6 Days (and a Plea for help)

UPDATE: Thank you for the donations that have come in. You're a great and loyal audience and I appreciate you tremendously. I have received enough to cover the new expenses and felt it important to share that since you've been kind enough to rally. I do have some things to do on my end to lower the expenses --I've been talking to other site owners and my plan / hosting service appears to be very unreasonable. Working on that. I'll keep you updated.

For those who are confused about this, blogger is a free service but I own the film experience domain and I do have to pay monthly charges at thefilmexperience.net (just as any of the other big site does) and the blog, which started as an experiment, has become successful enough on its own that I always intended to merge it with the site. Just haven't done so yet. The monthly expenses of running a popular site have been coming out of my own pocket for all the years I've been doing it. It's been a labor of love and it's nice to see the love returned.

the original post
6 days until the Oscars hit. The excitement is mounting but here @ The Film Experience things aren't going well.



Just as I was concocting some last minute plans for Oscar articles as well as another contest and spring & summer projects for your entertainment ... I was hit by a rather massive bill of overages for the site and I'll be blunt about it: I can't afford to do it anymore. I will be doing some extensive analyzing on my end to see where things are going wrong (or right I guess --I'm at the awkward stage of too popular for hobbyist and too small for self-employment). Once the Oscars are over I can do some hard core planning but if there is to be a future at all I have to have an immediate blood transfusion of the green sort --so whatever you can do to keep the site running and buy me time in this existential / financial dilemma for TFE, please help out.

Remember how Tilda Swinton collapses so completely at the end of Michael Clayton when she realizes how untenable her situation really is? That was me about four hours ago. Only without the glorious red hair, translucent skin and the burden of guilt from helping some massive corporation destroy children's lives. Yes thankfully without that last bit.

• If you're an international reader, the US dollar is worth nothing so you can really help me ;) and you know I'm the Oscar site that loves you most.
  
• If you're a poor college student, you can at least pretend you've bought me a beer or two. beer is cheap right. Throw me a $10 ;)
  
• If you're doing fine, lend me a hand. Think of the karma.
  
• If you're rich, you can consider me a really talented slighty looney charity case: be a generous patron of the arts.
  
• If you're filthy rich or a movie star or industry type, make my year and consider it a site donation, a birthday present, and a Christmas gift all rolled into one.

I try to provide a high quality creative year round service of entertainment about entertainment but as the site has grown in popularity the expenses are eating your host / editor / writer / creative director alive. Nathaniel (c'est moi) foots the bill himself and he's hurting. So be kind. And he'll also work on solutions himself (TBD, I'll fill you in) so that the pleas for help don't become smelly daily begging. I know you'd prefer daily blogging. I'd prefer that too. I have so many ideas --it's time and money that are the struggle.
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