obligatory preface: we're 100%-user funded and everything you donate to us specifically goes to the website, or any outside labor we pay to do something for us.
overall expenses this month: $523.79
as expected, a full month of running on last month's setup has come in pretty high. luckily, we expect downsizing to begin this month (and we have a pretty good idea of what we're going to do) so this will be our last month of costs at this scale. our initial estimation is that we can halve or better what we're paying now on a monthly basis.
$428.73 for Digital Ocean hosting, which can be further subdivided into
- $336.00 for hosting the site itself
- $67.20 for backups
- $25.53 for site snapshots
$28.87 for Hive, an internal chat platform we've set up (also being hosted on Digital Ocean)
- $24.07 for hosting Hive
- $4.80 for backups
~$39.16 for email functionality, which can be further subdivided into
- $35/mo for Mailgun (handles outbound emails, so approval/denial/notifications emails; also lets us not get marked as spam)
- ~$4.16/mo ($50/yr, already paid in full) for Fastmail (handles all inbound emails)
$22.87 for BackBlaze (redundant backup system that's standalone from Digital Ocean)
overall contributions this month: $1,310.90
support still more than covers our expenses, and particularly with our upcoming downsizing we don't believe this will be a problem. breakdown is:
- 100 monthly contributions, totaling $624.95
- 2 yearly contributions, totaling $67.10
- 36 one-time donations, totaling $618.85
between monthly and yearly contributions we are still sustainable overall—but now that the Reddit bump has ebbed most of our savings will come in the form of lowering costs and not "sheer amount of money being thrown our way."
total end of month balance: $4,347.79
expense runway, assuming no further donations
- assuming expenses like ours this month: we have about 8 months and one week of runway
I feel like those of us who have contributed should receive in return an adorable cat gif.
Not like, to display or anything. Just something happy that bounces in our mailboxes after we contribute. Maybe the cat is wearing a hat! Or maybe the cat has gotten into a humorous predicament. Or maybe the cat is riding a dog. Or a human! The possibilities are endless, the joy boundless; and pragmatically speaking, it makes our monthly receipts for donation slide ride on through with less risk of begrudging it :D
I am not a business cat and you should not take this as business advice
Can I ask what is perhaps a very silly question - why are you advocating for cute cat gifs as thanks on BEEhaw, shouldn't it be adorable bee gifs? We contribute, and the little bee gathers up pollen and then poots a happy little glitter confetti pollen fart or something? Idk.
I'm allergic as fuck to bees and wasps, I had a bad wasp encounter last year that has left me with PTSD regarding everybody who goes BUZZ BUZZ, I vastly prefer cats and dogs as animals to share space with - but this is Beehaw, it just seems totally wrong for any official anything to not involve bees.
I just figured the cat gif well was deeper than the bee gif well. I didn't want them to move heaven and earth, just tape a piece of candy to the receipt, yanno?
Oh totally. I guess I was thinking of it as something a community member might be delighted to make, like all the other fun bee-themed imagery.