I think the modest upcharge on the quality gear is a great place to start.
Time will tell if it will generate the necessary income to support this site. If it is not working out, I'll bet some new ideas can be thrown out.

When does the new upcharge go into effect? The moment it does, I'm going shopping!

Please keep us posted on whether or not the upcharge is providing the necessary means to keep this site we love alive and well.

Regards,
Adam

I dont have a problem with the increase on the gear to help fund the site. Heck, I figured it was already being done. :?

Also, just to throw this out there..... I run a site with a message board that has a dedicated server. Our site is 100 percent funded by the users via donations and is add free(shameless plug http://www.ramsrule.com/theoriginalherd/dcboard.php ). Being a football board, I run a 1 month fund raiser every April since we get the most traffic during the draft month. We give no special treatment for the donators, and have actually banned several over the years. It'* worked really well for us and we normally take in at least double the cost of the yearly server fees.

I know you guys are dead set against taking donations, but I question if enough gear is sold per year to pay for everything. When it comes down to it, donations will get you over the hump and wont affect the atmosphere here, if done correctly.

Regardless of which way you go, good luck and let me know when we're going to do tshirts again.

Go with what you have first wrote about.

From what I have been reading over the past 6 months, there are many poor college/high school student members here. We should not give special priveleges/badges for donors. That would cause problems between the haves and have-nots.

I think there are alot of people here that have problems making ends meet.

Another site I frequent has a "Supporter" feature. Supporters get better bandwidth, no ads, more PM space, 'access to supporter only sections, and a badge. I don't mind the badge and have no use for the rest but the bandwidth is the killer. IMO it actually hurts them to limit the bandwidth of the non-supports because it has gotten so slow that I just sign off and only hit there once every few weeks now.

The badge hasn't created any division or elite group there. Actually it hardly ever gets brought up so i don't think it would be a bad idea here.

I haven't bought anything from the store myself. That will change immediately if some of th money goes to the club.
The only things I would object to as far as keeping the forum funded would be pop-ups, animated banners, or those damn imbedded-text-link ads like they have on that forum I won't name....

I support an up charge on sale items. As a matter of fact I'm going to look for something now.

John