Yes, this must come as a shock to many of you… I know it did to me! Since I just live off of the old trust fund, with nary a care in the world, the concept of cost was a mind boggler! It took weeks to understand, and some thorough investigation.

After a vigorous interrogation (and a threat to reveal his hobby of collecting Village People and Barbara Streisand memorabilia), Moen owned up to the following:

Website Costs

I like doing the magazine and I hope it helps us reach some of our goals, so I have been reluctant about putting actual numbers on the cost. I do see the point, however, raised by several VI Listers, that we should ideally just invest our time and not our money too.

Monthly web hosting costs amount to $50.00. That's $300.00 for the first 6 months (February 1 to August 1).

Over here (Denmark, Europe) we pay phone rates for online time. The biggest part (99%?) of my email and online time has to do with Indians and the VI, but it is hard to divide the time spend on List mail (which I would do anyway!) and time spent on magazine stuff. I estimate an average of 120 hours a month online time for the magazine and related activities. The cost for this is around $150.00 a month. That makes $900.00 for the first 6 months.

All in all around $1400.00 for the VI from February until now. Or $200.00 a month, not counting setup costs.

I don't really expect all of this to be covered by T-shirt and book sales, but at least you have a picture of what it costs in money to manage the VI. I may get a faster/cheaper connection soon, and that might reduce the online costs.

Moen

Purpose:
We are selling T-Shirts to help support the website and future VI activities.

Status:
At the time of writing, sales of T-shirts has paid back the intial seed money, and netted a profit of $207.25

There's a number of shirts orders, but not yet paid. When the money comes in for these, profits will increase by $150.00

Further, there's still some shirts in stock. When these sell, the total profit will be $560.75

Details:
For a full breakdown of sales, remaining stock, profits etc, please see here.

Based on the operating costs, the VI shirt fundraiser can handle about a quarter of the cost of the magazine. Book sales are not doing much. Probably because the link was hard to get to. If anyone has an idea for how to help defray the costs further, please drop me a line and I will be glad to help you get it going. If you cannot afford a T-Shirt but want to contribute, an article for the magazine would be helpful.

Jim (jjones@eclipsetel.com)
 

Apart from the T-Shirt Fund Raiser, there was a link to Amazon.com a few issues ago (with the updates to Jerry Hatfield's Restoration Guide book and the foundry book on Lyle's DIY casting page). The idea was that if you needed Indian- or casting books, you might as well buy them through this link and support the VI.

And, lo and behold, somebody must have done just that!

I just got an email from Amazon.com that the VI earned $10.44 for its first quarter as "Amazon associate". Thanks.

I have been meaning to update the VI Book Page with links to buy any of the books, mentioned there, through this scheme, but so far haven't had the time. I hope to get around to it next month. 

For now, please click here if you want to buy a copy of Jerry Hatfield's Restoration Guide book, and here for "the only book you need to get started" on DIY foundry work. If you are going to buy other books etc at Amazon.com and want to support the VI, you can do so by clicking the Amazon.com logo to the right of here.

Moen

If you are going to buy any books or other stuff at Amazon.com, and want to support Virtual Indian, please click the Amazon.com logo below.