Big Paws Only Dog Forums
BPO General Forum => General Board for Big Dogs with Big Paws => : Bear April 18, 2006, 01:30:29 AM
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Jaime and I had never really planned on needing help running this site, and it's tough to ask, but here we are crossing the threshold between time spent paying for server, support and bandwidth costs and time just creating, coding and designing. As you'll read in the details, Jaime and I have supported the costs largely because of our love of this community and our family of big dogs, but also because we want to contribute to the lives of other gentle giants. Please see the below link for more details.
http://www.bigpawsonly.com/support-big-paws.php
If you can help, and it can be any amount really, it will be graciously appreciated.
Michael, Jaime & Bear
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BPO is the best site - EVER! I am addicted and am sooooo grateful for this community of caring, selfless, entertaining, friendly big dog loving folk.
You, Jaime, and Bear are doing amazing work on behalf of us all! Thanks for everything y'all do!
Help is on the way...
p.s. if I win the Mega Millions lottery tonight, I will hook up BPO big time! ;D
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Definately pitching in, I just need to figure out how much I can manage.
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Glad to help! Wish it could be more, but there's always next payday.
Thanks Ya'll.
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Sadie and I are glad to pitch in! We love it here! I just wish we could help more. There's more coming next payday!!!
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I love BPO and everyone here. As soon as I have some money I will gladly support. I feel awful cause right now I just cant donate money :-[
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;D DITTO DITTO DITTO that as soon as i can transfer funds i would gladly help i love this site and have learned so much from it! Marina - Bryce
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I'll see if I can help any. It wouldn't be a lot, but I'll see! I love this site already! It is the best of its kind!
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Friday is payday, so I'll have SOMETHING....
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i'm more than happy to help... i wish i could do more... i've become very attached to this place...
& this new addition to my extended family!
xox.
-k.
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OF COURSE I'll help out! Afterall, BPO is my second home! I wasn't able to donate as much as I wish I could - but I sure hope it helps! ;)
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Thank you soooooooo much for the support! We really can't express how grateful we are and how much this helps. :-*
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Glad to help! You guys are so wonderful to all of us and keeping this site running. We greatly appreciate it. I hope that our small donation will be helpful.
Keep up the fantastic work!
Hugs from,
Anita & the 3 Newfies from NJ
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Thanks you everyone for your support. It is really humbling to ask those that we love for help to keep this site going. As we grow though, so does the amount of love, kindness, and friendship that others help to contribute regularly. This is the best place on earth (IMO) and I am so thrilled that with your continued help we will be able to keep Our Home alive and well.
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Thanks you everyone for your support. It is really humbling to ask those that we love for help to keep this site going. As we grow though, so does the amount of love, kindness, and friendship that others help to contribute regularly. This is the best place on earth (IMO) and I am so thrilled that with your continued help we will be able to keep Our Home alive and well.
Ya'll shouldn't feel bad about asking for help. These websites do get expensive (not to mention time consuming) and it isn't like you're asking for our firstborn! I do appreciate this place so much. It supports my dog addiction!
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We would be so happy to help in ANY way we can! :) I LOVE this site. I have truly felt so welcome here and it is so nice to have a place where I know that others share my love of BIG dogs! :)
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Will be donating tomorrow or the next day. Thank you for all your hard work-this site is great!
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You guys have created something special here. Through all your efforts you've brought together such a great group of people. I wish I could do more...Thanks!
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I know bandwith is not cheap, and you have to be pushing a goodly amount with the images, etc.
Please let us know if you aren't getting enough in donations.
Thanks , Brandon
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I gave what I could for this month. I will give more at a later date too. I just want to thank you for all that you do. ;D
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right now things are strapped at the Fritsche house, but this site means so much to me. Please keep bumping this topic so I can be sure I don't miss the opportunity to pitch in next month when the finances even out a little more.
Jeanne
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i feel really bad for using the site, but not contributing, but i rewally can barely make rent. sorry!
Leah
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Sorry! I can't give anything at this time! But I want to shortly! And I've been putting the website's name around to my friends who own dogs! Great website! I love it here.
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Im sure it would even help $1 or $5 to give bpo.Geez we have over 3700 members.
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This is a great site! I am new to BPO but am happy to help out and keep it running.
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I'll definitely pitch in some money.
Question - Do you make any money if we click on the ads by google? because I would be happy to click away if you do.  :)
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bumpity-bump....
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I'd give more if you would use BIGGER FONTS
I'm getting old and grumpy!
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Oh, PupDaddy, please put your glasses on, like I have to do...makes us much less grumpy!!!
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Can you give us an idea of what it costs per month to run this site?
And are the donations rolling in since you made it know you need help? I sure hope so.Will be sending something your way on our next payday. Keep up the good work.
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Hello ?
Hello back! ;D & bumping!
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I just wanted to say that I am waiting for my paypal password reset so that I can send you some money. I am hoping to add you guys to my monthly list of items to pay. I love this site and I have made new friends and learned a lot and will do what ever I can to help keep it alive. Thank You Michael and Jaime, you guys are great.
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Can you give us an idea of what it costs per month to run this site?
And are the donations rolling in since you made it know you need help? I sure hope so.Will be sending something your way on our next payday. Keep up the good work.
I had been wanting to help, however
no one ever answered this question above that I posted
over a month ago.
I know there is a new post from what I am guessing
is the admin of this site asking for more help,
I see many saying they will help.
In order for me to help I would like to have my questions answered?
How much does it take to run this site per month?
Are you achieving that with all those who said they would help or are you falling short each month?
Before I donate I always like to know what a groups
monthly needs are and how close they are to achieving that goal for the month they request help.
Thank you
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Thank you again for the help everyone. As I told most of you, it is uber helpful, and will go far.
It looks like this post was resurected from a few months ago and it looks like I missed some of the comments and questions and would like to respond.
First, if you can't help, please don't feel bad because you use the site. That's absolutely absurd - the best feeling for us in the world is having so many compliments on this project and everyone having a good time.
As for the financial side of Big Paws, this place is always in the hole - and that's ok. We have ideas that would only see the light of day with the support of Big Paws, and someday, some of them might just come to life!
While I won't go into numbers for fear of me complaining or inviting ways to monitize the site, or a variety of other reasons, I will say that we are in the big leagues now and the big dog server requires quite a bit of horsepower. We run a dedicated Unix server with over 3 GB of bandwidth. We also have an extra 24/7 Apache support hotline for those extra problems that we're not smart enough to figure out. One little problem, tipping to far one way can spiral beyond what we normally expect and prepare for. That's when it can get rough.
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Seems like you profit from this website... you make clothing, calendars and now need help running a website....
If and that is a big IF, you needed help running the site, you should give a dollar amount that needs to be raised but when is the cut off, how long do you take money for and you never state how much is needed?.
Sounds like you (both of you) are taking advantage of good people and their money... I am on a ton of messageboards and i have never seen so much help needed to run a message board... I guess, I like my dogs are far more suspecious than most but, this says shady all over it
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planet molosser hosts tons of images and doesnt require a cent, molosserdogs.c om... they have donation area with a set amount and who donated an how much... they host far more images than this site, have more people on it etc...
people have asked michael a few times the costs and he has yet to answer... it is very vague...Â
Do you honestly think he sells merchandise to not profit from it... the almight dollar rules all
How much does it cost to run the site.. that is the question and why cant he answer it... it has been asked by other posters as well.
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Babs, if you have a problem with Michael and Jamie, and you find it needed to accuse them of pretty much trying to con us into giving them money, then why do you continue to visit this site? Obviously you don't really have any respect or care for friendship in the people who run the site, or the people who enjoy visiting here.
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I think he doesn't answer because it would probably embarrass us all that he and Jaime have been carrying it solo for so long. I'm in the privleged situation to have meet Michael, Jaime (and BEAR!!) a couple of times, and there are few people that are so forth-right and honest -- face to face! These are really, REALLY good people!!!
I agree that if you are not comfortable contributing, then don't. I don't think anyone will think less of you. But please don't question Michael's and Jaime's honesty. I, for one, would be offended by that.
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I am sorry, if you are asking for monetary support - you have an obligation to report how it is spent.
There is no need to be sensitive about it. It is just part of tax laws in this country. With advertisement and merchandise - this site is a BUSINESS, if the owners do not realise that they may get in trouble with the IRS - this should serve as a wake up call.
It donations are stricly to run the site and not for profit - there should be a meter running "looking for $200 this month, got $77", so people who can - contribute this month, and if the amount has been met - they can do it next month instead.
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't send the money to someone with a very nice site if there is no information about how much is needed and how close are they to the target. The only reason for not disclosing this information - is the hope to collect more than needed to run the site. And the opposite - if you are not meeting the monthly goal - disclosure will stimulate a few more people to donate.
This has nothing to do with this site in particular, just common sense, really.
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You can call me what you will...but altest I know I am not a lollipop...
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I'm dropping something in the mail on the way home tonight.
I have no reservatins about it. i guess to the people who do have reservations.. .i see one of you is a new member. you stick around a while and you'll think differently and see there are NO motives behind Michael and Jaime's asking for donations.
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You can call me what you will...but altest I know I am not a lollipop...
Ummm... Ok?
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Babs... why so hostile?
It is your choice to not contribute money to the site, just as it is MY choice to contribute. I have benefited greatly from the BPO community and want to help it continue to grow and succeed. I have nothing but the utmost respect for Michael and Jaime! They both work extremely hard for this site and I have absolutely no reason at all to think their intentions are anything but admirable! And quite frankly it appears you don't either. If you have such disdain for them, then perhaps you should consider moving on from BPO instead of waging attacks of slander.
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am i the only one who hopes maybe Bear gets a few toys out of this? ::)
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Hey everyone. Just to clarify, it’s not that we can’t, it’s that we don’t. A. we don’t really keep track as this is, at the moment just a hobby. If we did, we would invite suggestions from across the board that we’re not interested in entertaining. We like the site the way it is, we could obviously do better in certain areas, but we could also be a lot worse. As I explained to some of our friends, sometimes costs reflect mistakes that are of our own cause. Because we create a lot of our own software, to provide something different we’re simply in a different world. We just paid a $740 support bill, for programming errors that caused larger problems. We have contractors to program and debug. A lot, we do ourselves. We pay overage fees. In fact, it seems since the beginning of this site, we’ve been paying overage fees. The very first month we killed 180 other websites as we shared hosting space with them and the Big Paws traffic killed the server. Our provider forced us to a virtual shared space and allocated half the resources to our site only to do the same thing only days later. We now have an entire server for this site that brings even more issues – namely support costs, and we STILL go over. Is there an exact amount of money spent? Sure, but is there an exact amount of money needed? No! Jaime and I manage, as the costs are offset by revenue, and we have enough to pay the rest. Our requests come at times when unanticipated problems occur, and they’re enough to make us uncomfortable.
Next, your comparison of mossler dogs hosting more and providing more is factually untrue. As Amazon’s Alexa, an independent traffic reporting tool, ranks BPO, on a scale from number 1 to nothing, at pos: 217,219. Mossler is below the one million mark. See the graph below. What it comes down to is traffic and resources to serve that traffic.
Finally, this is request for support from our friends and those that *want* to contribute, who enjoy the site and want help us out. There is no set amount, you don’t have to help. A health amount of skepticism is healthy for certain, but untrue accusations are not needed. If you know us, you would know of our convictions, and likewise, we know of our friends’.
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Let me say that I am not a very trusting person. That said I did send money to help BPO - the reason is: I have gotten more free and good advise on this site. I have also asked for and gotten prayers for sick loved ones. I have also been able to vent to my BPO friends about all kinds of situations with my fur and skin babies.
No one is telling ANYONE that they have to donate money - no one will be denied membership if they choose not to send money so if we CHOSE to donate money that isn't up to you. You don't have the right to call us names or doubt our intelligence. We all make choices in life your choice can include not sending anything or staying off this site if it offends you.
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I know a little something about message boards and that is they dont make money, they COST money. The bigger they get, the more they COST. There is no revenue system in the world that has made a message board a profitable source of income. People generally pitch in because they enjoy it and they want to keep it around. Not for any other reason. I've seen people like this before and they make me wonder, if they're so passionately against donating, why do they protest? Simply don't! Enjoy the free fun you're having. Enjoy not having to manage everything, paying all the bills and making sure everyone is happy.
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Just in case there are others out there who are concerned, let me tell you that I have been/am a member of other message boards, and the ones that have been the most valuable to me have been the ones who ask for donations to keep the community as it is. A "ticker" of who paid what makes it seem more like Michael and Jaime are providing a service for us, which they aren't. They are providing a place for us to share our ups and downs with our pets and friends. I have belonged to one board for six years, and over the years I have been asked for various contributions, which I gladly gave. The understanding has always been that those who can, will give. Those who can't, don't. I appreciate that Michael and Jaime aren't trying to turn away those who may be in a tough financial position by posting who paid how much. No one wants to be embarrassed by how much or how little they can afford.
I have no idea how much BPO costs, but I know that they do it as a labor of love. When a friend asks for help, especially a small donation, I do not hesitate to chip in. And, you know, if Michael and Jaime use my few dollars to get a burger and fries, it's worth it because I've seen how responsive they are to problems with the boards. I'm happy to do what I can to help.
Thanks for everything!
Tracy
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As a fairly new member to this site- I want everyone to know that I am gladly contributing- I cant do a lot as a lot of my extra income is going to all of the fur kids in the way of feeding, vet bills etc, but I am contributing, and happily ( I have a problem with my pay pal password that I am working on,but as soon as I can- $$ is on the way.)
Since finding this site, I have found a group of people who I can honestly say I consider friends. I look forward to coming home ( or sneaking on at work :) ) to read the posts on the site and sharing.
I do not personally know Michael and Jaime, but I would be honored to be able to meet them at some point in my life.
Here's the deal guys, if you give, you are donating. Donations are not required, but are appreciated if and when received.
I would think that if a monthly "donation" was required then members who choose to "donate" monthly would want to know where the money was allocated.
I also think that some of the requests for costs were for those of us who do not want to see this site go away, and knowing the basic cost would help some decide how much to give and if they could give extra at some times vs others, then they would.
Michael and Jaime, thank you for everything. Please do not let someone who has a bitter attitude about donating, or thier hurtful words change anything that you are doing for this site.
I would be totally lost with out BPO and all of the wonderful people that I have met.Again thank you from the bottom of my heart.
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I have been a member on other boards. None can compare to this one(IMO). The members of this board have been here when I had questions, problems or just to lend an "ear" and share many laughs together. We are brought together by a common interest which bonds us. I have made friends here that will last a life time. I have met a friend 10 minutes away that I would trust with the care of my dogs and not worry about them while in her care or count on her if I was stuck in a situation with the dogs. I know she would be there to help and I for her.
None of the above would have been possible if it were not for Michael and Jamie. I am enternally grateful to them. So, if they need a donation here and there , I don't mind at all.It is MY choice to give. If they have a few dollars left over and buy a starbucks --well, they deserve it for all that they give us. They give us one of the most valuable and precious things in life. They give to us thier time. Thier time to organize and maintain a wonderful forum, time to organize photo contests and give presents and awards. Thank you Michael and Jamie ;D
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THIS IS STACY BTW
WOW, i am just reading these posts for the first time today.. I agree with the other posters that this website has been nothing but a great resource, networking, and an amazing huge giant friendship with other people that share a great passion for big paws.
First of all, Jamie and Michael I would like to say THANK YOU for creating this website and having the passion to keep it going! I can only imagine how difficult it is to ask for some aid here and there.
Second, I don't know the first thing about running a website and the first thing about costs etc. But I don't think that Michael or Jamie would be the type of people to "USE" BPO as a way to make money! and even if they were (IN SOME FAR FAR WORLD) then let them be the ones that have to go to sleep at night, not critize them. And quite a few people know there home address! if that was such a concern would you think they would be giving out there home addres??
We have been on this website for over a year now and I understand that selling things online can make profit, but most of the time when people sell things theres usually a defecite. PLUS i would assume that Jamie would put the money towards paying the costs. ANd never once has Jamie ever asked for money in return for the bibs that she sends out every month!! ANd I know how much fabric can cost! ;) hehehehe
If people want to donate money then let them. If you honestly have a problem with this whole ordeal, i think that the most responsible mature way to go about it would have been to PM Jamie or Michael with your concerns. Not Post it on a board where obv. everyone is so passionate and expressing there concern.
ITs the old, "IF you can't say nothing nice, dont say nothing at all!!"
Anywho, I myself am very upset by this and again would like to just say THANK YOU to Jamie and Michael for creating this amazing website, if it ever comes to a time when you need to have a fee, I WILL BE GLAD TO SIGN UP!!
and THANK YOU TO ALL OUR BPO FAMILY for sticking up for this cause as well!!
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You can call me what you will...but altest I know I am not a lollipop...
Just letting you know that, in this case, if it makes you happy, please call me a lollipop.
I've found it is a good thing in life to trust someone until they prove they can't be trusted.
I trust Jaime and Michael.
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You can call me what you will...but altest I know I am not a lollipop...Â
Just letting you know that, in this case, if it makes you happy, please call me a lollipop.Â
I LOVE LOLLIPOPS! Esp the ones you can lick for days! Tell me, how many licks does it take to get to the center of a toostie pop!? :P
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Its very obvious you all like lollipops...an d when u get to the center, someone will have fat pockets
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I second that, there is no reason to be attacking Jaime and Michael. And you can't deny that is what you are doing. BPO has helped me through so much. I am lucky to have met such wonderful people, and made so many friends. I couldn't have gotten through the loss of Dilbert without BPO, Jaime and Michael even sent me a card. They are such wonderful caring people and do not deserve this kind of treatment. In fact no one does.
Nina