Happy New Year~! (and InflateVids money plans)

Hello patrons!

First of all (now that I'm still allowed to), happy new year! I hope 2021 will be less of a shit show for everyone and be filled with balloons and inflatables (videos) for all! Also hope that Christmas was a nice break from everything and if it wasn't as great, I hope that plans for 2021 might brighten your mind up.

Also thanks for contributing and supporting InflateVids! Because of your support, I'm able to host this website for free without the upload restriction for the time being. It was a nice Christmas present knowing that this project has potential. Even if the support currently doesn't cover all the costs, your support still tells me that this will be possible one day.

Now for something that your patrons deserve to know:

The plan is that I will be paying for costs not covered by Patreon support up until December 14th 2021. At this point, the website is supposed to fund itself by means of support from you lovely patrons.

This is still far away. I have plans of pushing Patreon more on the website and other social media, and have plans for making exclusive (early access) features for patrons. Naturally, a Patreon profile badge will be first together with linking your Patreon and InflateVids accounts. Expect this around the end of February, as I am finishing a big project in my personal life.

You might wonder what would happen if the site can't fund itself? Well, in that case I have planned to pay for another month, pushing Patreon the hardest (the Wikipedia "we need money asap" approach). After that, the website will be put in an archival mode for another 3 months before (if still not funded) it will close down. Archive mode would be where any upload functionality would be disabled. Anything else would still be possible.

As a hard line I have decided that if there is not sufficient support before the 15th of the second archival month (so, 2.5 months into archive mode) that means the end of the Patreon page, and patrons wouldn't be charged after that.

So, as it stands, the website is planned to be hosted until at least May 1st 2022. After that, it depends on the support of Patreon. If the site would ever have to shut down due to monetary reasons, there is at least a 2 week notice.

Of course keep in mind that unexpected events do occur and costs may go above what my worst case scenario even considered, so please, please, do not strictly hold me to this :P

Any questions? Concerns? Anything not clear? Please do not hesitate to ask! No question is a stupid question and I am happy to answer either privately or in the comments below.

Thanks for reading!
Rick

P.s. I'll edit the goal on Patreon to what the server bill roughly was last month for a more realistic view on costs.