To: BadJoe
I've received quite a bit of email from banned posters in the last day or so, plus several anonymous complaints and remarks. Seems the bannees are taking great delight in their perceived belief that the current fundraiser is not doing so well. Well, we're not quite a full four days into the fundraiser and we're at 20% from credit card donations. Not bad. And, when you roll in the $21,000 in monthlies, plus the 8,000 to 9,000 that we usually receive in checks and through PayPal, we'll be over 60%. That's fantastic!
Also, receiving a lot of snickering remarks about the 84,000 FReeper number. Yes, that's the number of registrations we've had, but obviously we do not have 84,000 active FReepers (at least not registered active FReepers). The server stats show 65 to 75 thousand unique visits per day and I know that during big news events that number goes a lot higher, so I wouldn't doubt that we do approach 80,000 FReepers and LURKERS.
Also, receiving many nasty remarks about how can it cost $300,000 per year to run this website. Well, the short answer is, it doesn't. Our budget totals a little over $20,000 per month in regular recurring expenses. That includes 6,000 for management, 1,000 for admin, 3,000 for programming, 5,800 for bandwidth, 3,000 for legal and the remainder is for office expenses, travel, lodging and misc. Plus there's usually repairs, maintenance, improvements, projects, events, etc., that are budgeted and funds raised separately. Our bandwidth price this year is a couple thousand less than last year, but some of the other expenses are higher so I expect we'll probably need about the same amount overall.
Thanks for all your hard work and thanks to all who are helping you. You're doing a great job and a great service. And special thanks to all who are donating. Without your support there would be no Free Republic.
Regards,
Jim Robinson
832 posted on 6/11/02 5:26 PM Central by Jim Robinson
Thank you FReeper.
Jim