Let's show Joe some love and donate! | Fab forum

Oh wow, you're all so kind. Thanks very much.

First of all, even though there's a donate button, this site will always be free to use. I treat it as a creative outlet, to give me something to do. If I don't get to write for a few days I get grumpy, so it's Beatle therapy for me.

I do get a bit of money each month from advertising. It's approximately 1/10th of my regular salary, so not nearly enough to retire on and go and live on a beach somewhere, and if it was my full-time job the hourly rate would be pitiful. But in terms of server costs it more than pays for itself. Any spare cash generally goes on Beatles books, though I do have a fund to buy a set of autographs one day.

Amazon/iTunes: if you click on a link and go to those sites, whatever you spend I get a cut from. I think the Amazon cookie lasts for 24 hours; not sure about iTunes. If no money gets spent I don't get paid, but that's OK. Incidentally, iTunes makes me just a few dollars each year, while I get a couple of hundred dollars a year from Amazon. Google's ads are far more lucrative.

Google ads! I realise people here want to show their appreciation, but please only ever click on an advert if you're interested in what it offers. Don't click on anything and everything just to make me some cash – Google has strict rules against it.

Wikipedia: I can't stop anyone linking to this site (nor would I want to), but please don't be too spammy. Put references in only when they're warranted. And do follow Wikipedia's convention for citations, otherwise they'll get removed PDQ.

Spreading the word is always welcome. New people discover this site all the time, and in four years of doing this I still don't think I've had any negative feedback (apart from typos and factual corrections). The more people who talk about this, the better my Google ranking is, the more traffic I get, the more money I get. But, more importantly, I get to meet lovely Beatles fans from across the universe who really appreciate what I do. Sometimes the warm glow of a job well done is as satisfying as cold, hard cash.

On the subject of spreading the word, the very fact that people post on this forum help enormously. If people chat about topics it encourages others to join in, and adds to the bulk of Beatles knowledge. (That's why I occasionally change thread titles and urls, to make them easier for Google to find.) There's stuff that's been debated here that I couldn't ever find time to write about elsewhere, so thanks for joining in.

I've never really done any promotion of this site – when I set it up the thought was "build it and they will come". I do update Twitter and Facebook when I remember, but that's about it. And many of my friends and workmates don't even know I do it. If I tried a bit harder with advertising and promotion who knows what'd happen?

While I'm here, future plans involve a Beatles book. Probably a self-published ebook and print-on-demand title, though I'll keep the subject to myself for now. I'll sell it through the site and on Amazon which should be good promotion. Might have to give my full name away too…

Yes, I get paid a few pennies for each click on a Google ad. It all mounts up. Ebay do something similar which I've been thinking of using, but I'm wary of making the site too ad-heavy.

Two USB apples? Very cool! Thanks for buying through the website.