Novelr Needs Your Help

May 30th, 2008 · 9 Comments

novelr stats [Update]: I have upgraded the hosting package and Novelr is above the waters once again. I am humbled by the support and goodwill you guys have shown. Thank you, all of you.

I don’t think there’s anyway I can approach this other than by talking straight: Novelr ran out of bandwidth yesterday. As of writing there are 55 active visitors on the site, with 162 visitors within the past hour. Most of them are from stumbleupon and they’re nice folk, for the most part. They are, however, bringing this site to its knees.

Why am I writing this post? Simply put: I might have to upgrade the hosting plan Novelr runs on. I’m aiming for a $5 a month package, which provides the site with 10 gigs of bandwidth. At the moment I have 3 gigs per month, not much certainly, but I wasn’t expecting 3k spikes of traffic back when I first started. Novelr does not make enough with advertising to cover the bandwidth it uses up at the moment. At midnight last night I rushed online to purchase extra from my host, and at 10 this morning I was told that the extra 2 gigs I had bought were running out as well.

Helping Novelr Out

Now, before I get into the nitty-gritty of how you can help I’d like to explain to you where I’m coming from. Some of you may ask why I’m asking for donations, instead of paying for this with my own credit card. The truth is that I don’t have one - I’m still studying, and I’m not ‘earning’ anything other than knowledge. Novelr is passion, a hobby, or perhaps a part-time job if you’d like to call it as such, and I can’t pay more from my own pocket than what I did at the start of the year. Most of my time is spent studying, writing, and reading; a significant portion of my week is used to sharpen the ideas that I post here.

There are two things you can do to keep Novelr running. The first is to donate to Novelr by clicking the shiny donate button below. The minimum for a donation is $3, and if you have a little time, plus if you enjoy the stuff I’m writing here then please consider helping Novelr out. The donate button uses Paypal, so I hope it won’t be too much of a hassle.

The second thing you can do is to purchase advertising on Novelr. Novelr offers both Text Link Ads and image ads, and both cost $15 a month. There’s a prime spot in the sidebar for both.

I believe people reading this would be divided into three groups - the first wouldn’t mind tipping the site, the second would move on to other articles, and the third (which I believe is the majority) will think about it. And I’ve no problem with that, really. I thank all of you for reading what I’ve got to say, regardless of whether you comment, you donate, or you lurk around reading.

I’ve put a lot of energy into Novelr and I hope you enjoy it. Please help me keep it running.

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Tags: Asides · Personal Notes

9 responses so far ↓

1 Sam // May 30, 2008 at 5:33 pm

I’ll give you Ice-cream. Once I can =]
Then you can bounce around the whole night thinking of more stuff to write about here.
2 Eli James // May 30, 2008 at 5:36 pm

Thanks, Sam. =)

Now I’ll just have to figure out how to turn ice-cream into bandwidth. Ebay, perhaps!
3 Björn Schneider // May 31, 2008 at 3:35 am

Hi,

the Donate-button doesn’t seem to work correctly. I get a »We were unable to decrypt the certificate id.«-error from Paypal. Better try to correct that soon, unless you don’t need it anymore — or kick their a** if it’s on Paypal’s side

cu,
Björn
4 Eli James // May 31, 2008 at 4:26 am

Thanks, Bjorn. I’ve fixed it now.
5 bibliobibuli // May 31, 2008 at 1:55 pm

sent you some dosh - hope it gets through ok

am madly jealous of the number of hits. my most ever was just over 800 in a day. you’re clearly doing something right.
6 Eli James // May 31, 2008 at 2:37 pm

Thanks Sharon.

Those hits are stumbleupon users - somebody bookmarked one post I wrote over a year ago (one that I wasn’t even proud off) and it sort of went out of control.

It’s not very nice having that amount of traffic. I worry at night that the site would crash.

But the more exposure for blooking and digital fiction the better, so I shouldn’t complain.

Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou.
7 Björn Schneider // May 31, 2008 at 8:40 pm

Well,

I was one of these »stumblers« The entry referenced was pretty standard (sorry) and can be found on almost every second »how-to-write« page on the net. I don’t really know, why people continue bookmarking it wherever they find it…

What me actually got sticking to your page was the word »blook« I had trouble finding out what it actually meant. Then I read on… and on… And now I’m actually thinking of starting an own. Well, we’ll see. But it’s most likely to be in German, but I might add an English translation in parallel. Haven’t decided, yet. First I should get some buffer written ^.^

Thanks for sharing all that stuff about this still uncommon, new way of publishing

cu,
Björn
8 Eli James // Jun 1, 2008 at 2:04 am

Well, I’m glad you enjoyed your stay, Bjorn. Good luck with that blook!
9 Le Linkage #17: “Can You Help a Brother Out?” Edition - Gnorb.NET - Online Home of Norbert Cartagena // Jun 4, 2008 at 12:48 am

[...] Novelr Needs Your Help: So Eli over at Novelr has finally hit the big time and started receiving a fair share of pageviews. The problem with this, as anyone who’s ever run a site knows, is bandwidth. He needs more now, and doesn’t have the money to cover it, so he’s sort of asking for donations. Now, if you’ve been reading this blog for a while you know that I don’t often ask for money. In fact, the only time I’ve ever even mentioned donations is when I added that “Donations” area at the bottom of my home page, with links to the Methuselah Foundation and the Digestive Distress and Dysmotilities Association. (As you can guess, the donations aren’t for me. I’m in the very, very fortunate position of being able to offer Gnorb.NET for free, since Google Ads pay enough to cover the bandwidth.) But I’m asking you, if you have a few dollars to spare, to help a blogger out. [...]