Ways to Help the Site

[Andy]

Since running a forum takes a lot of work (I'll probably write an article on it sometime :D), Shaun and I made a list of all the possible ways you can help us out and put it on a page of its own. You can find it by clicking the Site Info link in the navigation bar.

Help the Site (http://www.youngwritersonline.net/helpsite.php)

Granted, we don't expect you to do ALL of these, or even most of them. But if you're bored, or you want to help give back to the community, check it out. We'd greatly appreciate it.

In other news, here's an update on the advertisements we added to the bottom of each thread. While Google doesn't allow us to reveal how much we're making, we are earning enough from them to cover the cost of hosting. So, if we get some more members, and if the revenue doesn't suddenly drop, we might be able to start giving out excess money in contests, and spend it on making a legit anthology once we get around to it.

In addition, we are currently working on getting a better chatroom for the site, one that allows multiple rooms (such as Roleplaying and Word Wars), and other interesting features.

[jordanisonfire]

I could do some of those things. :link: But not the monetary things, though, as I've said before.

[Carraka]

Can we know the exact percentage of money you receive when we purchase things from Amazon through YWO? I recently made a purchase totaling about $100, but how much of my money did you get?

[Andy]

Shaun manages the store, so he has the exact details. I believe the amount is around 5% to 5.5%, depending on which store you use. So that would be about $5.

[Carraka]

Abysmal. Well, at least you got something. x.x

[Imelda]

They're making money out of me. :D

So when you guys win a cash prize, thank me! XD

[jordanisonfire]

$5 from $100 doesn't seem a lot. Couldn't it have been 20% or something, that'd help the site a lot more?

[Andy]

Amazon doesn't want to lose too much money from this. If everyone made 20% off this program, Amazon would probably lose more than they'd gain by offering it. In the future we may see if there are other reputable bookstores that offer higher percentages and do a similar program with them.

[Carraka]

-smacks Amazon-

They bought the 7th copy of that Harry Potter book! They're rich enough already!

[Imelda]

They do give astonishingly good discounts, though.

[Shaun]

We don't get a lot from the stores. The intention of having the stores, again, was for people to earn us a cut when they go to buy things from Amazon...since you're going to do it anyway, why not give us a small percent of that right?

I think the U.S. one has 5.5% and the UK one is the same, the CA one is still at 5 or 4.5. So we don't get a lot of money, no, but that's okay. It's a little money, and we can use the money from it for contests. We've almost earned out the money we need to get a dispursement for the U.S. site. We're about 10% into getting a dispursement from the U.K. site. We've earned nothing from the CA site, cause you Canadians apparently don't buy anything :P. So, it's not that bad, and not super profitable. We hoped it would work out better and donations would come in so we didn't have to do ads, but oh well.

Andy, you are figuring in that we need to pay for a full year of hosting once this six months goes out right? I just want to make sure we are in agreement that we have to pay for the hosting we've already paid for and then hosting for the following year before doing anything with that money...

[Andy]

Right, right. I'm not going to do anything with it unless I've got the go-ahead.