Neocolours

Hi Neocolours,

Once again, 'tis time for me to come begging to you all... Since September 2007, Neocolours has been entirely funded by donations from you guys - the people who have helped to keep the site going can be found here (or linked at the bottom of every page!). Since then the site has had massive improvements and features added by our pet admin Jazzy (thank you!), and the rest of the support staff (the modmin team, news posters, pet image collectors and others) have also contributed time and effort to keep us up to date with Neopets, and to nurture a fantastic community.

The last funding drive we did was way back in October 2008 (I'm amazed it was so long ago myself), and the money raised back then has kept us going all the way through to now (actually to the end of next month, but early notice gives people time to think about and/or arrange finances). That was a really successful drive, and I'm hoping that we can replicate that success this time around - if we do, the next time I come begging will be in July 2011!

If you donate some money this time around, you'll get your name in lights on the donations page, and of course the warm fuzzy feeling that you're one of the people who makes Neocolours' existence possible.

If you want to donate, I am happy to accept any amount. Suggested amounts (for simplicity of managing donations) are £5/£10 GBP or approximations in other currencies (the site is paid in £ GBP), but I'm happy to work around that to permit anyone who either can't quite manage that or indeed wants to pay more - every little helps, it all goes to keeping the site going! However, below about £2 the admin fees do start to become too high and Neocolours won't see much of the donation, so I must set that (again, or local equivalent) as the minimum.

To actually donate the money, these are the tried and tested methods from the previous two drives:
Everyone: I can issue paypal invoices for any amount, or you can drop money straight into my paypal account. My email address linked to the account is paypal1@benmitchell.co.uk. NOTE: this is not the same as last time.
UK people: You can drop money directly into my bank account by electronic transfer, or mail me a cheque, or hunt me down and give me cash if you really want to - contact me privately for details of these.

Non-paypal means for non UK-people are more difficult, there are usually rules (as well as risks) concerning putting cash in the post. But do contact me, there may well be a way of getting money to another US / EU citizen to pass on (any nominations for people prepared to be a point of contact for converting money into paypal beans? Get in touch!).

I can be contacted by PM on here or by MSN or email at "ben.mitchell" at gmail's domain (dot com ). Feel free to post questions, ideas, and even pledges in this thread, but do contact me off-list before sending me any money!

NOTE: please don't post your own email addresses on this thread, keep them to PMs. Unfortunately in order to keep this thread open to everyone, email addresses can also be harvested by spambots, and this is exactly what happened to me last year - hence the new paypal email address. However, changing personal email addresses is a lot more difficult, so keep them spam-free!

If you're still reading at this point, wow Now the success of Neocolours funding drive 2010 is entirely down to you all. Pledge some money, and lets keep Neocolours going!

Edit: The funding drive will be open until the end of February!

To get the ball rolling, I should put up my pledge first:

As well as assisting Jazzy with the techytechy when needed (DNS and hosting and Linux crazyness), I also pay for the plethora of neocolours domains that now point to our site (I'm trying to get the old .co.uk seeing how Sam appears to not be at the helm of that one any more). Plus in the event of any shortfall between the donation sum and exact months' payments, I'll take that up too.

I can donate, but I only get paid at the end of the month, and I'm flat broke now. If this is open that long, I'm in.

Joey,

Edited the original post - the funding drive will run until the current funds run out as a minimum, so you've got over 6 weeks, don't worry!

Expect a donation from me sometime near the end of this week, as I get paid on Thursday.
And wow, the last donation drive did last quite awhile!

Expect something in the post over the next week or so.

Count me in for sending something sometime this month. I'll let you know.

I was too late last time, so I'm definitely in this time.

Poke me when you see me online.

Hooray! I have just sent mine in. Can you confirm receipt of the money when you get the time? I rarely use paypal and may have made some imbecilic mistake along the line (business as usual, ha).

Btw the conversion to GBP was totally outrageous and currencies in general should be ashamed of themselves!

Just about to drop you a pm. :)

I'll throw in 2 hour's pay (AU$50) - this forum's been so nice to me and I feel quite guilty for missing out last year

Hopefully the currency conversion isn't a pain for you!

Also, what domains point to us? Just out of curiousity!

Madge wrote:I'll throw in 2 hour's pay (AU$50) - this forum's been so nice to me and I feel quite guilty for missing out last year

Thank you!

Madge wrote:Hopefully the currency conversion isn't a pain for you!

For some reason Paypal didn't stick fees on converting your donation (woo!), so we only lost 70pence from the 'ideal' exchange rate (a la google's).

Madge wrote:Also, what domains point to us? Just out of curiousity!

www.neocolours.me.uk is the primary domain.
www.neocolours.org.uk (bought to try to keep our name as the primary user of the .uk domains, trademarks and stuff)
www.neocolours.eu (we are in europe after all - there was some reason for purchasing this at the time, I forget if there were .uk registry issues or something similar - Jazzy, do you remember?)

That's it for now. We've previously considered neocolours.us too, but don't really have a case for it other than "we have some American visitors and just because we can", which is a long and expensive road to start down...

Aren't domain names, like, $2 each or something ridiculous? Or are most of them parked?

So, wait, where are we supposed to send a message to you before sending you money?

I just logged into paypal and sent the money to the email address, with no prior notice or anything. I think paypal emails him and says "there's five hundred thousand million dollars waiting for you that wingsrising sent" (because, obviously, you'll give him that much, right?)

I marked it as personal>gift and it gave me the option of paying the 25c fee for Miguel, FWIW