Make Tabletop
is creating a 3D Printing Site for TabletopSelect a membership level
Thanks For Your Support!
$1
per month
Every cent counts, and I appreciate this. Thank you!
- 11GB of 3D printed models can be downloaded thanks to you!
- Helps support development
Ad-Free
$3
per month
With ads now making an appearance on the site to help with server fees, this makes sure you stay ad-free while still helping to support development.
- Ad-free
- Helps support development
Mass Downloader
$5
per month
- Ability to Download Entire Packs with 1-click
- Ad-free
- Thousands of people get to download 3D Printed Tabletop models thanks to you!
- Helps support development
About
The night before launching MakeTabletop.com I said to my fiancée, "I hope someone says 'wow'". Within hours of launching, I was saying it from the community's overwhelming excitement and support!
I launched the site thinking it would be a slow grow, but it's already hit the goals I figured I'd hit in a year's time.
With that, however, comes unexpected server bills! Just 2 days in and there's been 125GB worth of printables downloaded. Luckily, I prepared for this as best as I could by coding everything in a money-saving way and compressing all of the data I store by about 50%, so it's actually been about 250GB of stuff downloaded, but I only pay for the compressed stuff. To see it from my perspective, I was expecting enough excitement for just 90GB of data transfer in the entire month!
I use AWS S3 for my data storage, which is $0.09 per GB of data transferred (and some other fees, but they're tiny). Overall, it's been about $5-6 worth of data transfer per day thus far, and I pay about $3 per day for my actual server (custom built and co-located, which gives further savings).
About $10/day is extremely cheap for what the site is doing.
My plan to solve this situation if it happened early was to put a necessary evil on the site... ads. However, I've received so many messages wanting to donate to help or just as a thank you. After a couple days of thinking about it, I decided to try it out to see if it can help pay the bills. Obviously, the necessary evil will have to come sometime to help sustain myself, but I'll try to do something special for patreons like make an ad-less experience for them at a certain tier.
I'll make every cent count, and I'm super passionate and excited to build MakeTabletop.com!
New patrons will be charged the day they become a patron, then on the 1st of the month going forward
I launched the site thinking it would be a slow grow, but it's already hit the goals I figured I'd hit in a year's time.
With that, however, comes unexpected server bills! Just 2 days in and there's been 125GB worth of printables downloaded. Luckily, I prepared for this as best as I could by coding everything in a money-saving way and compressing all of the data I store by about 50%, so it's actually been about 250GB of stuff downloaded, but I only pay for the compressed stuff. To see it from my perspective, I was expecting enough excitement for just 90GB of data transfer in the entire month!
I use AWS S3 for my data storage, which is $0.09 per GB of data transferred (and some other fees, but they're tiny). Overall, it's been about $5-6 worth of data transfer per day thus far, and I pay about $3 per day for my actual server (custom built and co-located, which gives further savings).
About $10/day is extremely cheap for what the site is doing.
So what's the problem?
I'm full time on a site that costs me money to build at the moment. I'm building this with the savings I have because I believe I can make it sustain both itself and myself before my bank runs dry. $10/day is cheap, but it's $300/month which I didn't think it would hit for quite some time.My plan to solve this situation if it happened early was to put a necessary evil on the site... ads. However, I've received so many messages wanting to donate to help or just as a thank you. After a couple days of thinking about it, I decided to try it out to see if it can help pay the bills. Obviously, the necessary evil will have to come sometime to help sustain myself, but I'll try to do something special for patreons like make an ad-less experience for them at a certain tier.
I'll make every cent count, and I'm super passionate and excited to build MakeTabletop.com!
New patrons will be charged the day they become a patron, then on the 1st of the month going forward
Goals
$48 of $300 per month
Pays for an entire month of server bills so I don't have to worry about it while I develop the site.
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