Donation Progress
May 1, 2024
As you may know, a couple things are affecting the donation goal for 2024 and the future of my WaveCast report. As you may recall, I've been dealing with health issues and I need to decide how much time I want to put into this report (or other things). Coupled by a few months of diminishing donations, I've had to take a hard look to decide if this report should continue. After my plea for donations last month, many donated to nudge the donation goal out of negative territory, but barely.
Since a few months went negative, it took a lot to just get the donation goal into positive territory. So although the donation goal is in positive territory now, given the hard push I had to do last month, I have to assume that this trend could go negative once again. If the positive trend continues, then so will this report. If not, then I have to reevaluate if this is worth my health, wellbeing, and time.
As you may remember, when Surfing and Surfer magazines closed at the end of 2019 I asked readers like you if this report should continue. I've been doing this report for about 30 years and I wanted to make sure it still had value. Thousands wanted me to continue this report, so I offered to keep this report going under the condition that I could get enough donations to make it worth my time. But once that is no longer the case, given my personal issues right now, then this report may eventually need to sunset. As it stands today we're a ways off from ending the report entirely, but I need the donation momentum to continue to make my effort worthwhile.
In the case that this report falls into sunset (if donations falter), I will do so in phases. For now, I've had to abridge the extent and details in the report, since that seems to be a high-effort, low-return endeavor (there seems little to no interest in all of the science details I put in the forecasts along with graphics).
The next thing to go (if donations falter) would be the email report notification, which I pay about $1000 every year to maintain.
After that, if donations were to continue to wane, then I'll consider a two- or one-day per week report, instead of the three I do now.
If things continue to decline after that, then I'll sunset this report by giving everyone a month's notice where I won't take donations so that those who have donated get their money's worth.
BEFORE EMAILING ME ABOUT THIS, please note a few things. First, I get asked to make this a subscription service, but I won't. I went down that road before and I have no desire to do that again. Second, some have suggested putting more ads on the site, but I refuse to litter my decades of hard work with trash. And thirdly, remember that all I ever asked for was less than 0.3% of what some forecast sites pull in every year from required subscriptions. While some bigger forecasting sites rake-in tens of millions of dollars, my ask was a mere drop in the bucket, barely enough to make it worthwhile, just $2500 per month, which barely compensated me for my time and effort. To have to beg for that miniscule amount from the approximate 12,000 readers of my report has been demeaning and disheartening.
I would like to thank everyone who has donated to support this report. You are the reason this report continued, and I can't thank you enough. For those who didn't donate, you are the reason this report could end.
I'll post my next progress update after the first of June. Until then, I truly wish the best for all of you, and I hope that you too will decide to make the best use of your most valuable asset: Time.
