The 1947 - Present Chevrolet & GMC Truck Message Board Network - View Single Post - Help support the Board (Updated with Mailing Address)

**COBALT** · 08-16-2002, 12:44 PM

68 Suburban: Yeah, I agree entirely. This is the best resource on the web by far, and it's free. To keep it that way I would assume people would be happy to cough up $20 bucks or so in donations every few months.

I mean, who cares how Josh spends it? Bottom line is he does good development work on this site as far as I can tell. He's on top of bugs, and is receptive to user input, and speaking as a developer myself its work he could be doing for a whole hell of a lot of money (even in this economic climate).

Follow me for a second. As an example of what he's putting up with lets say he works for a company who has this site up as a service. They would probably would have to pay him an anual salary of $50K per year to do development work, which is modest but for an experienced developer quite low. After taxes that's over $8000 per quarter (every 3 months) or for a 40 hour work week around $17 per hour (again, after taxes - pretax it's $26 per hour). In that situation the site would NOT be free. All of us would have to pay $20 per month just to get our PM's off the site, and if we had problems we wouldn't talk to him directly. We'd call a 1-800 number. Over 1 month lets say there's only 2/3 of the membership we have now (around 3500 members). That's $70,000 per month.

Now lets say we're back with the site we have now. If 150 of us donated $10 per quarter on average that's only $1500 per quarter ($500 per month). Personal time put into this is on average, what? +20hrs a week (3hrs a day including weekends)? That's $6.25 per hour for personal time he could be spending on his truck, or earning more money some other way.

See the difference? We can all relate to wanting more time and money to do what we want to do. He's giving his time up for very little return to provide us with a resource. Doing it for free indicates personal interest beyond the call of duty. This isn't ditch digging. You can earn $8-9 per hour doing that.

Bottom line is let Josh do his business, and try to cough up as much $ as you think your time on this site is worth. As far as I'm concerned spend it ALL on your truck, Josh. Just promise me one thing. Keep the site up!

08-16-2002, 12:44 PM	#50
COBALT Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: Seattle, WA, USA Posts: 5,817	68 Suburban: Yeah, I agree entirely. This is the best resource on the web by far, and it's free. To keep it that way I would assume people would be happy to cough up $20 bucks or so in donations every few months. I mean, who cares how Josh spends it? Bottom line is he does good development work on this site as far as I can tell. He's on top of bugs, and is receptive to user input, and speaking as a developer myself its work he could be doing for a whole hell of a lot of money (even in this economic climate). Follow me for a second. As an example of what he's putting up with lets say he works for a company who has this site up as a service. They would probably would have to pay him an anual salary of $50K per year to do development work, which is modest but for an experienced developer quite low. After taxes that's over $8000 per quarter (every 3 months) or for a 40 hour work week around $17 per hour (again, after taxes - pretax it's $26 per hour). In that situation the site would NOT be free. All of us would have to pay $20 per month just to get our PM's off the site, and if we had problems we wouldn't talk to him directly. We'd call a 1-800 number. Over 1 month lets say there's only 2/3 of the membership we have now (around 3500 members). That's $70,000 per month. Now lets say we're back with the site we have now. If 150 of us donated $10 per quarter on average that's only $1500 per quarter ($500 per month). Personal time put into this is on average, what? +20hrs a week (3hrs a day including weekends)? That's $6.25 per hour for personal time he could be spending on his truck, or earning more money some other way. See the difference? We can all relate to wanting more time and money to do what we want to do. He's giving his time up for very little return to provide us with a resource. Doing it for free indicates personal interest beyond the call of duty. This isn't ditch digging. You can earn $8-9 per hour doing that. Bottom line is let Josh do his business, and try to cough up as much $ as you think your time on this site is worth. As far as I'm concerned spend it ALL on your truck, Josh. Just promise me one thing. Keep the site up! __________________ '69 3/4 ton C20 2wd-350ci/TH400 '69 3/4 ton Custom 20 2wd-350ci/4sp Manual '99 2wd 5.7 Chevy Tahoe Seattle, WA.