Celebrating another trip around the sun -- and a friendly ask

#1 · January 1, 2020, 7:13 pm

Quote from Wendell on January 1, 2020, 7:13 pm
Happy New Year!

First, I'd like to take a moment to thank you all for supporting us and participating here at RPLS Today. Of all the stuff I work on every day, this website is my favorite. I love the community -- I find myself exclaiming, "THIS is why I started this website!" out loud often when I see people helping each other solve problems. It's an amazing resource and it wouldn't be what it is without all of YOU.

Secondly, I truly appreciate everyone who has donated this past year, as well as our incredible advertisers. This all goes a long way toward keeping RPLS Today online and a viable solution for helping surveyors everywhere. We are happy to provide this service and will continue to do so.

My wish for this year is for all of us to be healthy, happy and successful in our professions. I have some big plans to boost my business in 2020, particularly in the surveying market, and some exciting plans to launch them. 2020 really needs to be a better year, since we experienced a lot of health scares, surgeries, and major diagnoses that were certainly not expected in 2019. This made it hard to focus on various projects and there was a lot of downtime on my part. This basically means that income was significantly down and expenses were sky high. Still, I did everything I could to stay on top of RPLS Today maintenance, squashing some bugs and defending from spammers and scammers. I don't have actual numbers in front of me, but it feels like 2019 was the biggest year of spam-related attacks, and we blocked all but a couple -- even those couple that got through were cleaned up quickly, but they sure made a mess. Fortunately, private information was kept safe and that is very important to me.

I don't want to get caught up in a huge sob story, so I'll just stop there with the explanation (if you truly are interested in details, feel free to send me a private message). I'm going to take a bit of a Wikipedia.org approach to my "ask" by pointing out that a small donation of $2.25 from each RPLS Today visitor (registered members or not) would cover our time and expenses for about a year. Our advertisers account for about a third of that, assuming they all renew this year, so you could effectively cut those per-user donations by a third to achieve approximately the same goal.

One other thing: We??re working on some exciting projects for the surveying profession, with plans to launch throughout 2020 and beyond. We??d like to show our appreciation for your support by granting early bird access, free goodies, and special discounts as a Founding Member of said projects. Just let us know in the donation form if you are interested!

?ÿ

TL;DR

In short, you are awesome and we appreciate you. 🙂

If you've benefited from using RPLS Today in some way, whether you are a registered member or not, we would appreciate even the tiniest of donations to help us cover our time and expenses. If you've received great advice, help with surveying equipment or software, found a job or employee, or you just want to help, we truly appreciate it.

?ÿ

[ Click here to donate ]

P.S. For those of you who always ask for a Donate link in the menu, your wish is (finally) my command. 😉

Happy New Year!

First, I'd like to take a moment to thank you all for supporting us and participating here at RPLS Today. Of all the stuff I work on every day, this website is my favorite. I love the community -- I find myself exclaiming, "THIS is why I started this website!" out loud often when I see people helping each other solve problems. It's an amazing resource and it wouldn't be what it is without all of YOU.

Secondly, I truly appreciate everyone who has donated this past year, as well as our incredible advertisers. This all goes a long way toward keeping RPLS Today online and a viable solution for helping surveyors everywhere. We are happy to provide this service and will continue to do so.

My wish for this year is for all of us to be healthy, happy and successful in our professions. I have some big plans to boost my business in 2020, particularly in the surveying market, and some exciting plans to launch them. 2020 really needs to be a better year, since we experienced a lot of health scares, surgeries, and major diagnoses that were certainly not expected in 2019. This made it hard to focus on various projects and there was a lot of downtime on my part. This basically means that income was significantly down and expenses were sky high. Still, I did everything I could to stay on top of RPLS Today maintenance, squashing some bugs and defending from spammers and scammers. I don't have actual numbers in front of me, but it feels like 2019 was the biggest year of spam-related attacks, and we blocked all but a couple -- even those couple that got through were cleaned up quickly, but they sure made a mess. Fortunately, private information was kept safe and that is very important to me.

I don't want to get caught up in a huge sob story, so I'll just stop there with the explanation (if you truly are interested in details, feel free to send me a private message). I'm going to take a bit of a Wikipedia.org approach to my "ask" by pointing out that a small donation of $2.25 from each RPLS Today visitor (registered members or not) would cover our time and expenses for about a year. Our advertisers account for about a third of that, assuming they all renew this year, so you could effectively cut those per-user donations by a third to achieve approximately the same goal.

One other thing: We??re working on some exciting projects for the surveying profession, with plans to launch throughout 2020 and beyond. We??d like to show our appreciation for your support by granting early bird access, free goodies, and special discounts as a Founding Member of said projects. Just let us know in the donation form if you are interested!

TL;DR

In short, you are awesome and we appreciate you. 🙂

If you've benefited from using RPLS Today in some way, whether you are a registered member or not, we would appreciate even the tiniest of donations to help us cover our time and expenses. If you've received great advice, help with surveying equipment or software, found a job or employee, or you just want to help, we truly appreciate it.

[ Click here to donate ]

P.S. For those of you who always ask for a Donate link in the menu, your wish is (finally) my command. 😉

#2 · January 1, 2020, 8:34 pm

Done. Huge thanks! And Happy New Year!

#3 · January 1, 2020, 9:59 pm

If anyone who donates now or has donated in the past would like to be recognized as a Supporter, please PM me and I'll make it so. It's nothing really flashy, just an indicator by your username in the forums and profile stating that you are a Supporter.

In the future, if and when any new fancy features are added that require payment, you'll be granted special access and abilities. I'm not saying something like that will ever happen, but it could and you just never know. 🙂

#4 · January 1, 2020, 10:24 pm

Posted by: @wendell

We are happy to provide this service and will continue to do so.

Posted by: @wendell

This basically means that income was significantly down and expenses were sky high.

Posted by: @wendell

pointing out that a small donation of $2.25 from each RPLS Today visitor (registered members or not) would cover our time and expenses for about a year.

Posted by: @wendell

In short, you are awesome and we appreciate you.

Posted by: @wendell

[ Click here to donate ]

#5 · January 2, 2020, 12:24 am

Those of us in the boondocks need this giant water cooler to hang around. Despite what some might say, spending time here does much to keep me sane.

Thank you.

#6 · January 2, 2020, 12:50 am

@wendell

Can you make paypal an option?

Me and credit cards = bad news ????

#7 · January 2, 2020, 1:06 am

Wendell - will you be at the PLSO conference this year? I used to make my contributions in person at the yearly event, but haven??t been able to track you down at the last couple ones. Which also begs the question, is a Beerlegger planned for the Jan. 22-24 Portland PLSO shin-dig?