obligatory preface: we're 100%-user funded and everything you donate to us specifically goes to the website, or any outside labor we pay to do something for us.
overall expenses this month: $523.79
as expected, a full month of running on last month's setup has come in pretty high. luckily, we expect downsizing to begin this month (and we have a pretty good idea of what we're going to do) so this will be our last month of costs at this scale. our initial estimation is that we can halve or better what we're paying now on a monthly basis.
$428.73 for Digital Ocean hosting, which can be further subdivided into
- $336.00 for hosting the site itself
- $67.20 for backups
- $25.53 for site snapshots
$28.87 for Hive, an internal chat platform we've set up (also being hosted on Digital Ocean)
- $24.07 for hosting Hive
- $4.80 for backups
~$39.16 for email functionality, which can be further subdivided into
- $35/mo for Mailgun (handles outbound emails, so approval/denial/notifications emails; also lets us not get marked as spam)
- ~$4.16/mo ($50/yr, already paid in full) for Fastmail (handles all inbound emails)
$22.87 for BackBlaze (redundant backup system that's standalone from Digital Ocean)
overall contributions this month: $1,310.90
support still more than covers our expenses, and particularly with our upcoming downsizing we don't believe this will be a problem. breakdown is:
- 100 monthly contributions, totaling $624.95
- 2 yearly contributions, totaling $67.10
- 36 one-time donations, totaling $618.85
between monthly and yearly contributions we are still sustainable overall—but now that the Reddit bump has ebbed most of our savings will come in the form of lowering costs and not "sheer amount of money being thrown our way."
total end of month balance: $4,347.79
expense runway, assuming no further donations
- assuming expenses like ours this month: we have about 8 months and one week of runway
I would wager I've spent between 40-70hours a week working on Beehaw directly or on things relating to it with as high as 90hours a week at the peak - I would wake up, open Beehaw, eat, sleep. None of us get paid for this, it would likely bankrupt Beehaw in less than a week if we were paid even minimum wage. The only reason I can do this is because I don't have a job - which is putting me in a bad financial situation honestly.. I really should've gotten a job but I didn't.
Thank you for the appreciation.
Surely that isn’t sustainable for you or beehaw? On the one hand, please take care to look after your own best interests. We really appreciate your work, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of your well-being.
On the other hand, if the project is based on full time volunteer work by people who can’t afford to volunteer full time over the long term, surely that is a major risk to the long term viability of the instance?
It worked for reddit for 18 years. They just need more volunteers.
40-90 hours a week isn't sustainable, but adding a few more people takes it out of burnout territory.
Reddit has always had paid employees, only the mods are/were unpaid.
I completely agree. It makes it more sustainable on both sides
That's certainly true but the issue is that we don't really have other options. Lemmy's system allows for little delegation outside of giving full admin powers. There's an issue to improve that but as with all of Lemmy's moderation woes - it seems no one is working on it.
this is quite belated but now i'm back to a computer so i can answer this at some length: this is a fundamental issue of the fediverse which nobody has solved. the money is just not there for this to be any sort of compensated job, even at the level of "monthly stipend between the admins" (because that'd double the expenses you see here at minimum). maybe if this site was pay-to-join perhaps we could make a scheme like that work but that has its own drawbacks too--and at least in our case could select for an audience which would exclude many of the very people we want to make a space for.
there is a brute force answer which may or may not work in the long run, which is "have a lot of people keeping an eye on the website". that of course introduces its own vectors for issues but is basically the way we're making this work right now, and will probably be the case into the foreseeable future unless people get much more generous with their spending here.
Thanks for the detailed response. It doesn’t seem like there is a perfect answer here, but it is very important that you and other admins/mods can find some sort of sustainable way to delegate and manage for the long term. We really appreciate what you have done so far
I really do appreciate the work you put into Beehaw, but to echo what others have said, I don't think anyone wants this to be unsustainable for you, or anyone else working on Beehaw.
At the least I think it could be reported as part of donations/expenses? Rough numbers would be fine too (because the overhead of tracking hours is not fun). So I'm imagining something like:
400 hours unpaid work (2 full time people working, 1 part-time) (if paid, that's $6,000 at minimum wage, $8,800 at a livable wage)
Which is a lot of money, and very scary, but at least it makes the behind-the-scenes work visible.
That said, I'm going to go set up a monthly donation now 🤗
I want to add my support for the unpaid labor being reported as part of the financial report. It would add more clear transparency to the total effort involved.
The human toll is hard to quantify but should not be ignored.
It's worth mentioning that a lot of moderation work is kinda always in the back of your mind and work even when it's not directly - answering people's questions, chatting in our mod chat, talking to other admins, etc.
No illusions on my part. This is true for a lot of jobs that have 24/7 support activity and also jobs that have an emotional toll that lingers when not "working" (social workers, teachers in bad neighborhoods, nurses, content moderators). And as such, the pay scale is commensurate. It's not that it solves the problem, but that it can afford the individuals time off and rehabilitation services.
I feel that putting dollar amounts on the work would be confusing to people, they might think we'll take that money. I've thought about making a post to donate money to me personally because well, I need the money but I don't know.
i can attempt this for the next expense report but it seems a bit academic. just estimating here, the number per month is already something like twice the total amount of money we've received over the course of the site's existence, and several times what we received this month.
I would rather see ads or something than having someone work that hard for no pay to keep it going. Have you thought about other potential revenue streams, or would you like to workshop or discuss options?
One idea that I believe could use some discussion is Beehaw merchandise.
I would be delighted to wear a Beehaw shirt out and about, and I'd love a Beehaw sticker for my laptop. I am happy to contribute labor to making these things happen - please let me know if I can assist in any way. My design skills are mediocre, but I am capable of taking an existing thing and turning it into a format that works for various applications, and I'm familiar with setting up basic online storefronts for print-on-demand etc.
An official Beehaw merchandise online store would be something that would require talks with all the admins with voting power. That would be my self, Gaywallet, Lionir and Alyaza. You could begin by creating a post about this in c/chat and pinging all of us there.
I would also happily donate some design labour towards Beehaw merchandise.
☹️
Do you haz a sad?