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Location: News/Main
Here is a full list of ways in which you can currently help support Sorcerer's Place. If you choose to donate, you can be sure that any money we receive will be put to a good use at Sorcerer's Place since we are always striving to make it even better than it already is. The costs of running SP in its entirety are several hundred dollars per month. With the little amount of money regular advertising brings in these days, we can't cover even the server hosting expenses, let alone anything else. (The costs include, among other things, paying for the domain name, hosting, server upgrades, software & hardware used in creating the site, message board upgrades, occasional site redesigns etc.). So many good sites have gone to the wall, victims of the current climate, and we don't want to join them in the website graveyard. Hopefully you feel the same way. We know that regular visitors to the site who enjoy the community features as well as the huge amount of free content we have online will not be shy in making a small contribution to keep it going. A few bucks a month may seem nothing to those reading this, but if enough people contribute, it can make all the difference to the future of this site. Payments can be accepted from all over the world, and we have many different options besides PayPal through which people can help alleviate the costs of running Sorcerer's Place independently, so everyone can do something to help. If you want to show your appreciation for all the hard work and thousands of hours invested in the site since 1999, and for our commitment to bring you the best in the future as well, please consider helping us in some of the ways listed below. 01. PayPal Donations / SPS Accounts PayPal is an account-based system that lets anyone with an e-mail address securely send and receive online payments using their credit/debit card or bank account. PayPal lets you pay anyone with an e-mail address and is the world's #1 online payment service - it's accepted on millions of eBay auctions and thousands of online shops. When you send money through PayPal, you can fund your payments with your credit/debit card or checking account. You won't have to worry about your privacy, because PayPal keeps your account information safe. Making a purchase with PayPal is more secure than mailing a check or giving your credit card number to a stranger. That's why millions of people from around the world use PayPal to move money. Is PayPal secure? Yes. PayPal uses SSL technology to keep your information safe. In addition, when you send a payment using PayPal, the recipient won't receive sensitive financial information like your credit card or bank account number. This way, you don't have to worry about paying people you don't know. How can I support Sorcerer's Place via PayPal? We have introduced SPS Accounts with a few default PayPal donation options, which you should check out if you intend to donate $15 or more. Of course, you can still donate any smaller amount of money via PayPal - every bit helps. (Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or concerns regarding the donation system.) If you want to show your appreciation for all the hard work and thousands of hours invested in the site since 1999, and for our commitment to bring you the best in the future as well, you can donate by clicking this link or by clicking on the PayPal button on the right side of any SP page. And to show our appreciation, you will in turn be e-mailed with information on how to select yourself a custom avatar/portrait & title on our message boards, should you desire this. While you will probably be required to pay a certain fee for the transfer of the money, you can also donate directly to my bank account from your own bank. This is primarily for those people who (for some reason) either do not want to bother with PayPal or simply fear giving their sensitive information over the Internet, but would still like to donate. (Although I must emphasize again that PayPal is totally secure.) Please contact me for my bank account details. You can send me either a cheque or cash (USD, GBP or Euro) directly by regular mail. Simply make sure to hide it well enough in the envelope, so that the contents can't be seen through. Just drop an e-mail my way and I'll provide you with my address. We earn a small sum (usually in the range of $1 to $2) from every item bought in our Sorcerer's Place Merchandise Shoppe. You get to buy some cool SP merch and support SP at the same time! 05. Buying Through Our Amazon Stores We have set up extensive Fantasy Books, Games and DVDs stores here on Sorcerer's Place. By purchasing anything from these stores (by clicking on the Amazon links provided on our pages), we earn a small commission. You do not pay anything more than your normally would, so this is a really easy way to support SP without it even costing you anything. Furthermore, should you want to order something that is not listed in our stores, you can use the appropriate Amazon search box (click here for .co.uk, .de and .ca), and anything you buy by using them to find it will still earn Sorcerer's Place a commission, albeit a bit smaller one: 06. Buying Through Our Alienware Links By purchasing anything from Alienware through any of the Alienware banners on SP (or simply by clicking this link), we earn a small commission. You do not pay anything more than your normally would, so this is another really easy way to support SP without it costing you anything. 07. Letting the Pop-up Ads Load The pop-up ads placed on some pages are a necessary evil, since they are literally the only form of advertising that pays at least moderately. You do not have to click or buy anything you see advertised on them, all it takes is letting them load fully before closing them. Otherwise (if they are closed before they load fully, or blocked in any way), they don't earn us anything. If you use a pop-up blocker, please put Sorcerer's Place on the list of sites that you allow to show pop-ups. This helps to insure our survival. 08. Clicking on the Advertising Banners Regular advertising on Sorcerer's Place is displayed via several advertising banners. The banners are located throughout the site and our message boards, and come in various sizes and positions. While some of the ads pay a very small sum even if people don't click on them, the wide majority of them only pay if people click them, or buy something from the pages that open after clicking on the banner. Your clicking on the advertising on SP will help support the site and make a difference. Despite the fact that advertising is not the only means of supporting the site, it remains an important one, especially because everyone can help the site this way at no cost to themselves. HOWEVER (and this is important!), please don't go on a click-fest clicking various ads across the site several dozen times a day. All advertising providers these days have trackers that will discard large amount of clicks coming from the same computer/IP in a short period of time, so you aren't helping at all if you click too much, since your clicks most likely won't count. Clicking a few ads a day is plenty, and will help us out with paying the server costs. It might seem like a small thing, but the fact is, the more people know about Sorcerer's Place and visit it regularly, the more successful the site will be. The least we ask of our visitors is to support us through word of mouth. Tell your friends and relatives about Sorcerer's Place. Tell your fellow students and co-workers. Invite them all to come check us out! You can let people know about SP by e-mail, your IM of choice, by linking to us on your website, in message board signatures... the more exposure Sorcerer's Place gets, the better! Thank you very much for helping us in any of these ways! |
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