The only ad I ever saw on here is after the "Barrack Your World" news post was posted and Sotrix put the obama ad at the top right until he was elected, though I know that was out of LPLive's control.
I would open up donation far before I'd start putting ads. Ads cheapen the website, and you dont want that.


This post has been edited by Acodemaster: Aug 19 2009, 03:29 AM

[KATHYxx]

And since most people use a certain kind of AdBlocker, I'm sure it also wouldn't bother them. They could just click the ads away *laughs*

AdBlocker can be disabled on a per-website or page basis. Have a simple request to disable AdBlock to support the site like Dragcave.net does.

[AlexonlyAlex]

Sure, why not, I would be ready to donate like 10 bucks everymonth.

[Jen88]

Go for it. I think it's a great idea.

This site has put out a lot of fantastic exclusives over the past couple of years, so I'm more than willing to help out and donate.

[-Nick-]

It's nice to see such a positive response to this. Prior to Mark posting this, several staff members were discussing this topic but we were truly unsure as to how it would be received. Since it was first begun, LPLive has been run by a dedicated group of volunteers who have donated their time, knowledge, money and other resources but it's gotten to the point where we'd like to do more. Donations would go toward any number of things, be it site improvements, a secondary source/mirror for downloads (not that we don't trust the current server, quite frankly we use far too much of of the bandwidth on it than I'd like to admit) as well as other things.

Just as an example - Very recently, we offered a fairly small DVD of the Sonisphere broadcast. I say small (~650MB) as most DVDs could be 4 to 5 times that size for a full show. It was decided to use Rapidshare to distribute it first and, to date, here are the numbers:

Total downloads of the files: 1467
Total bandwidth transfer: 130 GB

The 'cost' of doing so as a direct download would have been a large chunk of our bandwidth number for the month which as some of you may recall, resulted in us having to temporarily suspend downloads last month. That's something we didn't like to do and hope to avert in the future.

While nothing's been settled yet, I'm fairly confident that if/when we begin accepting donations LPLive users will be as supportive as they have been for just about everything else we've done.

As for ads - They'll never appear on this site if I have anything to say about it.

There are more exclusives coming...I can personally vouch for that...the staff is just getting their ducks in a row, organizing stuff and deciding what's coming next...and of course, we want to space things out so you guys and gals don't get bored But know there is certainly more coming

As this subject keeps coming up...

1) This is not the final exclusive we have set up. It may be the last thing anyone would ever want or need though.

2) As this exclusive has been delayed, several others have been lined up and are currently in the works.

The 'last' exclusive has quite literally been held up due to a number of factors, completely outside the control of any of the staff here. LPLive members can take this as a guarantee - we'll be working as hard and as fast as humanly possible for this release as soon as we're able to.

[murphyLP]

I´ll was going to send a PM to anyone in the staff just asking about it.

How could I contribute.

I´ll definitely donate some...this site has been my internet entertainment for quite a while and is fair enough that I need to spent a little to have it working!!!

Go for it!!! I support the idea.

[Trumtram]

throw the mid sized stuff (<1gb) up on rapidshare. apart from what a certain person had to moan about it, it's very fast and with an account even faster! many sites with bandwidth issues use it and it might save a lot of money.

people should rather invest in an rapidshare account (about 10$ a month) than spending it to the site. it will take of a good bit of weight from your pockets and might solve the problem. plus, when lplive uses an account to upload stuff, the more people download files off of it, so you get points that you can use to extend the sites account.

[-Nick-]

throw the mid sized stuff (<1gb) up on rapidshare. apart from what a certain person had to moan about it, it's very fast and with an account even faster! many sites with bandwidth issues use it and it might save a lot of money.

people should rather invest in an rapidshare account (about 10$ a month) than spending it to the site. it will take of a good bit of weight from your pockets and might solve the problem. plus, when lplive uses an account to upload stuff, the more people download files off of it, so you get points that you can use to extend the sites account.

We'll always have a certain percentage of users who will be against RS or torrents or just about anything except direct downloads. If we were solely hosting mp3s and WMV files, direct downloads would probably be the primary option. As this site is dedicated to preserving quality in the long run, it's not always the best thing to take the 'risk' of a direct download.

At the same time, we can't ask all users who want to download from us to have to obtain premium accounts for Rapidshare. We wouldn't be asking all users for donations, just those who are able and willing to.