[turtle]

So here I am with crickets all around me.


Days like today/yesterday make me really grateful for those who do the work behind the scenes.

For those who might wonder how the bills get paid: Donate.

[ThunderPoit]

No money to pay the DNS bill?

[turtle]

I actually just heard from alc, he didn't get the renewal notice. He's going to be taking care of it now.

Drew asked about paying for it so I figured I'd just remind him how he can go about doing that.

[ThunderPoit]

i just tried to make a donation via the link, but paypal wont let me pay without making me create an account, it seems. And i really don't want to revive my old account with them. Any other way to send a few $?

[turtle]

Not that I know of outside of the Amazon Affiliate link.

[alcimedes]

don't worry about it, I don't mind doing the hosting for the site, I just had an old email address that got nuked after 19 years and I didn't remember all the places I had to go to change it.

The amazon store stuff no longer works. MN was going to charge sales tax or something so Amazon shut down all the processing for our account. They said I couldn't change the address either, it's just shut down for good.

Paypal pretty much sucks.

[turtle]

Well isn't that crap. So Cafe Press really is your only source of income to help cover the cost of this place? I bet you are raking in the money from them too.

[ThunderPoit]

I say we go kickstater and get this place going with some web4.0 ajaxy css thingies

[turtle]

[kscherer]

Ok, guys. That's twice, now, that the domain got lost in the mail. Whose running this joint, anyway?

[alcimedes]

Originally Posted by turtle Well isn't that crap. So Cafe Press really is your only source of income to help cover the cost of this place? I bet you are raking in the money from them too.

oddly enough one of the bumper stickers I made years ago got popular for like a week, and we broke even on what our past cafe press bills were.

That's the closest we've gotten to money since the amazon thing was shut down.

[turtle]

What kind of fees do they charge? Just wondering.

[kieran]

That sucks about the Amazon thing. I've been spending a fortune on there lately and have always clicked through the affiliate link. That's stupid.

There's no other way to do it?

[turtle]

What about a new affiliate link for your new home? Is that area safe for you to create a new account?

[drewprops]

Alci I'll send you a few bucks anyway.

How much would 2 months cost?

...

[alcimedes]

I think we actually looked at one of the other mods/admins trying to set up an affiliate account, but Amazon's approval standards have gone up quite a bit since we initially applied.

I believe we were rejected, and our site no longer fits into one of the "store" type metrics they're looking for.

I suppose I could try again, see if anything has changed. Or if anyone else has an idea let me know.

For Cafe Press, I think they charge something like $5 or $10 a month to maintain the store. They just back bill you so you have a negative balance until you sell stuff, then your sales go to paying their backlog first and foremost.

So if we never sell anything the charges just stack up, if/when things sell they chip away. Nothing has ever been remotely popular enough to push ahead in any meaningful way on those charges though.

Don't worry about sending money, hosting is cheap. This was primarily an issue of me using that U of MN email address in like 500 places then having them pull the plug out of the blue.

With moving to a new state, starting a new job, having a baby etc. all going on at that time, I never got around to a truly thorough fix for any place using the old address.

[drewprops]

And thanks to T for the Twitter info on the hosts file!!!

(do I need to remove that once we're legit again?)

...

[709]

We (Drew) should come up with amazing products to sell on the NovaStore. I know people (Drew) who would like that.

[thegeriatric]

Whew! Had me a little worried. Glad to see we're back.

[Brad]

Yeah, the Amazon thing didn't work for me either. Amazon backed out of NC for the same reason as it backed out of other states; they weren't happy with how the local tax laws were set up.

If you ever want to transfer the domain to me, alc, I have at another one that I'll always stay on top of renewing.

Also, Drew, be sure to remove any hosts files modifications, or just comment them out with a preceding #. Our IP on the server pretty much never changes, but just in case, it's good to let DNS do its thing like normal.