Question Upgrade on hardware

Things have been running a little slow around here with the uptick in visitors. I've upgraded our virtual machine to one with a bit more memory, which will hopefully pick the pace up a little. I may push it a little further, too... as long as it stays within our price range. If the cost is too high or our ad revenue drops off; we might have to drop back. But I think this small tweak won't cost us much more and it appears to be making a difference.

This shouldn't be a serious price increase... I'll know more in a couple weeks. I could figure it out manually right now, but... math.

I could always link my Patreon account. I've been sitting with it more or less ready to go for ages now, just haven't gone live with it.

Well, we've talked in the past that that was one of the possibilities of setting up a donations system... that one of the 'low tiers' of donation would be ad-less viewing of the site. ie first patreon goal and reward - goal $150/mo in donations, we implement an ad-free access to the site. reward, anyone donating $3/mo or more to that purpose benefits.

We get to like $2k a month and I'll quit my job and work full time on the site and writing stories for Whateley.

It's the whole shared universe thing, mainly.

I mean... if I'm taking donations for just maintaining the site, that's technically 'whateley universe' income. But we're not incorporated or set up as a non-profit organization... so it means any money that comes in to me... is counted as 'my' income. And I pay taxes on it. Like the ad revenue. And it technically counts as self-employment as well (so, higher taxes). So really, what we get from ads doesn't even all go to me or the site... it goes into making my taxes higher.

Given the existing number balance... what we get from ads - taxes I pay on it leaves Fortunately, I work for a non-profit theatre and don't make a lot and the amount we bring in doesn't push me into a higher bracket so its only 15% for income tax. Unfortunately, that's where the self-employment thing comes into play and anything reported with a 1099 like this adds an additional 15.4% for SS and Medicare (normally your employer pays half of that)... thus taxing it at 30.4%.

So... for example. We have a weak month on visitors / ad revenue... making only about $3.50 / day. At $105, we lose $31.92 to the government and $73.08 finds its way into my bank account (well, technically the full 105 does, I have to manually set aside the part of the taxman or he mugs me in April). Then Google says, hey your server has used this many resources this month... that'll be... $71. Mostly, its between 71-73. So... on a low activity month, ads are just barely paying the bills. On a 'records high month' like this one? It's looking like the total is going to run around $175. That'll be about $122 after taxes, which gives me $50 to tap for improvements and misc costs. Like the $60/yr for the domains, a bit here or there for extensions/software. Even on the best months though right now, anything more than a couple hours at minimum wage is technically donated to the site.

But... if I start taking actual donations for the site... where is the line? If we are bringing in $1000 per month for the site? If so, do 'we' consider paying an accountant to do Kristin's taxes as a fair expense coming out of that as well as a fee to compensate me for pushing my tax bracket up? What are 'fair' charges to the site's money and what aren't? Obviously server fees are good. domain purchases good unless we start buying up obscure combinations of our keywords or paying hundreds/thousands to get the crystalhall.org domain back. do we get upgrades on the site because the money in is > than the fees out? Or does that money sit somewhere and accumulate? Does Kristin get a fee for hours spent on the site? Do the writers get a fee for words published? Editors? Do we put money into advertising or art?

Maybe I'm overthinking it... BUT be aware that its not a new idea and I HAVE thought about it a bit, because it would be nice to have my personal finances separate from maintaining the site. It will make the site/community more self-sustaining and transferable to another publisher/administrator should something happen to me. It's also not an easy road to walk down though if you aren't financially in the position to just casually have your people set up a new non-profit organization for you.

More than likely, if I DO set up a patreon publicly in the near future, it will be my personal one... for support of moving my career away from high hours/low pay theatre work into focusing more on my writing and other creative ventures. That would, of course, mean more time to support the site and community, but it would be 'me' that people would be supporting not directly the site. I think.

*nods*

I just don't want to give anyone a reason to think I'm cheating them out of anything.

We just need to get the Patreon account to like 5-6$K per month and I'll shift to working full time as the chief universe admin/editor/producer and I'll take a full time salary, maintain the system costs and pay authors a stipend for contributions.

I'd have to move someplace cheaper to live than California, so the authors would get a bigger chunk of the money... but its feasible.

I appreciate the offer, but it would have to be a US based organization for practical reasons (ie for me to legally administrate it).