Mac Musings

Crunch Time, Part 3

Daniel Knight - 2001.06.07

Wow, the Mac community has really rallied behind Low End Mac over the past week. At this point, close to 100 of you have contributed sent in over $1,800 in donations and for equipment purchases using the Amazon Honor System and PayPal. Still others are sending checks via snail mail. Thank you!

I've received some excellent feedback. One writer is very concerned about privacy issues, especially with regards to Amazon.com. Although Amazon says they don't track you when you visit a member site, the potential is there. In response to that and the overwhelming support from Mac users, we eliminated the Amazon Honor System box from our site on Tuesday.

Instead, as a writer suggested, we've updated our support page to discuss the various ways you can help Low End Mac - everything from telling friends about the site to buying through affiliate programs to making monetary contributions. We also offer four ways to send funds: PayPal, Kagi, the Amazon Honor System, and snail mail.

We have discovered a real drawback to the Amazon Honor System - we can't get it to transfer funds to our bank account, although that's supposed to be an option. They'll automatically transfer funds on June 16, but that's not very helpful when cash flow is tight. :-(

Thanks to you contributions, I was able to pay the writers this week, pay our ISP, and cut myself a paycheck (which also makes my wife very happy).

I've sold the Cube to Charles W. Moore and will be shipping it to Nova Scotia as soon as his check arrives. That will let us pay mid-month taxes and cut another paycheck. Maybe even afford Macworld Expo in July.

I've had a talk with the former sponsor who owes us over $7,000. They've been going through tough times, too. We've set up terms where they will be sending a "large check" immediately and an additional $1,000 each month until the account is paid in full. That will improve our cash flow for the rest of the year. Between that, banner ads, and other list sponsors, we should be able to meet expenses from month to month.

Between that and the mid-month check from BackBeat Media, we should be on a solid financial footing from this point forward (fingers crossed).

As the dot-coms learned last year, it's hard to get rich publishing content on the Internet, but at it looks like everything has fallen into place for Low End Mac the rest of the year.

Thank you for your ongoing support, financial and otherwise.