The sharp-eyed amongst you may have noticed a new button at the top of the right hand column of the site. It’s called Donate.
Don’t take it as an order, think of it more as an option that’s available if you feel the urge.
Why ask now?
As you know, we’ve been running VentnorBlog for over 2.5 years now and we’ve tried to cover the stories that the people of the Island and its visitors find important, digging into stories to find out the details that the other media sources on the Island choose to ignore.
VentnorBlog is taking an increasing amount of our days up and with your support, we hope to continue and hopefully expand our coverage.
From time to time over that period, people have suggested that we give them a way to let readers Donate. Each time, we thought, what a jolly generous suggestion! Well, finally we’ve remembered all of those times and done what’s been asked!
How much to Donate?
We didn’t feel it was right to decide for you how much would be the right amount if you felt the urge to Donate, so we’re leaving it up to you to decide.
It can be as little or as much as you like, but bear in mind that there’s a limit of £1,000 (!) … but if you want to exceed this, you could always donate again next month :)
How to Donate
We’ve made it as easy as possible. Simply click on the Donate button on VentnorBlog, you’ll be taken to a page when you can enter the amount of money you’d like to donate (1), click the Update Totals button (2) and if you’re a signed up for PayPal already, it should only take a couple more clicks to finish the process.
If you’re not already a PayPal user, there are a few steps to sign up, then you can use most credit cards to Donate.
If PayPay really doesn’t work for you and you’d prefer to use good, old-fashioned cash or cheque, get in touch.
What’s PayPal?
If you’ve not come across PayPal before, you’ll be assured that it’s owned by eBay (of online auction fame) and is just about as secure as you can get … we wouldn’t expose you anything that wasn’t would we?
What will Donations be spent on?
As to what your hard-earned donated lolly will go on … well it costs us a couple of hundred pounds a month just to run the server that VentnorBlog operates on, so that a good place to start.
Perversely, as we become more popular, the number of people visiting VentnorBlog goes up, so the costs we have to pay increase.
Beyond that base level cost that we need to cover, there’s always the vague chance that we might make a couple of quid out of this some day :)
