It is that special time of year again – the time when you are asked to please help us continue in our mission to advise and inform you on helpful matters about travel and travel related technology, and to hold accountable the people and corporations seeking to foist mistruths and double dealing on us.
Our mutual desire to see this project continue is best served by making everything we do open and free for all. But while the site is indeed fully accessible to all, it is not free for me to provide all of this. Researching and writing the weekly articles, news compilations and commentaries takes up all my day, every day – greatly more than 40 hours a week. The Travel Insider is necessarily my full-time job, and just like everyone reading it, I need to earn a full-time wage – plus the necessary extra funding to cover the costs of maintaining the website and blog – from my full-time work.
Hence the ‘Public Broadcasting’ model we’ve adopted. We have occasional newsletter sponsors and web page advertisers – advertising that in no way detracts from the quality and presentation of the content. This funding, while helpful, is massively insufficient to cover the costs of maintaining The Travel Insider and keeping me solvent. It needs to be supplemented by your voluntary support, hence these annual fundraising drives.
Whether you choose to contribute $5, $50, or even $500, we hope you’ll agree you get remarkably good value in return (you are of course free to choose whatever contribution level that assures your perception of excellent value in return). Not only are you informed and occasionally amused, but you also get valuable information that can help you with your travel planning and your technology purchases.
Whether you read everything we write, or just skim through it on occasion, you surely spend more time doing so than you do sipping on a single Starbucks coffee, and so we ask you to consider that as an appropriate measure to establish a voluntary level of contribution. Is the continuation of The Travel Insider worth a cup of coffee a week to you? Or is it worth a cup of coffee a month to you? Or just a single occasional specialty drink with cream and a cherry on top?
If you prefer, maybe you can equate reading The Travel Insider with reading a magazine, a book, or a newspaper. A single issue of USA Today is $1.00. Magazines are about $5. Books are considerably more.
Do the math any way you feel appropriate. However you choose to equate and value The Travel Insider, please be as fair and generous as you can in your chosen level of support. And, most of all, please do choose to help. Sending in only $5 or $10 is of course worth vastly more than sitting there and saying ‘Oh yes, David’s writing is definitely worth $50 or $100’ but then doing nothing. I see my glass as half-full, no matter what level of contribution you select (and as overflowing in some rare but special cases!).
To make it easiest for you this year, there are now four ways you can help The Travel Insider. You can make a single one-off payment by credit card through Paypal, you can do the same by credit card directly to me, you can contribute ‘the old fashioned way’ by mailing a check, or you can choose to become an ongoing sustaining supporter by signing up for regular monthly or quarterly contributions at whatever level you wish, and cancellable at any time.
Please choose to make a difference by responding and contributing. You’ll help me, you’ll help the many readers who continue to take advantage of The Travel Insider while not contributing, and hopefully, your assistance in helping The Travel Insider to continue into the future will also directly benefit yourself too.
Please click this link to be taken to our fundraising page.
With sincerest thanks
David.
