I appreciate all of the increased traffic and the popularity of Party Favorz but this has gotten out of control. The main reason I had implemented the Membership program earlier this year was to control the amount of traffic and cover my costs, which by all accounts worked flawlessly (until it didn’t).
Issues arose that prevented folks from logging into their accounts, which could be easily resolved if this site was comprised of hundreds of worker bees behind the scenes to respond and handle issues as they came about. Unfortunately, it’s just me, myself, and I.
Since moving over to an open site, traffic has exploded and continues to grow by leaps and bounds day over day. If you look at the chart below, Amazon predicts an end-of-month bill as high as last month’s but it doesn’t account for the continued traffic and is revised as we go through the month. Looking at my internal numbers, I can see that it will double the amount currently projected if I let it keep going the way it is.
Folks, I flat out cannot afford last month’s bill nor take on any more debt for the continued operations of this site. It’s like the Titanic sinking at an unimaginable rate.
For the next week, ALL DOWNLOADS will be permanently suspended until the release of Jingle Electric 2016. I’m going to move everything from self-managed to a host-managed site that will run me about $80 a month for unlimited bandwidth and data. Storage is a different beast. I’ll have to cut the size of the podcasts from 320kbps to 128kbps. Due to the software, I use to encode the podcasts and the remastering involved post-production the quality difference will be negligible but it will also allow me to stay within the 1,000 MB allotted to me each month for new uploads and storage.
While $80 a month is still more than I’d like to pay out (not including all the other expenses I incur), it’s far better than the current runaway train that’s about to be derailed. I’m doing my best to keep things running so I can make my 10 10th anniversary, but many of you folks who have been slurping up podcasts (I know who and where you are) should consider helping out. Otherwise, the next step will be to make the site private and available only to those who support my efforts to bring you and everyone else the best damn music podcast that no one; and I mean NO ONE out there even comes close to. That may sound arrogant, but I’ve checked them out myself and have had many donors express as much when contributing to this site.
I want to give a HUGE shout-out and big ole southern thank you to Gary B. for $50 and Eric W. for $100 contributions. This helps dig me out of the hole from November as I dig an even deeper one this month.
As it stands, between the new setup and my final bill with Amazon, I’ll still end up shelling out $200 or more this month. Please consider contributing today.
