If you have had a closer look at my website before, you might have seen a number of advertisements spread all over the page and wondered: where do they come from? What purpose do they serve?
In the spirit of transparency, I want to answer your questions regarding these ads, and closely tied into that, the financing of kimberley-jackson.com.
Even though I rely on free plugins and services wherever possible, some costs can’t be avoided to keep a website secure, up to date, and in accordance with the current legal situation.
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Money Raised for 2017
Let me start out by giving you an idea of my yearly expenses for this website:
Webhosting and Domain (all-inkl.com): 95,40 EUR
Theme and Security Updates: US$69 – approx. 63 EUR (Yearly Subscription)
Mobile Theme and Security Updates: 50 EUR (Yearly Subscription)
Other Expenses: approx. 50-100 EUR (includes things such as one-time-fee plugins for security or new features, marketing (such as giveaways), and stock images for blog posts and cover art.)
That’s a total of roughly 250-300 EUR every year that I spend just to keep this website online. And that doesn’t even include the money I spend on offline programs such as Microsoft Word to be able to create the stories and art.
And that’s just the material expenses. It doesn’t include work hours spent maintaining the page or doing marketing for it.
So how is it paid for?
Generally, I pay everything out of my own pocket, as I don’t sell most of the stuff I create. In 2015, I began selling some of the art I’m allowed to sell on Redbubble, however, the profits from that go to charity organizations.
Another source of funding for me is my Patreon account, where people can pledge a monthly amount starting as low as 2 EUR to help cover expenses.
And then there are advertisements of course. In general, every time a user clicks on one of the advertisements, I receive a tiny amount of money that helps cover website expenses (sometimes 1 Cent, sometimes more, depending on the type of advertisement and the user’s actions on the target website).
In 2015, those advertisements created a total amount of approx. 72 EUR revenue, which helped cover about ¼ of my total expenses.
The advertisements on this page merely serve self-funding purposes. I do not make any profits from them. As you can see above, they’re not even sufficient to balance my balance sheet—which is somewhat self-evident, given that I offer most of my art and writings for free.
Want to help cover expenses?
You can help cover the costs for this website by becoming my Patreon. Patreon is a free donation service primarily directed at artists who want to finance themselves doing their art.
Patreon allows you to set up a monthly payment, starting as low as US$2, that will go to my account and will officially make you my patron. The system is inspired by the way artists used to finance themselves in the past: by gaining the support of wealthy nobles, who would finance them and in return receive art and such.
If every person reading a story on my website clicked one of the advertisements, I would most likely be able to cover my expenses through the ads alone. However, the internet is flooded with advertisements, and consequently with users using ad-blockers in their browsers, so that’s not going to happen. Therefore Patreon is an important funding source in covering expenses for this website.
I have introduced a reward system, that will grant higher rewards to those who pledge more money. Have a look, and maybe check out the page if you’re interested. You would help me cover some or all of the expenses, so any pledge will be appreciated. Thank you very much.
Become my Patreon now!
