HERE, NOW – I am Christopher “Morbid” Lee and I have been running Dreamin’ Demon since 2004. As a lot of you know, I have been fighting our server, off and on, for the last couple of months – but it has gotten a lot worse over the last week.
What started out as a hobby has turned into something else that strongly resembles a second job. The issue is that I never started the site to make money any further than paying for itself, and I still don’t. I just want to write horrible articles. I had no idea that we would find an audience of sick, twisted individuals that actually like reading the site on a daily basis.
This has caused us to upgrade our hardware and software multiple times through the last decade, and in that time I have been doing fine with the bit of money we got from ad revenue and Patreon donationsfrom our fans. But now the site has reached another milestone, and those methods are not going to help resolve our dilemma in the time frame we need it to. We need to upgrade the server, and we need to do it fast.
The high marks are when I publish an article. The low were the early morning hours.
So I set the fundraiser amount at $6000. I didn’t pull that number out of my butt, I simply took the monthly cost of an upgraded server ($500) and multiplied it by 12. I’m a genius. I am being as transparent as I can be, so here is my plan. I am sticking with our hosting service, Nexcess, because we have been with them since 2004 and they know our site. They are also very helpful and put up with me and my multitude of issues and dumb questions. Here are the dedicated server plans. We are currently using the 410 plan:
https://www.nexcess.net/hosting/dedicated-servers
The next tier would be the DS 510 at $ 399.95 a month or $359.95 annually (around $4300) plus the $120 a month Level 2 Management fee (another $1440), the latter ensures site backups, 24 hour tech support, stuff like that. Trust me when I say that this level of server management has saved the site’s ass more times than I can count. I write articles and look pretty, people, I leave the server admin stuff to the professionals.
If this fundraiser is successful and we surpass the $6000 mark, we can look at the DS 610 at $499.99 monthly or $449.95 annually ($5280 ) plus the $1440 server management cost for the year. regardless, there is no profit being made in the fundraiser. All of this will go towards paying for the server for the year, and I will provide the receipt once (if) we make the goal. No matter the scenario – we make the goal or we overshoot it – any extra funds will go towards things like getting a professional site design, more writers, getting our mobile app back up and running, t-shirts. Hell, all of the above!
Look, I have no idea if this will work – I am surprised people still come and visit the site as fanatically as they do. I just know that if we cannot get this done, the site will be in a sad state as I have done just about everything I can to keep it running as smooth as possible on what we are currently running on, and that is no longer cutting it. If this works, and we are able to upgrade to a higher tier server – and have it paid for a year or more – then that really frees me up to focus on nothing but what you come to the site for – reading horrible news.
What started out as a hobby has turned into something else that strongly resembles a second job. The issue is that I never started the site to make money any further than paying for itself, and I still don’t. I just want to write horrible articles. I had no idea that we would find an audience of sick, twisted individuals that actually like reading the site on a daily basis.
This has caused us to upgrade our hardware and software multiple times through the last decade, and in that time I have been doing fine with the bit of money we got from ad revenue and Patreon donationsfrom our fans. But now the site has reached another milestone, and those methods are not going to help resolve our dilemma in the time frame we need it to. We need to upgrade the server, and we need to do it fast.
The high marks are when I publish an article. The low were the early morning hours.
So I set the fundraiser amount at $6000. I didn’t pull that number out of my butt, I simply took the monthly cost of an upgraded server ($500) and multiplied it by 12. I’m a genius. I am being as transparent as I can be, so here is my plan. I am sticking with our hosting service, Nexcess, because we have been with them since 2004 and they know our site. They are also very helpful and put up with me and my multitude of issues and dumb questions. Here are the dedicated server plans. We are currently using the 410 plan:
https://www.nexcess.net/hosting/dedicated-servers
The next tier would be the DS 510 at $ 399.95 a month or $359.95 annually (around $4300) plus the $120 a month Level 2 Management fee (another $1440), the latter ensures site backups, 24 hour tech support, stuff like that. Trust me when I say that this level of server management has saved the site’s ass more times than I can count. I write articles and look pretty, people, I leave the server admin stuff to the professionals.
If this fundraiser is successful and we surpass the $6000 mark, we can look at the DS 610 at $499.99 monthly or $449.95 annually ($5280 ) plus the $1440 server management cost for the year. regardless, there is no profit being made in the fundraiser. All of this will go towards paying for the server for the year, and I will provide the receipt once (if) we make the goal. No matter the scenario – we make the goal or we overshoot it – any extra funds will go towards things like getting a professional site design, more writers, getting our mobile app back up and running, t-shirts. Hell, all of the above!
Look, I have no idea if this will work – I am surprised people still come and visit the site as fanatically as they do. I just know that if we cannot get this done, the site will be in a sad state as I have done just about everything I can to keep it running as smooth as possible on what we are currently running on, and that is no longer cutting it. If this works, and we are able to upgrade to a higher tier server – and have it paid for a year or more – then that really frees me up to focus on nothing but what you come to the site for – reading horrible news.