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Have you ever noticed this website is free? probably not because like all websites are free these days or something
well, CF isn't funded by big venture capital or selling peoples data, or ads, it's literally just the patreon making 200ish dollars a month, which covers the cost of hosting and basically nothing else. No one here gets paid, unless you count the proud 2-figure profits the site is making (as in, less than 100$, and not even close to it). I never minded all that, the site is strictly a passion project, and in the 12 years of it's existance, I never really tried to monetize it, I just wanted it to be a cool place for webcomics, no strings attached.
However, we've also been meaning to move the site to a new server for a long time now, partially just to make things run more reliably, but also to allow for https on peoples webcomics, which our current host doesn't support. If you're not sure what that means, don't worry about it too much, just know that it's something that's necessary for the site to have sooner or later, preferably sooner. Like I said, almost all of the money from the patreon currently goes into the current server, so we don't have a ton of financial flexibility here.
I'm not great at asking people for money, so uh, I'll just come right out and say it. This is a robbery. empty your wallet, into this patreon below and no one gets hurt:
okay but seriously, I had basically resigned to the fact that I would have to add some monetization to the site to help us out of this pickle. Unfortunately I also recently went back to university after like half a decade, so my time to work on that kind of stuff has been significantly cut short also. I brought this up recently and people kind of surprised me by being amazingly supportive, we got like 5 new patrons, just from an obscure thread in the problems & suggestions forum.
So this is my plea to you, if you can afford it, please donate to our patreon, so we can keep the site free for everyone. Usually I don't like bothering people with this kind of stuff, and I won't make a habit out of using the announcement feature to just ask people for money, but I'll probably at least have to force myself to bring this up more often when I make actual announcements. I don't think I even mentioned the patreon at all since I made it like 2 years ago
About the potential monetization: Now I don't want to scare anyone too much so I'll also briefly talk about plan B if we're unable to raise sufficient funds by just asking (it's a foolproof plan though, right?). Like I said, I'll be forced to monetize the site. I really don't want to put ads on the site, I may do a thing where you can advertise your webcomics on the voluntary ad slots in exchange for money/patreon tokens/whatever in the future, but I don't want to just put google ads or something on peoples comics, I feel very strongly about that. Another thing that will probably happen if we can't raise enough money is that I'll have to charge people for using custom domains. I don't want to pull a bait and switch on people, so everyone who already is hosting a custom domain will get some sort of free grace period if it does come down to that. I may also do stuff like e.g. limit extra files to like 80 files or something before you have to shill out some dosh you know, nothing overly restrictive, I don't want to turn this site into a massive grift, I think our track record over the last 12 years should hopefully afford me enough trust when I say this.
Like I said though, I would prefer if it was just a dealio where people who can afford it donate to the patreon, and the site's funded, and everyone can use it without restrictions. Also the patreon rewards are fake, sorry. You have to do it exclusively for keeping the site free, and I guess for my gratitude which I'm not even that good at showing. But I am grateful though, so a massive thank you to all the current patrons, who have been keeping the ship afloat so far
PS: I may or may not also raise the minimum pledge to 2$, what do people think about that? When you pledge one dollar, most of that gets sunk straight into fees, apparently these days if you try to set up a 1$ pledge, patreon shows you a big old scary warning about how that's a bad idea.
PPS: also you have to be at least 18 years old to pledge to the patreon, or ask your parents for permission.
well, CF isn't funded by big venture capital or selling peoples data, or ads, it's literally just the patreon making 200ish dollars a month, which covers the cost of hosting and basically nothing else. No one here gets paid, unless you count the proud 2-figure profits the site is making (as in, less than 100$, and not even close to it). I never minded all that, the site is strictly a passion project, and in the 12 years of it's existance, I never really tried to monetize it, I just wanted it to be a cool place for webcomics, no strings attached.
However, we've also been meaning to move the site to a new server for a long time now, partially just to make things run more reliably, but also to allow for https on peoples webcomics, which our current host doesn't support. If you're not sure what that means, don't worry about it too much, just know that it's something that's necessary for the site to have sooner or later, preferably sooner. Like I said, almost all of the money from the patreon currently goes into the current server, so we don't have a ton of financial flexibility here.
I'm not great at asking people for money, so uh, I'll just come right out and say it. This is a robbery. empty your wallet, into this patreon below and no one gets hurt:
okay but seriously, I had basically resigned to the fact that I would have to add some monetization to the site to help us out of this pickle. Unfortunately I also recently went back to university after like half a decade, so my time to work on that kind of stuff has been significantly cut short also. I brought this up recently and people kind of surprised me by being amazingly supportive, we got like 5 new patrons, just from an obscure thread in the problems & suggestions forum.
So this is my plea to you, if you can afford it, please donate to our patreon, so we can keep the site free for everyone. Usually I don't like bothering people with this kind of stuff, and I won't make a habit out of using the announcement feature to just ask people for money, but I'll probably at least have to force myself to bring this up more often when I make actual announcements. I don't think I even mentioned the patreon at all since I made it like 2 years ago
About the potential monetization: Now I don't want to scare anyone too much so I'll also briefly talk about plan B if we're unable to raise sufficient funds by just asking (it's a foolproof plan though, right?). Like I said, I'll be forced to monetize the site. I really don't want to put ads on the site, I may do a thing where you can advertise your webcomics on the voluntary ad slots in exchange for money/patreon tokens/whatever in the future, but I don't want to just put google ads or something on peoples comics, I feel very strongly about that. Another thing that will probably happen if we can't raise enough money is that I'll have to charge people for using custom domains. I don't want to pull a bait and switch on people, so everyone who already is hosting a custom domain will get some sort of free grace period if it does come down to that. I may also do stuff like e.g. limit extra files to like 80 files or something before you have to shill out some dosh you know, nothing overly restrictive, I don't want to turn this site into a massive grift, I think our track record over the last 12 years should hopefully afford me enough trust when I say this.
Like I said though, I would prefer if it was just a dealio where people who can afford it donate to the patreon, and the site's funded, and everyone can use it without restrictions. Also the patreon rewards are fake, sorry. You have to do it exclusively for keeping the site free, and I guess for my gratitude which I'm not even that good at showing. But I am grateful though, so a massive thank you to all the current patrons, who have been keeping the ship afloat so far
PS: I may or may not also raise the minimum pledge to 2$, what do people think about that? When you pledge one dollar, most of that gets sunk straight into fees, apparently these days if you try to set up a 1$ pledge, patreon shows you a big old scary warning about how that's a bad idea.
PPS: also you have to be at least 18 years old to pledge to the patreon, or ask your parents for permission.
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