I think it has been asked in the thread already but how much needs to be raised to keep the site up for say 2 years if a donation drive happens. I am curious if there is an amount to keep it up versus adfree etc.

Dain said it costs over $650/month to run the site. That's $15,600 at least for 2 years. $230/month pledged on Patreon so far. That brings us to over $5k per year, or $10k for 2 years to answer your question.

Hopefully we get more pledges to bring that needed total down.

Gimme them ads. If that's what it takes that's what it takes

No just no.  Ads bog the shot out of the only other site i post on. No way this would be a different place with ads. 

We will get the funds through a drive  i know we will.

I think the people advocating for ads are doing so in order to feel better about themselves when they donate zilch to a resource they use continually.

Maybe so?  But how sustainable could it possibly be to rely on the goodwill of Internet denizens?
 

We could raise 10k through a donation drive. Lets do it.

Welll the site is 10 years old sooooo at least that long and no end in sight
 

My income is inconsistent, so I can't pledge monthly. I will, however, find something to auction off for an "all proceeds" donation auction. It's been a couple years since I pitched in.

I, along with many others, run adblock so ads would probably not do much these days.

I'm not much of a fan of ads either, so I signed up for Patreon.  Hope my contribution brings NAge closer to it's monthly goal and puts you in a better mood.

Cheer up Evil Overlord.

I wonder how much has been donated since this issue has come up? The pledge is actually doing better then I expected to be honest.

So I dont know how ads generate revenue for the site, but dont all the people that say the just run adblock defeat the purpose?

I should have been able to do that math..

NA has been a big part of my life for the last 8+ years, and it doesn't feel weird saying that. It's ultimately my home page. My game collecting hobby has always centralized around NA.

Thanks for all you do Dain, for providing us this great community, and thanks to all the volunteers on the site that keep things running. Obviously pledging.

I don't think game related ads, hosted on NA (no spyware) would be a bad thing. People could advertise their games/stores/hardware/ebay/whatever to the audience that is already their target market. Of course that means more work for Dain but hopefully something that wouldn't just be instantly blocked by everyone.

Amen.  Well said!!
 

Pledged. I will also be donating to the DD whenever it opens up. Thanks for everything, Dain.

I saw someone post above about extending the garage sale, maybe that would be a good idea if people would donate some to the site. I have some stuff I want to make a thread for and will make a donation when the details are posted

I'm down to help with the donation drive. I'm now a Patreon++ subscriber! Can't wait to see my new badge!

Pledged $5 a month on Patreon.

I'm in when/if the fundraising drive starts too.

C'mon guys we're close to getting the bills paid and keeping NA up and running proper.

Why not try something like community made/purchased ads?
So the ads are just set spots, filled in by paying members of the site that want to advertise something. Could be their ebay store, could be just one of their auctions or even their own product such as homebrews. There would be a limited amount of "slots" persay and the ads could rotate ever however often. Could even have people "bid" for ad slots, that way ads over peak times of the year would be more while lower volume times are a bit less.
I'm not really for ads, but if it was something like this I think people would accept it and maybe even enjoy it.

I've noticed quite a lot of new members recently, so bumping this old thread in case anyone is wondering how to help the site out with a monthly subscription and get a smart banner at the top of their avatar.  
 

Well done sir!

I'm betting there are ways you can drastically reduce your upkeep costs. I have websites built on $40-60/m cloud servers, with nginx that handle high traffic very well, and i'm betting NA can be that cheap as well. I stress test 1000 unique hits per minute with no 503 errors. (if you peak at 4m hits per month, thats close to 6k hits per hour.) I also do a lot of optimization on MYSQL tables because storage is probably where a bulk of the costs come from. I'm assuming storage is the reason for the high cost on NA? Move images to a cdn, maybe make posts older than 2 years read only, move them to a non interactive table, and have another table for only newer content. Maybe this is not how NA's setup is but my suggestions is seek a consultant on how to reduce costs.