Info Donations Discussion thread

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idea: cash donation = title change

you could let people donate a set amount of money (whatever you think is fair maybe 20$?) and let them change their BLUELIGHTER title to something original or funny. It would A) generate money for BL and B) give people an opportunity to be creative...might be enough to motivate somebody on the fence about donating.

That is if you're still looking for a way to generate cash donations.
 
Forgive me if this has already been answered. I have read through the last 8 pages and haven't seen info/replies about Bluelight and it's stance on being paid for by advertising.

So If I haven't already asked properly. This site as stated before is a very busy site with a lot of regular users frequently using it and also new users. Hence why running costs are high. Would this not also mean that since the site is busy that prospective adversiting space could also be sold off at a premium price (eventually)? Can I ask would Bluelight consider the possibility of having a number of advertiser banners to pay for this site? At the moment all I've seen is one for eztest.com test kits.

I'm unsure why I haven't heard anything about this yet. Is A: the people behind Bluelight are against running this site with advertisements as they feel it will degrade the site? Or B: Are we not talking about advertising because we think that we don't have a market audience because of the sensitive nature of the subject of this site? Either way I think there are options here to consider. If it is A then I think we can find advertisers like the eztest.com banner than neither degrades the site or clutters it up. Also if it is A shouldn't we be considering these advertiser options if Bluelight has a fair chance of being shut down because it doesn't have the funding? If it is B then by all means say so and lets get our heads together to brainstorm and put forward marketing strategies and companies we can target as our prospective clients of our advertising space.

All in all I would consider this one of our largest and most convenient sources of income for the site (and possibly sites pillreports/enlighten ect). I would hope that if worked successfully over time there would be no need for donations. The site could be purely run by advertising space could it not?
 
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^^ AFAIK this is how sites like Facebook and Myspace are kept alive. Not only would they be completely paid for but they would also run at a profit. I believe they are quite expensive as they are pay per click. As in the client pays facebook/myspace per user click. They are also supposedly targeted ads, as in it takes you age, sex and possibly hobbies/interested and targets the ads you see. This is what I have been told. I'm sure I can ask my housemate if needed who has been reading up on such things for quite some time as he owns a bussiness in media/design/web and web marketing.

Now I am not recommending anything as intrusive as the banner ads that are really over done and annoying like facebook (this is just one of the many reasons I don't use crackbook). We could however have useful targeting of ads. For example a client selling rave clothing in USA pays for their ad to come up on all those users who visit bluelight from within the USA (using cookies or whatever technology just like when you go to google.com and it auto detects your country). Now if the USA company selling rave clothing has an online store and wants to go international then they pay extra for international advertising. This way it keeps out ads such as a company in Germany selling psychedelic artwork that does not ship to the rest of the world away from the users who visit from countries outside Germany. This in tern makes more available advertising banner space and a higher price bluelight can charge.

Sorry if I am boring you with of this. I'm not experienced with web marketing. This is my 2cents and I just thought maybe someone could answer this or direct me somewhere if already covered. Thanks
 
Hey there. Didn't we meet at a Two Tribes once, many years ago? Never noticed you were a mod now :)

Hopefully we'll have a better answer shortly but personally, I have no problem with banner advertising but I guess it's a matter of whether the income it generates is worth it's inclusion and also whether those ads are in line with what the site is about. Hope to give you a funding update soon :)
 
Excellent question - one that several staff have also been asking! Unfortunately, we can't give a definitive date, but I can say we're working on it :\ The details of the problems involve being a drug related site and finding a banking service that will work with us and NOT cut us off thinking we are dealing drugs :o So yeah....we're working on it. Sorry we can't be more specific, but we will let everyone know when a solution is in place.
 
Donations

I was wondering what the current situation is with regard ro Bluelight's annual fundraising goal.

It just struck me that there was a whole lot of noise this time last year, and a real push for donations, but this year the donation bar shows 2.4% and I don't see threads about it.

Has the site secured funding/sponsorship through some other channel?

Or am I just a drunken fool?
 
I've actually been wondering the same thing but keep forgetting to bring it up. Glad you started a thread :) I'll ask around, but I'm sure people who know more about it will be in here in no time.
 
Okay....using the search engine for a moment:

Bluelight Funding - 2008 (final push) - recap last year's push

EZ TEST Question about payment (CC Donations) - merged - From FEB when we lost PayPal, and promised a solution shortly.....that still isn't in place yet

testing kits link - a little more on the testing kits situation, and why we aren't getting money from that right now, and another promise we'll try to address it (and haven't)

*****Now, this recent thread is merged into the general "DONATIONS" thread, and we'll continue with answers as best we can:

Um, we're working on it....badly? Shit answer, but most realistic. For over half the year now, we have been without proper online banking for accepting of donations - this hinges primarily on the fact that to get an account, you need someone willing to put their name on some legal paper, and right now the only person who stuck their personal neck out far enough is the site owner, johnboy, who has been struggling to find a suitable solution thus far. Yes, we're nearing the end of the year, and the 'funds' appear very low....so what DO we have in the way of solutions?

1. Snail Mail - the Aus addy is still valid, and we've added one in the US for those unwilling to pay postage overseas. For those wondering, the US POBox is near me, and I will simply collect and forward any such funds to johnboy in AUS so he can deposit them. These are always welcome :)

2. Partnerships - With studies like the recent Inflexxion research or others conducted through DRUG STUDIES (DS), we can get some monies in return for advertising and funneling lab rats....errr, good candidates ;) .... to them. As such, we've been told there is a check expected shortly which will meet a good portion of our shortage for next year's funding requirements. Your continued help with studies like this will cost you a little of your time, but provide generous benefits for the site overall. :)

3. And, once we get our online banking solution in place, you can expect us to have another end of year push for donations as well as running our kickback system with EZ-test or similar. Yeah, this is the same old 'we are working on it' without a solid date or solution....sorry, but we can't do better than that at this point.
 
Any donations can still be made, though slower than we would like, but any amount is always greatly appriciated! :)
 
Rexeh said:
I have €1000 willing to donate (no joke! you know it :)) so send me a PM or mail me and we will sort things out, ok? :)

<3 BL

Peace o/
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If we had 10 people that did this a year I don't think we would have to worry about money anymore. Thats a huge contribution man, awesome. :D
 
iCafe said:
Has bluelight ever thought of putting google ads to generate revenue? Adsense is a wonderful program that pays you per click for ads on your website. Just thought I'd let you know just in case.

https://www.google.com/adsense/g-app-single-1
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yes, it's been thought about before. if all other avenues fail, perhaps it will be considered, but until then, we're trying to keep BL an ad-free zone. :)
 
I definatly think those tacky ass banner ads would really degrade Bluelight. It may become neccary though, I just donated a few $ via paypal and noticed BL's only reached 2-5 % of thier needed funds, unless thiers something I'm missing. Its a shame too, so much good info is collected hear, thiers no good reason a junky can't sacrafice on point to help out.
 
TheLoveBandit said:
Now, this recent thread is merged into the general "DONATIONS" thread, and we'll continue with answers as best we can:

Um, we're working on it....badly? Shit answer, but most realistic. For over half the year now, we have been without proper online banking for accepting of donations - this hinges primarily on the fact that to get an account, you need someone willing to put their name on some legal paper, and right now the only person who stuck their personal neck out far enough is the site owner, johnboy, who has been struggling to find a suitable solution thus far. Yes, we're nearing the end of the year, and the 'funds' appear very low....so what DO we have in the way of solutions?

1. Snail Mail - the Aus addy is still valid, and we've added one in the US for those unwilling to pay postage overseas. For those wondering, the US POBox is near me, and I will simply collect and forward any such funds to johnboy in AUS so he can deposit them. These are always welcome :)

2. Partnerships - With studies like the recent Inflexxion research or others conducted through DRUG STUDIES (DS), we can get some monies in return for advertising and funneling lab rats....errr, good candidates ;) .... to them. As such, we've been told there is a check expected shortly which will meet a good portion of our shortage for next year's funding requirements. Your continued help with studies like this will cost you a little of your time, but provide generous benefits for the site overall. :)

3. And, once we get our online banking solution in place, you can expect us to have another end of year push for donations as well as running our kickback system with EZ-test or similar. Yeah, this is the same old 'we are working on it' without a solid date or solution....sorry, but we can't do better than that at this point.
Click to expand...

FYI, update - we have an alertpay page put in place if anyone cares to click on the DONATE link atop the page. :D

To answer another question that hasn't been asked, or answered in awhile..."Why does the current bar only reflect a goal 6,5k euro and 2.5% there?" followed by "Is the site going under in a minute?" The answer is that the bar above is manually updated - a process which has not been done as we've been trying to get our avenues of donation put in place :\ We have gotten a recent advance from one of our research partners, and we are accepting online donations from members at this point. We hope to update the bar very soon, and more frequently going forward. So is 2.5% accurate? No. What is the real 'money in the bank' right now? We'll have it updated shortly.

To the point of "Is the site going under?" No. Our funding push last year was so that all funds were in hand by the end of the calendar year; this was to have monies in hand to pay for our year of hosting in advance. We obviously don't have the full amount 'in hand' right now to pay for the year in advance, but we have enough to stay afloat for awhile longer. We will, however, be running a donations drive early in 2010 to help get us where we need to be for the remainder of the year. Additionally, we will be stepping up our partnerships with researchers in ways that will hopefully bring us more funding that way as well ... stay tuned :D

For those that wondered if the 2.5% is a scare tactic - no. It was a reflection that we did not have everything in place to properly report our current situation. This is being addressed, and you can more reliably count on the bar being accurately representative of the site's health and financial situation. We will also be revisiting some of the earlier discussion in this thread related to member donations as soon as we can, pending on a few other things getting put into play. Again, we'll make notice here for your education and hopefully for your participation.

For now, we thank you all for your continued support - either via the AlertPay donation buttons or by your participation in sponsored research surveys and trials.
 
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