Supporting Arabel, Long Term
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I do it for a living so I'd be happy to help set up a new server if it comes to that.
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He proved to be professional since I play here, I totally understand Zool's point of view.
Being currently unemployed, I can't offer anything. Once I get a job, I'll consider my possibilities.
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I want to re-iterate that this is not some kind of emergency fund gathering. We're doing fine on donations. There is really no need to over-stretch yourself financially.
Small, regular payments just leave less of a spike that the occasional large donation, and the idea behind this was to offer people that option if they were interested.
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I know this might take a little (stress: very little) to set up on your end, but if you have a dedicated paypal address that staff have access to, you might consider Patreon: http://patreon.com/
You can set up an account on there for free, put up the CoA relevant stuff and direct people wanting to pledge support on a monthly basis. I myself support and work with several 'on going development' gaming projects on there. It keeps things neat and tidy and opens up a lot of passive advertising for the server. Unfortunately due to the nature of the games I'm working with I can't really link them for reference, but I cannot more strongly reccomend it. My own patreon has gathered a lot of interest from people who I'd never have met and I'm positive you guys would see some benefit from it, too.
I, personally, would consider CoA a mix of 'indie game' and storytelling, though I'm sure there will be plenty of people who may feel it doesn't fit into patreon's model. So, something to look into and think about, but if I can be of any help with it, just shoot me a PM.
About the platform: http://www.patreon.com/about
Their FAQ: http://www.patreon.com/faq
Creator stuff: http://www.patreon.com/creators/ -
This sounds like a promising way forward, if only just to get monthly payments automated.
If I understand correctly, we can set up a Patreon homepage for CoA and just allow for monthly pledges of $5, $10 or whatever. It sounds like it can process payments directly from a bank account or from Paypal.
It seems a bit overkill, as it's set up more like a monthly kickstarter, but it sounds like it could do the trick.
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That's pretty much how it goes, yeah. You can start with as little as 1 dollar and the sky's the limit. The money becomes available (I believe) on the 15th of the month for recurring subscriptions? I use a 'per release' model for my own since I write fiction.
Now, be aware, they do take like 2% off the top for a service fee, I think this is their payment gateway (stripe) more than them, but it's something to keep in mind. On the bright side, they charge the cards and do all the accounting (if whomever sets up the account is US based) and send you a report at the end of the year with your pledge numbers and stuff like that. All you have to do is give them a paypal address or bank account to push the donations to and off you go.
They do actually have kickstarter-like 'projects' where you can specify a monetary goal and run it like KS, but otherwise if you set it up as a recurring donations thing, it's just like a subscription system.
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I donate using Patreon for a writer I happen to like. I'd use the same system for Arabel as well.
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I'm sure that writer sincerely appreciates it, too.
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I don't mind supporting the server might i recommend move to hetzner though? they are a german server company. and though out of the us they have good rates on dedicated servers they you can get some really good deals from them. The biggest issue i see with the server right now is lag. and for 65$ a month i was getting a server for minecraft with 64 gigs of ram and a badass processor and 2tb of solid state hard drive space. its worth a look into. but i can chip in when i can