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Re-visiting how donations help us

Started by Towelie, May 28, 2017, 03:36 PM

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Towelie

May 28, 2017, 03:36 PM Last Edit: May 28, 2017, 03:41 PM by Towelie
I'm going to keep this short and to the subject. I was asked to post a break-out on how we spend our donations and how donations help SFT.

Our expenses:
Main (Survival + Pixelmon)   $116 / mo
Games (bTeam + Lost + PE + Ark + GMod + Creative + Factions) $50 / mo
Website (website + forum + ssl cert) $66.739776 / mo
Buycraft (payment processor eg /buy) $12.783382 / mo
Backup (Dropbox Yearly) $9.2268 / mo
Advertising   $200 / mo

Total $454.74 / mo

Clarifications:
- Main and Games are dedicated servers. So shutting down Creative + Factions + Lost for example would save no money because we would still have the machine for bTeam which is still our 2nd most popular server, as well as PE and so on
- Advertising is needed at this point and it's not optional. Without it, we wouldn't last. $200 doesn't go far in the way of advertising. A bid for a "sponsored spot" on a list site goes as high as $1000+. So $200+ is the minimum possible. Preferably we should be putting $300+ in ads
- Please note that apart from this, I also host a server in my apartment for SFT. This server is the "Dev server" and is used to host the bots (Music Bot for discord, Skype bot and dev servers for Survival where we build new spawns / train staff / test plugins). I don't take any money for the power bill or for the internet line I have dedicated to this server.

How donations help
Your donations help us pay the bills, and most importantly, keep SFT alive by means of advertising. As you can see $454 / mo is the minimum necesary for SFT to not shut down, but obviously, the more we get the better. Because more money gets into advertising, more players will come resulting that, more donations and in turn it makes SFT healthier and more able to sustain itself.
Patreon is probably the best way for someone to support SFT because not only does it give us revenue, it also gives us peace of mind, knowing people are commited to donating monthly (and getting some cool perks following that)


Breakout of May 2017
- In May 2017, Buycraft shows a revenue of $561.5. Out of that $225 is actually me who sold my 3DS to magl and I decided to have her send that money to SFT instead of me. So a more real revenue figure for May is $336.5 + another $133 from Patreon (out of which $40 / mo are also pledged by me). So that is the bare minimum and May was what could be considered a good month compared to previous ones where we made a lot less. How are we alive if we didn't make our monthly costs for the past few months? Because anything extra from the previous years was left in our accounts (which are running dry) instead of being spent. So when I said your money was used to pay the bills, I meant that. I didn't take any money even though we had a hefty surplus ~3-4 years ago. Instead that's how it's possible to keep SFT alive now.

Shiny Charts




PS: How's this for transparency?


Follow me on Instagram (i post cool stuff) https://www.instagram.com/toweliewtf/
Psst, got a Nintendo Switch? Add me -> SW-6574-1607-3796

Zeph

Thank you for making this tow, i believe the breakdown of income and expenses will help people to realise how their individual donation can go a long way, best of luck with sfts future <3

Towelie

In the post I sound like I'm angry for putting my own money towards SFT. I'm not. I just wanted to point that out. Thankfully, I now have a decent paying job so I'm able to do that. I wasn't in the past. Compared to ~3 years ago, I make 6 times more so.. that's something xD


Follow me on Instagram (i post cool stuff) https://www.instagram.com/toweliewtf/
Psst, got a Nintendo Switch? Add me -> SW-6574-1607-3796

Towelie

Specs:
Main: Xeon 4c8t, 64GB RAM, 3*300GB SSD's, 1gbps
Games: Xeon, 4c8t 32GB RAM, 3*160GB SSD's, 500mbps
Web: Xeon,4c8t 32GB RAM, 3*120GB SSD's, 500mbps
Dev: Xeon, 4c8t 16GB RAM, 2*1TB HDD's, ~10mbps


In case someone cares. We host at OVH and SYS


Follow me on Instagram (i post cool stuff) https://www.instagram.com/toweliewtf/
Psst, got a Nintendo Switch? Add me -> SW-6574-1607-3796

Zeph

Quote from: Towelie on May 28, 2017, 03:43 PMSpecs:
Main: Xeon 4c8t, 64GB RAM, 3*300GB SSD's, 1gbps
Games: Xeon, 4c8t 32GB RAM, 3*160GB SSD's, 500mbps
Web: Xeon,4c8t 32GB RAM, 3*120GB SSD's, 500mbps
Dev: Xeon, 4c8t 16GB RAM, 2*1TB HDD's, ~10mbps


In case someone cares. We host at OVH and SYS
Is there any possibility that any of the server hardware could be downgraded without too much of a downgrade in perceived performance to possibly help save costs? @Towelie

Towelie

Quote from: DarthAxonaxirah on May 28, 2017, 04:08 PM
Quote from: Towelie on May 28, 2017, 03:43 PMSpecs:
Main: Xeon 4c8t, 64GB RAM, 3*300GB SSD's, 1gbps
Games: Xeon, 4c8t 32GB RAM, 3*160GB SSD's, 500mbps
Web: Xeon,4c8t 32GB RAM, 3*120GB SSD's, 500mbps
Dev: Xeon, 4c8t 16GB RAM, 2*1TB HDD's, ~10mbps


In case someone cares. We host at OVH and SYS
Is there any possibility that any of the server hardware could be downgraded without too much of a downgrade in perceived performance to possibly help save costs? @Towelie
Nope. Not really possible. Minecraft servers demand a ton of ram. We could save another ~20 bucks on the main machine but that would mean moving to a lower tier and it would mean in the event of an emergency (server going down) instead of 24/7 support we'd have to settle for 8h / day support. Meaning if the server went down outside their schedule, it could be down for days. Seing as minecraft server lists rank by uptime, that could be disastreous.
The way things are now, are after we have cut costs to the lowest possible level without sacrificing functionality.


Follow me on Instagram (i post cool stuff) https://www.instagram.com/toweliewtf/
Psst, got a Nintendo Switch? Add me -> SW-6574-1607-3796