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Note: None of this is in effect yet. This is being written to obtain feedback from our readership and contributors.
In order to make the Wiki financially self-sufficient, we will establish a paid-membership process for users of the wiki.
Benefits
Primarily, the benefit is the removal of advertising, in terms of the ads at the bottom and to the side of every page.
Additionally, we'll also include the removal of ads from our online Battlestar Forum as well for our paying members.
Cost
The cost for a membership is $10 USD per year.
Members can pay for additional years, should they wish to do so.
How to pay
To pay, make sure to first set up an account on Battlestar Wiki and Battlestar Forum, if you haven't already done so. That part is free.
Once you've done that, simply choose to pay through one these secure, online services:
- Paypal
- Amazon
In either the comments section of the donation form or in an e-mail to Joe Beaudoin, provide your Battlestar Wiki and Forum username. (Just the username, not the password -- no one from either the Wiki or the Forum will ever ask for your password.) Once payment has been verified, we'll add you to the membership list, thus removing the ads.
Rationale
While we have recouped about half the money we spend on the servers via the ads and the commissions from being affiliates to Amazon.com and the like, for full financial independence from any one person, we need to have a process to reasonably secure the financial needs of the website.
Thus what we are asking for is basically $10 USD/year, in return you won't have to be bothered by advertisements.
To get an idea of the costs of running Battlestar Wiki, let's do some math. I've rounded the numbers down from what we have posted at our server cost page, so if you want exact numbers, go there.
- Per month, the Battlestar Wiki costs $300 dollars to run.
- Between the ads and the commissions from Amazon.com, et al., we get $150. Which means we are 50% sustaining.
The issue here is that we need to be 100% sufficient. Short of plastering the site with ads (pop-ups, full-page ads, etc) for additional funds, which honestly won't work, we've decided to go with a tried-and-true method of membership.
In all honesty, we could support the site for one month with 30 members paying $10 or 360 members per year.