Save AarinFantasy Forum

[aarinfantasy]

Dear all,

It took me some time to write this as I want to do this properly but a sad situation is happening... so please hear me out.

The forum is in need of funds to keep it going, otherwise it will be facing closure. Most of you may not know but the forum has always been funded mainly because of a single person from the forum (let’s call this person “KK”) on each month without fail for many years. KK has always wanted to share the forum joy with everyone through donating to keep it going but unfortunately KK has stopped donating 3 months ago and can no longer donate any more. I felt KK has done more than enough and I will always be eternally grateful to KK for all the contributions. It is unfair to mainly rely on KK to always fill in the gap, though the forum also has a few regular donors whom I am also grateful to as well. While I do make a small profit from my online BL shop, it is unable to cover the forum fund monthly. Previously, I mostly used these profits from my shop for sponsoring BL events and also giveaways/contest prizes… as a give back for yaoi fans.

Therefore, I am now making a donation drive called “Save AarinFantasy Forum” drive to help keep the forum going. You can donate any amount or as how you can.
All donations amount and donor’s initial details (only initials email will be shown to know that you’re the one who donated that amount) will be put out for transparency purposes at this thread.

There are two options:
- SUBSCRIBE (monthly donation, $1, $3, $5,$10 or $20 option)
- KO-FI.COM (single or monthly donation, in units of $2)

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Donating via AarinSecret.com:

The SUBSCRIBE option is a monthly donation that will charge $1, $3, $5, $10 or $20 each month from the day you donated automatically. It is safer to say that SUBSCRIBE can allow me to plan ahead for anything involving the site and at least know what’s in for next month without having to worry if next month’s donation can be achieved. If there are decent amount of subscribers, I would like to setup special perks like extra forum points each month or forum cards making or any nice bonuses that I will think of, and I will be fair for that like for example $10 subscriber will receive more compared to $1 subscriber.

Steps to donate:
- Go to AarinSecret.com page and scroll down till you see the DONATE and SUBSCRIBE buttons.
- Choose either Donate (one time donation, any amount) or Subscribe (monthly donation, choose between $1, $3, $5, $10 or $20).
- At the donation page, please write your forum username on the message box. If you forgot, it’s fine, I will contact you through your email you used.

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Donating via Ko-fi.com:
I setup a Ko-fi.com page for more ease of use and where I can show the donation goal easily.
The total donation you made at Ko-fi will be added up together with the other donation total towards the monthly goal.
You can donate one time or monthly at units of $2 which means you can donate $2, $4, $6 or any even numbers. You don’t need to sign up as a ko-fi member to donate for one-time donation but signing up is free.

Steps to donate:
- Go to www.ko-fi.com/aarinfantasy
- Choose the type and amount you want to donate
- Please write your forum username and any message at the text message box on the page, please set it to Private Message if you don't want others to know your username.
- NOTE: "Buy a Yaoi for AarinFantasy" is just a cute way of Ko-fi saying Donate.

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For now, I will be using my own money to fund the forum for the previous 3 months (Dec 2018 till Feb 2019) and this donation drive will start funding for March 2019 onwards. Sorry, I don’t think I can fund more than 3 months on my own.

The forum is on its 15^th year now and I do hope the forum has a few more years to come (even if it’s a few short years), but at this point, the future of it is unknown. KK and I do hope that with some faith, this drive can pull through and get the site going. It has been a home for many people over the years though trends are moving on to social media and I do keep up at social media too, but it will always be nice to have the forum to be there.

For anyone that asks about how the fund goes, it goes to the website servers, download bandwidths charges, domains (AarinFantasy and AarinSecret), backup server, fansub team server, maintenance, certain fansub projects, and random projects or activities like the AarinSecret magazine which I may be bringing back due to overwhelming encouragement for a next one.

If you like my content and site, please consider supporting what I do. I hope to continue with the forum site and do more for everyone who enjoys yaoi and BL.

Thank you for all your support.

Please share this if you can to any yaoi or BL fans out there.

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I will be monitoring this drive from now till end of March everyday and will try to update on every info (including donation goal every 1-2 days till end of March), to see how how far we can go. If you have any questions, messages or anything, please post at this thread.

It can definitely make a difference if everyone can donate just a little bit.

DONATION GOAL UPDATES:


Donors List from 18th-19th Feb 2019
Donors List from 18th Feb - 3rd March 2019
18th March 2019 - LATEST UPDATES >>> Thank you post
Donors List from last update till 1st April 2019
Donors List update till 1st May 2019
Donors List update till 1st July 2019
Donors List update till 2nd Aug 2019
Donors List update till 3rd Sept 2019
Donors List update: Oct 2019
Donors List update: Nov 2019
Donors List update: Dec 2019
Donors List update: Jan 2020
Donors List update: Feb 2020
Donors List update: Mar 2020
Donors List update: Apr 2020
Donors List update: May 2020
Donors List update: June 2020
Donors List update: July 2020 (mid June update)
Donors List update: Sept 2020
Donors List update: Oct 2020
I have stopped adding to this list as it keeps growing longer,
so just check for the latest posts will do

~

[lemur7]

I shared the FB post ...and I'm in on this !! (20$ for sure !!)
every tiny bit helps ...
if just 100 people did a recurring payment of just 10$,,,you'd be okay !!

Come on folks we can do this !!!!!!

.. ..

[aarinfantasy]

Had a few hiccups with setting it up earlier for donate one time and monthly. I think now both are all properly set up and ready to go. Please try again if you have errors earlier.
I will keep the donation info (donors/amount) and goal updated here whenever I can, please allow me 1-2 days for that.

[iceley]

Subscribed. Only minimum subscription for now, but in the coming months I should have better money coming in so I plan to raise my subscription when that time comes.
I used my "formal" paypal though (which is not connected to my Aarinfantasy account. Hope that's okay.

[kunitsu]

I haven't been active here in so long but I love this place no matter what so I set up a monthly donation as well. Hoping you can hit that monthly target everytime

[Salia86]

I'm supporting my family and don't have that much... so I just could help with 2$ monthly >.<
(and totally forgot to add my name in a message, yaay... xDDD but Ko-Fi and Aarin have the same nickname xDDD)

[Nan]

I just subscribed, thanks for this site always being there - haha I think I forgot to put my username in the box though.

[aarinfantasy]

Thank you to all who donated so far. I just want to make a quick update before I go off for the next 16 hours.

As of this post timing, the donation has reached 68% after totaling up from AarinSecret donation page and the Kofi page. This is just an update before I go to sleep and off outside, so I will be back only after 16 hours from now.
The donation goal bar is at: https://ko-fi.com/aarinfantasy

If the goal has reached 100%, your donation will go to the next month's goal. Currently monthly donation total is at US$141 (about 17% of the donation goal), the others are one time donation (for March only). I will definitely post updates on total donation status within 1-2 days from now. Thank you once again!

~~~ @Nan ; @Salia86 ; @kunitsu ; @iceley ; I have noted together with your email and set your status as Contributors. Thank you!

[Kojichan]

This is sad news, indeed!

I've met a lot of friends over the years here, and I was very glad for the existence of AarinFantasy to bring Yaoi and BL Visual Novel fans together as well.

I wish KK well, and an deeply grateful for them being able to foot most of the bill for you as well. I wish them well with whatever their pursuits may be. ^_^

As every little bit helps, I also would like to contribute. I have a few questions, though. Firstly, are you able to use Patreon in your country? I know a lot of people rely on Patreon, and because it's so widely spread, it might be easier for some people to use as well for donations.

Secondly, a more technical one... How much disk space, bandwidth, server load, memory, etc does AarinFantasy take up per month? Have you perhaps looked at alternative hosting to try and find a cheaper solution?

[sumire007]

@Kojichan; I remember Aarin already took an alternative a few years ago and changed servers to keep the cost at minimum, so I don't know if there's even a more cheaper server And as for Patreon; From what I heard you can only donate via credit and debit card, so it can be an alternative, but not as an only alternative, since many don't own credit/debit, which includes me too. So I rather choose ko-fi with paypal^^;