Edit: There's a new help page about the donations and subscriptions you can make:
https://forum.beyond3d.com/help/subscribe-and-donate/
Hi folks,
Now that the forum reorganisation is done, the big Intel ad campaign is finished and things have quietened down after E3 and the Radeon Fury X launch, I'd like to talk about Beyond3D and contributing financially to its future, and what I think that future could look like with a bit more help.
It's clear to me now that advertising is not the best way to support a niche publisher. The rates, even for specialist targeted advertising campaigns like the Intel one we just ran, and the experience for the end user, are just plain shit. Sites like Beyond3D can't fund their publishing on ads (in fact, some months our Google ads don't even cover the hosting costs, never mind anything else we might have planned) and the ads you get to see, if you even see them, are often just a complete waste of everyone's time, CPU power and Internet bandwidth. I wrote about it in more depth on my blog, if you care.
What should also be very clear before I get into the meat of things, is that even if we turned all of the ads off and had no other income, Beyond3D wouldn't fall off the web. I'd just pay for it out of my own pocket, like I always have. Beyond3D hasn't always cost me money in that respect; for a decent time we were hosted by the same folks as The Tech Report, but then that company was acquired and wasn't willing to extend the deal, so since then either I've paid for it, or my company has, minus what little we make from ads.
It runs today partially on hardware of mine, in a datacenter near Heathrow airport in the UK, and partially on virtual machines on Linode, Digital Ocean and Vultr, all here in their respective datacenters in the UK. The total bill for everything is currently $135 a month at the time of writing and I've been paying for that myself for the last year or so, since I've yet to move it over to my company. I will do soon.
Earlier this year I transferred Beyond3D from being a private concern I was wholly responsible for, pretty much as a hobby, to a new company I setup in December 2014. It's a consulting and software company that I use to book income I make outside of my day job at PowerVR, so putting Beyond3D's incomings and outgoings in there too was the natural thing to do, in preparation for future plans and hopefully have it cost me as little as possible (corporation tax is much lower than my income tax, so donating to me is less efficient than donating to the company).
Fast forward to today, and I have plans for the future of Beyond3D that I want to see if you, the users of the site and the forums, will help with:
I plan to publish again, including architecture analysis of desktop GPUs, renderer analysis of popular games and engines, analysis of important industry events, and anything else interesting that either I can write about without breaking my NDA and contract with PowerVR, or that contributors can write about and Beyond3D is just the publisher for.
I'm writing software again. You might have seen The Tech Report run a new Beyond3D suite. That's currently being developed further, to support new kinds of tests and analyses, and I plan to release it to a wider audience when it's ready.
I plan to do a pair of episodic podcasts, both themes around accelerated 3D graphics, GPUs and the industries that make them possible. There's a thread about that if you want to help.
Simply put, I want to have Beyond3D take part in graphics analysis again on the web, rather than sit as a set of forums and and old website that never gets updated. With niche technical publishing only getting harder to do online, I want Beyond3D to stand with the rest again. Sadly, money is a thing and the site needs money to execute on the plans above. So here's the deal:
While my company can't afford to pay for Beyond3D with its non-Beyond3D profits, I'm going to ask for help, via subscriptions and donations. They're the same thing financially for both you and Beyond3D: my company isn't a charity, so you can't write it off against your income tax burden in your current locale, so, subscription or donation it doesn't matter, I have to pay the same taxes on each (VAT on receipt, corporation tax on any profits at year end).
Subscriptions let you give set amounts, monthly or yearly, with no set expectation about what those amounts will be spent against. By subscribing, you essentially trust me to decide what's best to put the money towards.
Subscriptions have perks. If you've subscribed already (they've been enabled for a while), you'll notice adverts don't show for you any more. In the future, you'll also get early access to published articles (if that makes sense, there might be NDAs in place that prohibit that) and the ability to listen to the podcasts a day early. I'll also turn on a Subscriber Only forum, where you can talk to me about what's happening with your subscription and what I'm spending it on, or anything else you want to discuss with me or your fellow subscribers.
Donations are specific things I'd like help with, to help you direct your contribution a certain way. Some of you will only want to help if it's in the area of something you want to see written or done. The first two donations that'll show up when I enable them are help with keeping the lights on: the current hosting and software licensing costs, monthly, and a drive towards moving back towards modern colocated servers here in Europe, rather than virtual infrastructure at Linode, DO and Vultr, to reduce long-term costs. That'll be a one-off fund you can contribute to.
Other donations will show up from time to time. Say you want the site to take a look at the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Hyper Fighting when it comes out. If we're not in contact with NVIDIA by then to get one early, we'll need to buy one after launch. We might need hardware or software for the podcast. We might need hardware or software to test and develop the new software suite. Those things will show up as and when they're needed, and I'll discuss each one separately so you know why the donation exists.
With things you've helped the site buy, when we're done with it we'll donate it to someone. Maybe free-to-enter competition style, maybe to one of the moderation team to say thanks for their hard work over the years, maybe to someone who can't afford a new GPU but would absolutely love one. We'll work that out at the time, but Beyond3D won't horde hardware it doesn't need any more. We'll give that back to you.
So, before I turn on the new donations and remind everyone how to subscribe and what the new tiers are (they've been tweaked), and I push people towards noticing they can help, let's talk about the above and make sure it's OK. To publish again I need help, and I think adverts are the worst possible way to get it. This is the best way I can think of so far.
Lastly, if we don't get anywhere with this then it's all OK. There's no pressure or obligation to help out like this and if nothing happens then like I said before, Beyond3D will still exist and I'll pay for it even with zero other income.
Thumbs up, thumbs down, questions and comments are all very welcome. I'm off to Scotland tomorrow for the day, but I'll reply when I can, and I'll be back around properly on Sunday. Thanks for getting this far
https://forum.beyond3d.com/help/subscribe-and-donate/
Hi folks,
Now that the forum reorganisation is done, the big Intel ad campaign is finished and things have quietened down after E3 and the Radeon Fury X launch, I'd like to talk about Beyond3D and contributing financially to its future, and what I think that future could look like with a bit more help.
It's clear to me now that advertising is not the best way to support a niche publisher. The rates, even for specialist targeted advertising campaigns like the Intel one we just ran, and the experience for the end user, are just plain shit. Sites like Beyond3D can't fund their publishing on ads (in fact, some months our Google ads don't even cover the hosting costs, never mind anything else we might have planned) and the ads you get to see, if you even see them, are often just a complete waste of everyone's time, CPU power and Internet bandwidth. I wrote about it in more depth on my blog, if you care.
What should also be very clear before I get into the meat of things, is that even if we turned all of the ads off and had no other income, Beyond3D wouldn't fall off the web. I'd just pay for it out of my own pocket, like I always have. Beyond3D hasn't always cost me money in that respect; for a decent time we were hosted by the same folks as The Tech Report, but then that company was acquired and wasn't willing to extend the deal, so since then either I've paid for it, or my company has, minus what little we make from ads.
It runs today partially on hardware of mine, in a datacenter near Heathrow airport in the UK, and partially on virtual machines on Linode, Digital Ocean and Vultr, all here in their respective datacenters in the UK. The total bill for everything is currently $135 a month at the time of writing and I've been paying for that myself for the last year or so, since I've yet to move it over to my company. I will do soon.
Earlier this year I transferred Beyond3D from being a private concern I was wholly responsible for, pretty much as a hobby, to a new company I setup in December 2014. It's a consulting and software company that I use to book income I make outside of my day job at PowerVR, so putting Beyond3D's incomings and outgoings in there too was the natural thing to do, in preparation for future plans and hopefully have it cost me as little as possible (corporation tax is much lower than my income tax, so donating to me is less efficient than donating to the company).
Fast forward to today, and I have plans for the future of Beyond3D that I want to see if you, the users of the site and the forums, will help with:
I plan to publish again, including architecture analysis of desktop GPUs, renderer analysis of popular games and engines, analysis of important industry events, and anything else interesting that either I can write about without breaking my NDA and contract with PowerVR, or that contributors can write about and Beyond3D is just the publisher for.
I'm writing software again. You might have seen The Tech Report run a new Beyond3D suite. That's currently being developed further, to support new kinds of tests and analyses, and I plan to release it to a wider audience when it's ready.
I plan to do a pair of episodic podcasts, both themes around accelerated 3D graphics, GPUs and the industries that make them possible. There's a thread about that if you want to help.
Simply put, I want to have Beyond3D take part in graphics analysis again on the web, rather than sit as a set of forums and and old website that never gets updated. With niche technical publishing only getting harder to do online, I want Beyond3D to stand with the rest again. Sadly, money is a thing and the site needs money to execute on the plans above. So here's the deal:
While my company can't afford to pay for Beyond3D with its non-Beyond3D profits, I'm going to ask for help, via subscriptions and donations. They're the same thing financially for both you and Beyond3D: my company isn't a charity, so you can't write it off against your income tax burden in your current locale, so, subscription or donation it doesn't matter, I have to pay the same taxes on each (VAT on receipt, corporation tax on any profits at year end).
Subscriptions let you give set amounts, monthly or yearly, with no set expectation about what those amounts will be spent against. By subscribing, you essentially trust me to decide what's best to put the money towards.
Subscriptions have perks. If you've subscribed already (they've been enabled for a while), you'll notice adverts don't show for you any more. In the future, you'll also get early access to published articles (if that makes sense, there might be NDAs in place that prohibit that) and the ability to listen to the podcasts a day early. I'll also turn on a Subscriber Only forum, where you can talk to me about what's happening with your subscription and what I'm spending it on, or anything else you want to discuss with me or your fellow subscribers.
Donations are specific things I'd like help with, to help you direct your contribution a certain way. Some of you will only want to help if it's in the area of something you want to see written or done. The first two donations that'll show up when I enable them are help with keeping the lights on: the current hosting and software licensing costs, monthly, and a drive towards moving back towards modern colocated servers here in Europe, rather than virtual infrastructure at Linode, DO and Vultr, to reduce long-term costs. That'll be a one-off fund you can contribute to.
Other donations will show up from time to time. Say you want the site to take a look at the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Hyper Fighting when it comes out. If we're not in contact with NVIDIA by then to get one early, we'll need to buy one after launch. We might need hardware or software for the podcast. We might need hardware or software to test and develop the new software suite. Those things will show up as and when they're needed, and I'll discuss each one separately so you know why the donation exists.
With things you've helped the site buy, when we're done with it we'll donate it to someone. Maybe free-to-enter competition style, maybe to one of the moderation team to say thanks for their hard work over the years, maybe to someone who can't afford a new GPU but would absolutely love one. We'll work that out at the time, but Beyond3D won't horde hardware it doesn't need any more. We'll give that back to you.
So, before I turn on the new donations and remind everyone how to subscribe and what the new tiers are (they've been tweaked), and I push people towards noticing they can help, let's talk about the above and make sure it's OK. To publish again I need help, and I think adverts are the worst possible way to get it. This is the best way I can think of so far.
Lastly, if we don't get anywhere with this then it's all OK. There's no pressure or obligation to help out like this and if nothing happens then like I said before, Beyond3D will still exist and I'll pay for it even with zero other income.
Thumbs up, thumbs down, questions and comments are all very welcome. I'm off to Scotland tomorrow for the day, but I'll reply when I can, and I'll be back around properly on Sunday. Thanks for getting this far
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