Donation button

I don't find an easy way to make a donation to this site. Why not? After all the help and support I have received in my few months as a member, I want to kick in, and encourage others to as well. Other forums I am involved in have this feature, and it gets you a "donating member" tag on your avatar as an incentive.

It's not something we've considered or talked about to be honest. The 6 of us that started this decided to be self funded so there would be no ads ever. Even our Sponsors don't pay for anything, just a link back to us on their website.
The sticker and T shirt sales have replenished everything we've spent to date.

I think that is commendable. But wouldn't it be a good idea to have a little something in the coffers, just in case something should come up in the future? Provided voluntarily by members of course, and not sponsors or ads.

It's just a thought.

And it's a good thought, don't get me wrong. Starting a forum isn't as expensive as one might think and the amount of the basic costs are out there, you only have to research it to find out. At the recommendation of our very experienced Tinkerer, we went with the cheapest hosting package available at the server we're with and that literally only costs us about $100 a year, and the domain costs are $36 a year total. We're still only at about 66% server capacity right now and it took us 14 months to get that far. There were some other one-time costs, but as the forum sits right now it can be maintained for around $200 a year easily, but of course that will increase as we grow. Without divulging a dollar value, we're more than set financially for the next couple of years with money to invest in more stickers and t-shirts or other promotional items as we choose.

We will certainly keep the idea in mind for the future.

If this does happen - please remember to add a recurring donation option.


-Ed
1972 CL350

Not sure how we would do that but I do see a section of our software for "paid subscriptions". We'd have to figure out how to set it up, or maybe a member's PayPal or other payment method would have a provision for recurring payments, like a bank's billpay would. Either way, it certainly isn't something we need to do in the foreseeable future. Unless we get sued by you know who.

ancientdad said:

And it's a good thought, don't get me wrong. Starting a forum isn't as expensive as one might think and the amount of the basic costs are out there, you only have to research it to find out. At the recommendation of our very experienced Tinkerer, we went with the cheapest hosting package available at the server we're with and that literally only costs us about $100 a year, and the domain costs are $36 a year total. We're still only at about 66% server capacity right now and it took us 14 months to get that far. There were some other one-time costs, but as the forum sits right now it can be maintained for around $200 a year easily, but of course that will increase as we grow. Without divulging a dollar value, we're more than set financially for the next couple of years with money to invest in more stickers and t-shirts or other promotional items as we choose.

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Glad to hear VHT is in good shape for the near future.!!! Thanks to all who make it the pleasant resource it has become !!! I'll be in for a version 2.0 Tee shirt when you all decide to raise more funds.

Yakeye said:

I'll be in for a version 2.0 Tee shirt when you all decide to raise more funds.

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Im guessing they’ll sell out at first release! But put me down for one also, please.


Tom - 1982 CM450E / Midwest USA

I'm glad to hear that the sticker/t-shirt sales help cover the site costs. What about doing special t-shirts (say, annually) that feature a really nice photo of a particular Vintage Honda Twin along with the VHT logo? I may be wrong about this, but if VHT controlled the photo rights, I imagine it should be possible to get batches of such shirts printed. Members could submit their photos and vote on the one used for each run. I have ordered several t-shirts like this for myself and one shop even allowed me to use an image from an old Honda magazine ad.

I would not care for a full frontal photo Tee, because personally I don't like shirts with more ink (or worse, iron on) than material, as they don't breathe well. I vote for hats. I need a new cool hat.

Back to the beginning… until hats are an option, and if you still want to donate more, you can order more stickers. It’s as simple as PayPal… just a thought.


Tom - 1982 CM450E / Midwest USA

OK, among all the other things on my plate I'll make some room to look into hats and T-shirt 2.0. Some of the things on the plate are squirming around so they get priority.
You do have to understand that all the shirts or hats have to be printed and paid for when done, minimum order of 50, which is a healthy outlay of money that's parked collecting dust.
This last run started sales 8-20-20 and a little over a year later there are still 4 shirts left.
Black and Red sold out within 8 days of one another but that was still 11 months after sales started.

No rush here.
(I’m not going to ask about squirmy things.)


Tom - 1982 CM450E / Midwest USA

LongDistanceRider said:

You do have to understand that all the shirts or hats have to be printed and paid for when done, minimum order of 50,

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Oh, I know. I have played in bands all my life, so I get the merch angle.