Hi Stewart,
thanks for your post, I know you meant it in a positive way. I have mentioned this in the past, I hate talking about this and only do it when absolutely necessary. The problem is that it is not just my laptop, the issue is that as this is taking up more and more time (mostly due to the ever increasing number of users), I would ideally start reducing my part-time job, which I actually find very boring and dont like doing at all. I would much more enjoy working on MT. Unfortunately that would mean I would have to offset the money made in my part-time job with MT. And this is ongoing even if I replace my PC (which Im sure I eventually will). All money I made in my job I use for things like rent, basic food, clothes etc. - i.e. not things that I could do without or possibility to save money.
I have talked about why monetizing is not an option here in this blog comment:
1. some people really cannot afford paying for it – I want even those to have the possibility
2. my goal is not to make money out of this, but to enjoy working on it and to enjoy seeing other people´s websites
3. making this commercial, even if just for 1 dollar, would make things much more complicated in terms of all licenses to many scripts used in the template
4. implementing the actual payment gate in the page is also not that easy and I dont even know how to do it and how it would work. (eg. – sending download link only to someone who paid? How do you then prevent them from sending it to other person as a zip file too…)
5. people would look at you totally differently if you sold it compared to when you just offer it. I like to be seen as the one who does this because I enjoy it and because it makes me really happy to see other people´s site. You could say Im not a good businessman, but I think thats not true 😀 I actually am, just that this is not a business for me…
6. taxes – also would be much more complicated
AND….
Meteotemplate is actually something that helped me to learn programming as such and I am still learning it and there are (fortunately rarely) moments where something does not work no matter what I try and I have no clue why. In such case I have piece of mind in a sense I bear no responsibility and that person can only say, well too bad, unfortunately it does not work. It would be different if they thought – hang on, I paid for this and its not working and he didnt fix it.
So I will not even consider that option. It is just not in my nature to do that.
Other point is that I would say about 95% of all people who have ever donated are people who also participate on this forum - and I really appreciate your help. The problem is that most people dont read the newsletter, dont read the forum, dont read the blog - and I guess dont even read the part in the wiki where I mention that given there are no ads and given my situation, this is the only way it can work - I do not expect anyone to donate for every plugin, update, block... of course not. Not even if I offer them support. But overall, vast majority of users never consider this.
Since you have already posted it here Im not against it, but I would never mention it again myself. I tried other ways, eg. placing ads in the YouTube videotutorials, but just if someone is interested - if you ever consider using monetization on YouTube, it is not a big deal
After a week, with 1400 video views I made 0.06 USD
One thing I hate is when people feel sorry for me - that is one of the reasons I dont like talking about this. I also want to say that 3 of you have offered me their older laptop! And I really appreciate this, though I kindly declined that offer - first, one day when I get something new I want a desktop PC, possibility to configure it yourself, easier updates, better value for money and I no longer need it to be portable (I did before because I used it at uni and high school). And probably get something more powerful, I could afford something second-hand probably even now, but there is no point really in having something temporary again... it just feels so great when Im at work, even just with i3 and everything is just so smooth... so I would rather really get something new and powerful and enjoy working with it.
Most importantly however, I would not feel good about this, thats just the way I am. I have been made similar offers by other people, not just with laptops and I think I can say it because it shows how nice they are - Boris offered me a free MB Pro and Brian offered me a free WD license. In the former case I also declined it, in the latter I accepted it, but that was only because I dont really use WD myself, I only needed it to test things, my PC is not on 24/7 so I use other ways of getting my data online.
My dad, being a CEO in one of the largest companies here, has many times offered me help, but I also told him I feel better with less resources, but being totally independent.
Once again Stewart, thank you very much, it is all very complicated, I wish I could just remove the PayPal button completely and enjoy working on this in my free time. That would just make it all so much easier, but Im in a difficult position. Ken, Wim... they also have these buttons, but never talk about donations and I wish I could do the same.... on the other hand of course I would rather reduce part-time job and go home from here (Im in my office right now) and work on MT, be able to offer support (which is often complicated at home because I cannot use TeamViewer or even view some people´s sites). I just wanted to show you that my laptop is one problem, but it is a bit more complex.
One thing I do know is that even if I had to for some time completely stop this, I can guarantee the page as such will be up and running because the hosting+domain I think I can cover myself even if I had zero incomes from this.
