Emergency request for funding help -supercharge.info

[jelloslug]

I put a few dollars in the pot. It's too much of a good resource to let it go away.

 

[Pluto]

There's now an official Patreon and in the first 5 days, it has 40/200 patrons! Honestly $1 a month is the sweet spot for me, you can hardly find any subscriptions for that cheap. And this isn't even a subscription, it's totally optional. Anyways, here's the segment on the Patreon as it pertains to funding:

This is really just a hobby for me. I'm generally not comfortable asking for money. But with the recent google maps cost increase options are limited. Maps costs were over $1000 for the month of October. Have reduced the cost by by about 75% by reorganizing the site a bit and disabling some features. To be sustainable, and to re-enable all features, I need about 1% of those who visit supercharge.info monthly to become a patreon.

$250 a month is $3000 a year, and I'm guesstimating that the GoFundMe created like a 4-6 month buffer when taking into account the past few months. So as long as we get 200 patrons in that timeframe, the site should become self-sustaining without any issues.

 

[MarcoRP]

@BlueShift ?

 

[Pluto]

@BlueShift ?View attachment 357613

The map appears to be working for me atm. However it sounds like the (daily?) quota was temporarily met:

Nov 21, 2018 10:23 pm (PST)
Google maps API usage for the first half of November fell within the free tier. Starting November 13 I passed that threshold and am now seeing some high usage peeks (holiday planning in the US I guess). I placed a strict quota on the API usage and the map will now stop working after about $20 used in a single day.

There was also an update a few days ago about the Patreon:

Nov 29, 2018 9:15 pm (PST)
With 98 patrons at the moment: There is $204/month pledged. So very close to $2/person. Good progress I think.

$204 becomes $184 after patreon.com fee (10% ouch) and about $140 after US taxes.

Google maps bills me on 18th:

• Oct 18th to Nov 18th: $200.52
• Nov 18th to Today: already at $180.00

Overall it looks like patreon will help balance the budget while I spend time converting to another map provider. If you include donations from gofundme campains, overall finances for the site are still approximately $2,500 positive, including all costs for the past 4 years.

Now there are 108 patrons, so new patrons are coming in slower but gradually improving. I highly recommend anyone who uses supercharge.info pledge at least $1 a month. I'm doing $1 a month, so you should too!

Find the Patreon here: Keith is creating supercharge.info | Patreon
And these quoted updates (probably more over time) here: google maps alternatives

 

[BlueShift]

Yeah, just a big surge of traffic today, so the quota worked as designed I guess. See attached photo. Unfortunate though that it happened so early in the day, leaving 10 hours during which the map will be unavailable today.

 

[Cosmacelf]

What services do you need from the map? I'm trying to figure out how hard it would be to move to openstreetmap. Is it just geographic pins on a map (with pop up info links)?

 

[st50maint]

What services do you need from the map? I'm trying to figure out how hard it would be to move to openstreetmap. Is it just geographic pins on a map (with pop up info links)?

Looks like they are now using openstreetmap.
Not quite as nice as Google maps but better than nothing.
All the major roads in red is distracting at first.
I thought there was a major traffic jam throughout the area I was looking at.

 

[Big Earl]

I'm glad to see that supercharge.info has moved to openstreetmaps. Tough luck, Google.

 

[zhu-]

Why not put up some minimal Google Adsense advertising? Based on the public traffic stats, it should bring in over $1k/month without much issue.

 

[MarcoRP]

Why not put up some minimal Google Adsense advertising? Based on the public traffic stats, it should bring in over $1k/month without much issue.

Hm? I thought the primordial goal was to get away from the Google fees, not to reapply them in small revenue.