why, never, wer, never *blush*

so why you asking now? I finally signed for visto, too... now to have the time to see if it is gonna be useful!!!

Yep, we've made $14.00 on the 7 signups so far. And I just looked in to a couple of dozen more affiliate programs. I've gonig to be busy today evaluating these programs and figuring out where we can put them. I can see we're going to need both a special affiliates/sponsors page on www.spring.net and on a dedicated website as well. I'll start a topic for affiliates in the projects conference so you can get some links from there.

kewl!

!!!

Thanks, it's pretty easy to click through to visto's site and sign up, it's a 10 minute gig and it's pretty painless. And it might even be highly beneficial!

Renate did a nice "ad" for Visto in Drool. I hope they were paying attention. Else, they will hear from me in mass emailings... I can be most persistent when the cause is right, and you, Terry dear, are most worthy!

Thank you! I sent an email to Anne haker (anneh@spring.net) to see if she would put a banner on austen.com. The stats for this site are off the charts, it's rapidly catching up with spring.net. The stats alone for hits on that site fill up a major share of our hard drive to the point where I'm goin t to have the replace the two 4 gb hard drives with much larger ones. Maybe a pair of 12 gb hard drives. austen.com is a huge success, huge! So I hope she'll let us do a banner there or at least a link.

Is Drool losing its preeminence on your boards and in your heart?! I am all astonishment (an Austenism); we shall have to rise to the occasion.

Ca-ching.... I have signed up with Vista, Terry, through the link on the spring.net page. OK by me to put a banner link on the Drool main conference page and at the bottom of each topic page, with the amazon link for balance of course. ;-) Esthetics always. (Marcia) They seem to need to be entertained there, so they left me in charge. Silly people! tsk tsk

Karen, 113 is dormant, sleeping, non-responsive, moribund and not very active, either...How often you get down this way? I'll have to be a whole lot nicer if I am to live up to my Drool reputation - whatever that might be...!

Hi Marcia....what are you doing here? Babysitting the Pledge Drive?

actually she's adding wisdom and insight... and plenty of good vibrations!

and a hearty "Thank you, Evelyn!!!"

Have you signed up your goldfish for Visto yet?

nope, they all died...

Your pet snail then.

they don't get online much, what with all the garlic butter and such...

Perhaps they'd love the epicurious site...

who wouldn't?

I just signed up for Visto under my alternate ISP and used my formerly wedded name. I don't quite know how you will arrange it when you try to enroll your guppies, but think of your relatives - even if they do not know! (How closely do they check to see if that phone number and zip code match, BTW?)

ah, something is finally working!!!

Am I ever happy to hear that. I was about to sign up people who do not know I can because I know all about them!!! Great news, Terry! And, thanks, wer, for putting them everywhere!

The Spring made over $100 this weekend on Visto clickthroughs, and we havne't even introduced the idea of Visto groups yet. When folks hear about this they'll want to use Visto for their families and groups. It's really a good thing so I feel good about using these banners to support us. I'll keep building the affiliates page for folks who want to shop there and use these click throughs and, wer, feel free to copy appropraite banners to strategic areas around the Spring (eg. barnesand noble.com to books). But Visto is really turning out to be a winner for us. I hope this trend continues, if it does, it could mean the end to financial woes.

Amen, Terry. It is about time you were free of financial worries. Just keep us posted if any reverses occur and I shall rattle cages once again on your behalf. Now, kick back and enjoy - you can't imagine how delighted I am to find your postings everywhere! Now, if we could only interest you in Colin Firth...(Not!)

The click throughs are back to about 1 or 2 per day now, I wonder what happened that pushed us through the roof for those three days? I notice wer put Visto banners in a bunch of conferences. Let's figure out how to pump it up again. I'll copy the banners to http://www.spring.net/shop from http://www.spring.net/affiliates and keep adding to this page so it can be a little shoppping mall area for software, books, videos, travel bookings, etc.

and we need to coordinate better, because I already had a GoTo affiliation, not to mention Amazon and American Spice...

Visto's the only one that ever brought revenue in. Speaking of which, I got a $20,000 offer for a domain name today (not spring.net, austen.com or firth.com so don't worry). Don't know if this is too low or not.

well, in my view, it is more than nothing...

really! (was it mine?)

yep... go for the cash-ola

Take the cash and "buy" some more promising domains :-).

like Paulterry.com or .net or .org or... tofueater.com or .net or .org or veggiepastelover.com etc etc etc or coolandedgy.com Hmmm... this is fun!

Take the cash and "buy" some more promising domains :-).

Ooops. Hit reload..... What about www.summer.net www.winter.net www.fall.net :-)

interesting renate! take the dough, terry :)

(i LIKED tofueater.com)

(So did I, Stace, but Terry is probably saving that one for special occasions.)

Terry, I posted this notice in Drool, Food, SpringArk, and Porch and Screwed then sent it through Springfolks message board. Could you give me some figures to throw at them for the next round of pleading?! This place and its people are very special to me! If you value Spring and the discussions herein (not to mention the venting going on), do you realize this is Terry's web site for which he pays all the bills? Please, it is time to help with any donation you can afford. He has some pretty big bills to pay and he needs your (and my) help to sustain all of the stuff we are posting. Think if he had to cut back and eliminate some of - or all of - the conferences?! Please! Send contributions to: Paul Terry Walhus The Spring 9011 Quail Creek Dr Austin, TX 78758

Figures: 1288 quarterly colocation fee charged by ddc.net 602 quarterly SW Bell bandwidth fee 125 purchase of 9 gb hard drive to ease disk space shortage ??? upgrading of machines for y2k (1800-2000 approx) 300 Yapp licensing fee for the quarter So that's about $4k to get us through till the end of the year.

Thanks, Terry. I posted in Poetry hoping to stave off the departure of posters and the increase of donations. I had no idea it would be taken that way...!

Our stats, for anyone interested, are at http://www.spring.net/stats/stats.cgi Visto is supposed to pay quarterly, but we haven't seen our first check yet. We may be stepping up our shopping areas and going after more clickthrough revenue.

Terry, that's a great resource. Thanks for posting the URL. Shall I put it in Drool 100 or did you do so already?

Go ahead and put it wherever, folks like to see stats. If you've got telnet access, try this at an ok: prompt sometime: !tail -f /var/www/logs/spring.net/access.log You'd be amazed how much traffic have every minute.

Ok, I'll put them around where the curious might look and I do indeed have telnet access - two places (through haleakala.aloha.net and www.spring.net) and I shall remember that prompt to see what activity there is. Thanks!

I entered it at the OK prompt and it keeps telling me it cannot execute it !tail-f /var/www/logs/spring.net/access.log Something wrong with my spacing or the wrong dash before the f?

Ooops, There's a space in between tail and -f !tail -f /var/www/logs/spring.net/access.log will do it.

thanks again! (posted that comment above in telnet and do not know how it got posted twice...!)

Looking back at your original post, I note that you put the space in originally - the Oops was mine!

Please help me to recover some of these bandwidth costs for austen.com! I'm out a total of $1,021.26 since 1/21/2000 on extra bandwidth costs and sure could use some help right now. Please mail contributions to Paul Terry Walhus The Spring 182 Clover Rd Cedar Creek, TX 78612 Thanks!!!!!

I just emailed the people who need to know (May I be of help? Call me if so, but that is more than I can handle...)

Of course it is more than one person can handle, that's why we need to crank up the old pledge drive again, it's always worked before. Folks usually respond.

I sent this to the list, but I put lots of nice and loud notices about it on the Austen.com site. I think it might help that I can be specific for people about what exactly is needed. I posted the info (without what looked like credit card numbers), so people know what is owed. I suppose some of that was due to our chat room. Since that is gone, I hope the expenses drop off some.

It should, and if you need a chat room, I can work on a plan for that on another server. But for some reason, austen.com is using huge amounts of bandwidth. This isn't a bad thing, it's good, it means the site is healthy and a lot of information is getting transferred. I just need some help from the community with these extra bandwidth costs.

We're working on finding an off-site chat room, right now it looks like we may settle in at ATT's chatroom service. Chat rooms use a lot of bandwith, so my guess is that the death of our room should cut back on your costs. If you had it on another server, you'd have to pay for that, right? I think keeping it at a free site would be good (if I can find one everyone on my site can get into, which isn't easy). That way someone else picks up the tab :) Do you want me to post B&N ads on Austen.com, and encourage people to buy their books there?

Well, today I ordered 1.5 gib bandwith DSL at my Quail Creek house, and I could put one of the old UNIX servers back online from the days when we colocated. I think this would do the job, and we would have total control over the setup. In fact, I could dedicate an entire machine to this. Speaking of bandwidth on austen.com:

Pretty amazing! What's it gonna cost you to put the old UNIX server back online? What is the new 1.5 gb bandwidth gonna cost? Something is terribly wrong if you are supporting something in which you do not even participate. What happened to the good old American way?! (Sorry, but I am getting testy about this on your behalf)

It's gonna cost $299 per month for 13 machines with dedicated ip addresses, I think I'll set it up as ns1.wholetech.com and ns2.wholetech.com. I'll get 3 or 4 of the roomies there to chip in $30 apiece a month for their own ip addresses and that will cut it down to around $200 or less. But it will let us run an Internet buiness out of that house. I've got 2900 square feet of space in Cedar Creek I'd like to use for the same purpose, running servers, but the problem is no DSL, only isdn in the area. So the Quail house is going to be it for now. Maybe we could run satellite bandwidth to Cedar Creek?

Sounds fascinating...and it is time you got your ISP back online. I was so sad the day you were forced to take it offline. The $200 is over and above the cost of running your websites...You surely are not setting yourself up as a philanthropic organization...?!

No I'd like to make enough so I didn't have to do other things to support this venture. I'd like to devote a lot more time to webpage creations and community building.

Super! We'd all like that, methinks! I cannot think of many other things which would give me more joy than more Terry on the Spring (bring that big guy with you, too, please!)

First, I'm very happy to run fundraisers on Austen.com to support our part of the Spring, and I know a lot of my people are happy to donate--but I need to know when the money is needed, and I'd like to know how much is needed on a monthly basis to support Austen? It seems that the only time I hear about money problems is when there is a crisis. If I don't know it's needed or how much is needed, it's hard to know to run a fund-raiser. If I can get info to my people on the costs of the site, I think they will understand the kind of money is required in donations and ante up. (Unfortunately I have quite a large group of teenagers, who just don't have money to donate, but the adults are fully willing, and I think they can do enough.) I'm also willing to look at the Austen site to see where bandwidth can be reduced, but don't really know how that whole things works, and could use some general explanations of it. Second, I'd like clear info on affiliates which could be used by the Austen folks to help raise money. What affiliates are all out there, should I put up B&N links, for example? How much could be collected this way? Thirdly, if you do set up those new computers, how much would that cost? Would switching over some of the biggest bandwidth-hogging parts of the Austen site to those machines save money? or would it mearly shift the same cost somewhere else? Info is good! More info! Money is good! More money!

Good questions, Ann. I'll have to get with the DSL folks to find out if they charge for excessive bandwidth. I'm curious about this. If they don't charge for bandwidth, then I'd say that would be the way to go for the bandwidth intensive aspects of austen.com. The best place to get info on affiliates is reporting.net, you can see the range there. Visto is potentially far and away the best affiliate, and they offer a great service. I'll have to figure out why it is that austen.com uses so much bandwidth. It's not necessarily good to reduce it if it means large transfers of useful information are going on. I'll look at the logs in more depth to see which areas of the site are getting the most intense traffic. Maybe that will reveal the answer. It's surprising that austen.com has so dramatically surged ahead of spring.net in bandwidth, with all the streaming video and audio we do on spring.net. But somehow it's happened. And in many ways it's due to the great job of site building y'all have done, Ann. It's a sign of success and growth.

I'll try and get a good answer to the when the money is needed question. Perhaps we should do a fund raiser at the start of every quarter. January, April, July and October would be good times. Start at the first of each of these months and try to raise enough to cover bandwidth and any ohter costs. Just a suggestions, you could establish a membership/patron system like I'm working on for spring.net (see the button on the main page). Where do you see austen.com going, Ann? And what would you like to see in the future as far as new features on the site? How do you see austen.com fitting in to the universe of other austen.com sites, do you see it as the portal site? Or do you see it more as a place for literary expression?

If the volume of traffic from Austen.com end up being overbearing on Spring, there are ways I can reduce it without ruining the site. Most of the traffic is on the bulliten boards, but I can move those off-site to a free service, such as Inside The Web. I'd like to avoid that if possible, because they have ugly flashing ads at the top, and I'd have less control over the structure of the pages. But I looked at the Analog output and the number of hits the different boards get is over 55% of the Austen.com traffic. So, if necessary, Austen.com could go on a diet. I noticed the usage spike, and was quite surprised by it, especially when it seems to correspond to the death of our chat room (which occured around 3/13/00). I would have thought that would have caused a drop off. As for Austen.com. I don't know where I want it to go. Right now it is a bifurcated site. The front half has lots of JA links, and I'm slowly putting her six novels up as well. The back, and interactive, half us mostly dedicated to creative writing and archiving the stories people post (over 650 of them!) I'd like to have more Austen-related info, but there is no reason to duplicate the stuff that Pemberley has, and that covers a lot of ground. Right now my goal is to get annotated version of the novels up on line. I'm working on the third of these right now.

Wow, Ann, that is certainly impressive regarding your annotated Jane Austen. And, you have a real life besides. I am all amazement *smile*

I'd rather figure out ways to support the site rather than inhibit it's growth in any way. I'm looking foward to these annotated novels, that's outstanding. It wouldn't seem like the bbs would use that much bandwidth.

I certainly agree. Especially if it is not done at the expense of other places of value on the Spring.

Pretty soon, in 30 days to be exact, I'll have some homegrown servers that can take up some of the slack. And also there may be other deals out there on bandwidth. Excessive bandwidth is a good thing, it means we're going, we just have to be more creative about supporting it with ads, donations, and click throughts and get more commerce sites in gear.

Friday was a record day for contributions toward our austen.com bandwidth bill, I received 5 contributions totaling $215, one for $100. *Huge* thanks and hugs for all those who sent the checks and the beautiful cards and notes. It really, really helps out. Thanks!

How far are you from total coverage of the amount?

We're about 27% there.

Writing check and putting it in the morning mail....

We're over half there now! Actually close to 70%!!!! Today was awesome. Much, much, much thanks, especially for the $500 donation!

Yee Haw! Whoopee! and my check is in the mail....

I can't thank everyone enough for the best day ever in the history of Spring for the kind contributions and the wonderful thoughts that came along with them. My sincere, heartfelt thanks to everyone. I was going to put the names on a pledge page, but the overwhelming sentiment is to keep it anonymous, so I respect that. You know who you are, and I'm so grateful to you!

*Big Hugs, Terry! Thank you Springizens all!

Terry, I was asked in email if your address had changed. Before it was a box number at Cedar Creek.

Was that $500 one from an Austen.com person?

CEO of Visto will be in live chat tonight at AT&T WorldNet. http://attworldnet.ehosts.net/celeb/celeb.html

Cool, any idea what time?

Who will be a hero today and help out with the $35 we need to renew the austen.com website? Call me at 512.699.4000 or email terry@spring.net if you are willing to help pay this. It has to be paid by credit card at http://www.networksolutions.com (click on "make payments" and specify austen.com). I'm very broke today, waiting for a payday and rent checks to come in!

Message 1/429 From invoice@networksolutions.com Nov 1, 0 09:35:01 am -0500 Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 09:35:01 -0500 (EST) To: terry@SPRING.NET Subject: INVOICE (AUSTEN.COM) Precedence: Bulk Date: 28-OCT-2000 Domain AUSTEN.COM Walhus, Paul Terry Rt 2 Box 56R Austin, TX 78612 US Scan Code: 900286278924035006 FROM: Network Solutions, Inc. PO Box 17305 Baltimore, MD 21297-0525 United States Federal ID # 52-1146119 PHONE: 1-800-779-1710 from the United States and Canada. Outside of these areas, call 1-703-742-4777 Monday - Friday from 7:00am - 9:00pm Eastern Standard Time. FAX: +1 (703) 318-9125 E-MAIL: Send us an e-mail from http://www.networksolutions.com/help/question-for m.html **************************************************************************** E-MAIL REGISTRATION/RENEWAL NOTICE FOR DOMAIN NAME ******************* Please DO NOT REMOVE Version Number ******************** 30-day e-mail Registration/Renewal Notice Version Number: 1.2 **************** Please see attached detailed instructions ***************** In making payment for , the Registrant agrees to the terms and condi tions of the current Network Solutions Service Agreement. Registration/Renewal Information 1a. Notice Number.....................: 28627892 1b. Notice Date.......................: 28-OCT-2000 1c. Notice Due Date...................: 28-NOV-2000 Domain Name Information 2a. Registered Domain Name.............: AUSTEN.COM 2b. Period Covered.....................: 25-NOV-2000 - 25-NOV-2001 2c. Amount Due.........................: $35.00 U.S. Dollars ******************************************************************************* Thank you for registering with Network Solutions, the dot com people(tm)! This will be the only reminder sent via e-mail. In a few days, you will also rec eive a notice in the mail, sent to the street address above. Use one of the meth ods outlined below to make payment. Timely receipt of this payment will ensure s ervices for the period noted above. This fee is non-refundable. ****************************************************************************** REGISTRATION/RENEWING INSTRUCTIONS: ****************************************************************************** CREDIT CARD PAYMENT: For fast and easy payment with a major credit card, go to our secure online paym ent system at http://www.networksolutions.com/help/pay.html. In addition, you ca n protect your Internet identity by renewing the above domain name for up to 10 years! OR Call (888) 771-3000 from the United States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Isla nds. Outside of these areas, call (402) 496-9798. You'll need your invoice numbe r and credit card number to use this automated service. We're available 24 hours , 7 days a week to help you. CHECK: If you'd like to pay by check, wait until you receive your registration/renewal notice in the mail. When making payment by check, be sure to include the remitta nce stub in the return envelope provided. ATTENTION BUSINESS ACCOUNT PROGRAM MEMBERS: If you have a Debit Account and would like to pay the registration/renewal fee f or AUSTEN.COM using the funds in that account, send an e-mail to accounts@networ ksolutions.com with the domain name, invoice number and 16-digit account number you were assigned when the Debit Account was established. **************************************************************** For all other billing or customer service inquiries send an e-mail from http://w ww.networksolutions.com/help/question-form.html or call 1-800-779-1710 from the United States and Canada. Outside of these area s, call 1-703-742-4777 Monday - Friday from 7:00am - 9:00pm Eastern Standard Tim e We appreciate your business and look forward to serving you for many more years! Sincerely, Network Solutions, Inc. A VeriSign(r) Company

No problem, Terry. Me and my folks will take care of it. Which raises the question...can we actually get it registered in our name instead of yours? I know I mentioned buying the domain from you before. I was wondering what you might want for it?

We'll discuss offline!

Have you checked out the click-thru links to make donations? First, it says on the screen that terry@spring.net does NOT accept payments from non-US payers. What?! Why are you not taking advantage of the International capabilities of PayPal? This is what is needed, especially for austen.com, which has a huge worldwide following? Didn't you sign up for a "business" account? Second, why does the screen have an "amount" shown ($25) and a quantity? Why isn't it donate what you want and what you can? This is nonsensical to most people. Please check out your links and setup from the main Spring page, as well as the one Ann has posted at austen.com

Good advice Karen, I'll follow up on all of this. I did sign up for the business account, and I'll try and figure out the International stuff (any hints?). Bandwidth for austen.com was enormous this month. I just got the monthly report. It was about $583 something, but there are about 14 pending PayPal signups wiating verification and I got 4 $25 donations in the last few days. I've been sending out color 8x10 photos to donors and am looking at more items to send out in appreciation. I'll check out those links!

austen.com 10,595,157 ... from bandwidth report (this is megabytes of bandwidth for November)

I upgraded to a "business" account from a "premium" PayPal account so I should be able to accept International payments. The proof will be in the first time one of our overseas folks tries this. I have no way of testing it.

Um, anyway I can get one of those pictures. My donation was to Karen and not small... please??!!!

Absolutely, email me your mailing address as a reminder!