30k users paying a dollar a year or 3k users paying a dollar a month.

to be frank -- i would much rather have 3000 people paying a dollar a month because it affords me the ability to properly budget, predict trends and growth ebb and flow and makes operating the site and its costs much more stable. as it stands right now I have to move stuff around every couple months to try to save money and cut corners

on the other hand, 30k at one time would afford us the ability to pay for *everything* for an entire year which reduces our total operating cost by between 15-18% which is very far from insignificant when you are talking that kind of money.

im torn every which way i look, and we are in a unique position here because we are more or less pioneers in the sphere with a pleroma instance of this size, so i dont have a lot of people to turn to for technical help but i lean heavily on those i do -- including our security audits which are helping the fediverse as a whole.

i am talking to both shari (on matrix) and fse pete (on irc) about this and I think admins of larger/more active instances on this side should band together to resolve this not just financially but with tech and other stuff -- i have sent contributions to NCD and NHTB and I'd like to see others pay it forward. I'd like to see a Poast user who might have an alt on NCD to throw a couple dollars matty's way. or someone who doesn't have an NHTB account throw some shari's way because they know we rely on this. so i will try to cultivate this culture here as best i can. in this situation we dont win unless we all win