In this day and age web hosting services are relatively cheap. The cost of maintaining this site is approximately $80 per annum (2008) plus domain rental. This is not a great deal over the course of a year but it does have to be paid.
More significant are the hundreds of hours that have been spent on:-
- configuring the appearance and navigation framework
- moving the old pages into the new system
- building database driven solutions for boats, articles, links and adverts
- entering data
Of course, this I have done entirely because I like doing it, I love the Flicka and I want the boat and the community to have a good web presence. I have also to admit that this seemed an ideal project to gain some experience in web areas that I have not been able to touch upon in commercial projects.
Bearing in mind that my usual web development rates are about €40 per hour this is a very expensive hobby!
So, in order to get something back for my efforts I decided I would add an optional donate system so that anyone who has sold a Flicka and saved themselves agency commission might be generous enough to make a small donation to the project.
In addition, I decided to use affiliates such as West Marine and Amazon to generate a small cut from marine gear and books I review on this site. Personally, I dislike fussy sites that bombard the user with adverts and links. So, I will try to use these features sparingly and only in the proper context. If you are offended by any of these methods or have been treated badly by any company listed on this site then please let me know. I will only list companies that I trust and have heard good things about.
If you feel happy to make a small donation then please click the button below.
Web Captain January - 2009