MechSpecs Moving to a VPS Soon. Want to help out?

Mech Specs now gets around 115,000 unique visits per month! Apparently we are now a "community". Yay!

However, because of this we are beginning to bounce our CPU Time Per Day limit of 100 minutes. We are looking at moving to a new host or getting a VPS which will allow us to continue to expand. Our current host has informed us that if we continue to bounce the limit the site will simply be shut down or throttled. Not so "Yay".

With that said we are exploring several options; some include just passing the hat around to see if we can cover the 25-35$ a month a VPS would cost (cheaper if we pay up front than in monthly installments), another is merchandizing and finally the last option is a subscription based system for some parts of the site; whether it be rolling any new mech sections into the Benefactors area for a few weeks or moving all our news feeds and game mechanic discussions in there etc.

Anyways, since we would all like to have as much open access as possible, and before we get to all that subscription stuff, we will just simply throw this out there and inform you guys of what is going on behind the curtain.

 

Thanks for the heads up, nice to see the site grow.

Would a poll check on the different methods be worth it or is that premature?

 

There, I added one.

 

I like free shit.

Mostly cuz I can barely afford to keep gas in my carmech, but whatever's clever. Do your thing, Mike.

 

if its only 25 to 35$ you would only need like 2 to 5$ a month from like a few people. Then that might help with making more videos

 

Actually when PGI stops screwing around with weapons and builds on a bi weekly basis that will help out too LOL

 

I'm looking in to this now. NGNG has a store but they have to pay like 60$ a month just to keep it open. CafePress and Zazzle are two options but just to create a product on say a Coffee Mug it costs $16.95 (Zazzle) and then whatever you want the "royalty" percentage to be. CafePress is $16.00 for the same 11oz Coffee Mug and again you set your royalty percentage.

Expensive shit.

 

Merchandise and Subscription as a follow up would be the way, imo.

I picked Subscription because you only had a specific option and I think it is the best way to go.

 

A bit of a mix between merchandising and getting more donations (I am up for that).
mybe just throw your things on deviantart or something and sell them... think there is no setup fee at least.
I don't mind having a small bar of commercial, and I will probably click on it once per day or something, as long as there is NO SOUND!

I know I would support it in one way or another.

I do suggest to keep the spec-n-build section open to public though, that is the point of this sight, right?

 

I'm working on a store front system that would allow me to do something like you suggest WITHOUT having inventory products and do shipping myself. I know some folks out there do it but I have a full time job already and don't need another one.

So far I am looking at Coffee Mugs (White) with our logo that say "All Systems Caffeinated" and then a Coolant Flush Beer Stein (with just our logo on it).

 

Donations, obviously.

Merch would be AWESOME. I would totally rock some MechSpecs tshirts/hoodies.

Also, I still hate Paypal.

 

Paypal is the one universal thing that everyone takes LOL at least 99% of people and companies take it.

 

I know, I know. They are a great company for quick and easy personal transactions. My company is actually just having to move into accepting Credit Cards instead of individual invoice and purchase orders... CCs are a pain.

Maybe this VPS change will be the push that will force me to spend the time on the phone cutting my way through all the bull(ogna) "service" layers Paypal has to settle this three year old battle... I want a damn MechSpecs shirt! lol

 

Donations and Merchandise, id love a beer stein and a tshirt to swag around in lol! Also donations as not everybody want or can afford merch.

 

I'd go for donations and merch, subscriptions are good but only as long as we are talking a tiny amount. For a F2P game, most people will be ok with occasional but not periodically "large" sums, IMHO.

Personally, being a euro, I have a hard time seeing merch being a possibility transocean shippingwise. If you go that route Michael, might be worth a look at the IP hit demographics to see if it's worth a merch sale connection inside europe?

 

+1 for what Bolt says.

Merch would be cool - but hardly depending on where you are. Aylek is very right in this:

[quote author=Aylek link=topic=3936.msg24253#msg24253 date=1381134741]
Shipping fees to Germany would probably be horrible, though.
[/quote]

Maybe you need an EU Merch-Outpost Would work for shirts, high-performance-mousemats, Michael-autograph-cards and stuff like that...as they can´t get crushed by the mail-providers.

 

Zazzle is the option that I have been looking at and they do ship internationally however I am unsure of the actual rates for shipping. They do have international portals but that does not mean that the products actually ship from those domestic territories.

The problem with these types of systems is that they charge insane prices; $16.95 for a blank 11 oz coffee mug becomes $21.95 for one with MechSpecs custom imagery and that is BEFORE shipping. MechSpecs would only receive approximately 5$ of that. The Beer Stein is even MORE expensive. I haven't even begun to price clothing yet. Yes, you can set the royalty percentage per product and that is something I could fiddle with.

I have not found a single european storefront / system that works along a similar principle.

 

I would probably be willing to
Donate,
Pay a small subscription fee,
and buy merch.

But I might have more than the average amount of free cash available. When I can sneak it away from the wife, anyhow.

I had read the other post about the coding work you need someone to pick up too, and I would love to do that (I'm a C/C++ developer by trade) but between my actual work keeping me busy about 60 hours a week, plus the fact that web development would put some learning curve in front of me, and my family... I wouldn't be able to commit to timelines. That being said, if there's some way I can have a look at what the plan is and what needs to be done I'd be willing to look into and see if I can figure out a schedule, or at least put out some of the smaller tasks.