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Category: Website Changes

Paypal Donation Form Broke

As some of you know the Paypal Donation form is ‘broken’. Pressing the button brings up a message ‘This Organization Can’t Accept Donations Right’. Needless to say we do accept donations, but only Venmo or snail mail until we can get the Paypal issue resolved.

I will get it fixed this coming week–a few years ago I could ‘fix’ this myself–but my skills in coding and such things are lacking more and more so I won’t be able to get the tech people on it until Monday.

My apologies for the issue.

Thanks to All Who Donated During 2023

When I first thought about how to pay for the not inconsequential overhead costs of running a 5000 page website I was kind of skeptical about supporting the cost with ‘donations’. Certainly some websites operate on donations, but we are fairly specialized here on Innovation Income Investor which means that our appeal is more limited than a website with broadly based security coverage.

I was wrong about doubting the generosity of people supporting our website. Kind of like some of my interest rate predictions folks have proven me wrong. Since December 2022 (when the donation page was launched) we have had donations of all sorts – from just a few dollars to $100’s of dollars and everyone of them is appreciated. We even have some folks who send a check every month to our P.O. Box. Some of the ‘paper checks’ we receive in the mail even have nice notes in them – I really appreciate that we have folks that do not participate in commenting etc., but who are newer to preferreds and baby bonds and who find value in the comments that all our ‘experts’ (not me) post.

The donations received come in very handy–in fact December is when the tech folks start sending the bills for basic operations for 2024–$1,400 which is just to keep operating online. Everyone wants a little ‘taste’ nowadays–I even have to pay for the ‘like/dislike’ button (not much fortunately). A couple weeks ago I received a note from my tech folks for their ‘retainer sale’–so I will invest some money there since security issues are kind of an ongoing thing and believe me no one does anything for less than a couple hours of billable time–when I call them I know that $200-$500 is gone in a flash. I currently pay $115/hour for the tech support.

Just to let everyone know I do not even know who gives what in support of the website. My wife takes care of that stuff and of course everyone comments on the website with ‘screen names’ so we have ‘screen names’, ‘real names’, ’email addresses’, etc. – there is no one here trying to match donations with ‘screen names’.

So THANK YOU TO ALL–to donors, commentors and even lurkers. The most important part of the website is YOU–without you all it wouldn’t be worth the effort operating this website. After 17 years of publishing this (or predecessor sites) kind words and comments make it all worthwhile!!