…or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Tip Jar
Wow. Just… wow. Our site traffic has been exploding these past few months. In fact, in the past 30 days we’ve racked up over 500,000 page views according to Google Analytics (see screen capture below).
That’s half a million, folks. While it’s not in the same league as a site like Questionable Content or PvP, for a longform fantasy comic that’s not even two years old, we’re doing pretty okay (so we’ve been told.)
And that’s all because of you, dear readers. You’re absolutely awesome and we couldn’t have gotten to this point without you.
Buuuuuut it’s not all sunshine ‘n kittens. See, with the increased traffic comes increased expense. Quite simply, our current hosting plan cannot keep up with this kind of traffic. As some of you may have noticed, brief outages during peak times have become an almost daily occurance and that’s with Cloudflare in place. This is because we’re running a pretty complex WordPress site on a mid-range VPS (virtual private server.)
We started out on a $9.95/month shared hosting package and are currently shelling out $49.95/month. That’s out of pocket expense. It’s been recommended that we upgrade to a plan costing us around $120/month. At that rate, we’re looking at almost $1,500 per year for hosting.
Despite the heavy traffic and the ads littering the site, we really aren’t making all that much (again, see below)…
Yeah, $6.40 on CPM ads over the past 30 days with over 500,000 impressions.
Six dollars and forty cents.
Yes, we do make some money off of Project Wonderful ads as well, but that is most often rolled back into our own advertising campaign so at least that’s not coming out of pocket. Sales from our Amazon referral link? I think we’ve made about $1.50 this month.
Right now the only money we’re making off of Shadowbinders is from book sales and (sporadic) convention appearances. It really has been a labor of love for us, and we’ve resisted asking for any kind of financial help because I’ve always found panhandling to be a bit distasteful. We had a tip jar early on that I took down because I really didn’t want to “go there.”
But guess what? We kind of need to “go there” to keep this train from derailing into a craptastic fiery ball of suck.
More good news: In addition to the need for an increased hosting package, our trusty Lenovo Thinkpad we use to create Shadowbinders is going to die any day now. We bought it refurbished and it made it through a year of heavy abuse. However, it’s had some issues recently and I think it’s going to be headed for the Great e-Recycler in the Sky. Soon. We’re talking like $1,200 and the used one we bought last year still isn’t paid off yet.
We hate to ask you for anything, but we are. We’re certainly not expecting to get rich off donations, or even make living by mooching (tsk! tsk! — that’s what the day job is for.) No, we’d just like to break even or come close to it. Right now, we are not.
So that’s where we’re at. Yes, if you can spare some pocket change to keep us chugging along it would be mucho appreciated. Honestly, if every one of our readers kicked in just a buck or two every year (half the cost of one issue of a Marvel or DC comic) we’d have plenty of funds for hosting and decent equipment.
However, if some of you are feeling reeeeeeally generous, I shall bribe you with ‘thank you’ trinkets. If you donate over $5.00 USD, we’ll send you one of our new double-sided, reversible bookmarks.
And if you donate $50.00 USD or more, we’ll send you everything in the pic below…
Yes, for donations over $50 we’ll give you a signed copy of the Shadowbinders Vol. 1 graphic novel, a set of 1″ buttons and our double-sided, reversible bookmark! And you know what? You’ll be highlighted on our soon-to-be-announced Wall of Awesome!
For donations over $75? All of the swag pictured above PLUS a one-of-a-kind B&W custom sketch card by Kneon. (Please allow a few weeks for this — I do get busy!)
For donations over $100? All of the swag pictured above PLUS a one-of-a-kind B&W custom commission by Kneon of your choice on 11×14″ Bristol. (Please allow a few weeks for this — I do get busy!)
But seriously, any help is appreciated. And even if you can’t help financially, please help spread the word about our comic. Comment. Participate in our forums. In a way, this has become your comic too, and we truly appreciate the support thus far!
So a tip jar has been added to the righthand sidebar of the site, or you can click on the link below:
Thank you!
