The site is in desperate financial need (more about that below), so I've been thinking about reviving my Patreon page but first wanted to see how much support I'd get (thanks to Supercool for reminding me). That can be found here:
https://www.patreon.com/davidauchampach

The Patreon page is still up, and people can still become Patreons, but I currently don't keep it up to date like I use to, I don't announce it, and I obviously haven't done my part to make it worth pledging to...but that's going to change and is changing.

What would it take to get you guys to Pledge?

There are already some really good perks for Pledging but I can definitely add more. The $25 Pledge has this: "What Do I Work On? Your input will help determine what I invest my time into working on." but I'd prioritize this more, and give these users more of a say in what features I add and what I fix. The $50 Pledge has this: "1 Hour of My Time Monthly. I'll hang out with you online for 1 hour a month gaming, chatting, etc." and I'll prioritize this. I could also have a monthly stream session where I play a specific game with a bunch of Pledgers of a certain tier each month.

Another possibility is adding services to this site that are only accessible to users that Pledge. The server is utilizing 80% of its disk space but it rarely utilizes more than 50% of its RAM or CPU, which means this is untapped resources. I could add features and services to the site that would be exclusive to certain tiers, which could include:
-YouTube Video or Playlist Downloader / MP3 Downloader (no limits)
-Install an AI model like an LLM or image generation model
-Your own game server (much higher tier)

Let me know if any of these ideas interest anyone and if anyone would be willing to Pledge. Tell me what it would take to get you guys to Pledge. I'm open to honesty.

I could even make a deal that if my development slows down, you can pull the plug on your Pledges but as long as I continue to fix and add things on a weekly basis, you keep your Pledges up.

The site has not been profitable in a long time and I've probably lost $1000s over the past couple of years because of the site. I've made a lot cost reductions over the past couple of years but it still hurts me financially and continues to do so with the recent Google thing. I'm too passionate about this site to close it down, and I've been on my wife's bad side for quite a while due to the financial burden that this site has placed on our marriage, which is why I'm so desperate for some financial support.

Here's the details behind the Google situation.

Google recently suspended my Adsense account which was generating a small income from Vizzed but was also generating an income from my YouTube channels. The income from my YouTube channels were covering over half of the server fees (I've got many channels which are dedicated to financially support the site). The reason they suspended it was related to all the bot traffic on Vizzed, they thought I was manipulating views. I appealed this with evidence but they rejected it. I can't appeal it again for another 2 months, so I've removed the Adsense codes from the site so that they'll approve it in 2 months since the YouTube revenue is what was helping the most. In the mean time, I'm searching for an ad network.

However, the financial loss I've had lately has been bad, and I'll have a pretty big financial loss on the site for the next few months.

The total site costs are around $300 a month. I could do another server downgrade to get them down to $200 a month but that's last resort due to it resulting into the site losing even more content and it's a lot of work to do a migration.

The upgrading to a newer version of PHP was done for 3 reasons:
-Makes the site faster and more efficient
-More secure
-And gives me access to better bot and traffic control resources.

Anyways, if you have any questions, ideas, sugestions or feedback, please let me know.

I've never pledged money on Patreon and I'm sure that's not going to change, that said, speaking as someone who doesn't use Patreon, I like the ideas you mentioned at least, I'm sure at least 2 or 3 people would be willing to pledge considering everything you mentioned and the rewards, ''1 Hour of my time monthly'' would be great for someone interested in interacting with you for example, definitely.

Like i said before i wanted to support the site using patreon. I just pledged $25.
Im not too sure on how to improve the pledges because they're already good as is. Im just glad you decided to revive your patreon.

Also my patreon user is baxterartdragon.

supercool22 : You are a freaking legend! I'll look into getting applying the privileges to your account tomorrow (or I mean, later today, in like a few hours lol). If I forgot, which I probably will due to sleep deprivation, gently remind me

Already got pledges which puts my total Patreon earnings to $61 a month. Very good start considering I haven't officially promoted this yet.

supercool22 :
pokemon x :

Thank you guys

I'd do the $50 just for 1 month to change my username color lol.

Dauntez : have to do it for a year to be permanent.

Also if you did $50 wouldn't David lose money out of that in the end?
He gives you $50 to spend and then you pay him through patreon and he loses a percentage of that $50.

I wish more than anything I could convert half of my Viz to money to donate, but it probably wouldn't amount to much anyway (I have more than enough there isn't anything I want from the market)

pokemon x :

classgame : I really want to find features and tools to add to the site that have actual usefulness beyond the site, enough for users to be willing to pay Viz to use those features. I need to see what services on the internet cost money and which of them I can replicate and charge for a small amount of Viz.

pokemon x : It'd be my own money. although I only have $20 right now.

While I'm not sure I could actually do anything with the perks for various reasons, I have my own personal agenda going on that could improve my income and maybe then I could give something to this site more than my time and content.

The problem is that I won't have all the details until May at least, and even then my personal agenda will still not be over, so I'm not a solution for the short term. Still, I have pending helping this site the way it needs it most and I'll make sure to commit to it.

And yes, if there was anything I could spend my enormous treasure of Viz on I'd definitely do it. That could also drive me to write more content to generate more Viz and give them back to the site in one way or another, so it's a win-win.

I'm an outsider at this point, but my thoughts are you're going to be losing money on server costs no matter what, so minimizing costs is going to be much more effective than trying to conjure up money. I assume the vast majority of people who would even pledge or are passionate about the website are primarily forum users.

What portion of web traffic is to the RGR/VGR and what portion is to the forums? You may as well cut off what I assume to be the largest contributor to server costs. There are dozens of websites that already accomplish the same thing as the RGR and VGR (and music room to a lesser extent). The only unique thing here anymore is the community in the forums. Obviously there is a huge sunken cost fallacy here - Decades of incremental work, tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of hours from admins uploading game info and screenshots. But you're not going to see people who mainly use the RGR/VGR complaining if they disappear, since there are so many other options (including actually downloading an emulator).

Also, I don't think a YouTube downloader or AI model would bring anything new to the table that isn't already better and free elsewhere. It's hard to see how either of those pledge features would be worth the effort.

TheFadedWarrior : The RGR does still bring in real traffic and a lot of users still do use it. It's true that the RGR contributes to most of the cost but I think it's still worth fighting to keep, especially since so many users have invested so much time into it. I also still have plans for it. Also, I'd still be able to keep the roms if I was to downgrade the server to $200 a month, I'd most likely just have to get rid of most of the remaining CD systems. And at $200 a month, the site could break even and even slightly profit in time.

It's true that there are too many sites that do what Vizzed already does now but a good portion of them have a lot of flaws, are filled with ads, and are just sketchy. And most of them don't have as many games as Vizzed.

As for the YouTube Downloader comment, have you ever tried going to one of those sites? Majority of them have tons of ads, and many of them even attempt to give you a virus. But either way, these are just ideas I was throwing out there, hoping that my ideas would spark ideas among others.



EX Palen : I appreciate you considering Vizzed in your future agenda. Of course, you've done so much for the site that I'd almost feel guilty if you were also a Patreon. But of course the same could be said for all of the other Patreons.

I pledged at the $10 tier, not because of any of the perks, but just because I want to give back to the community. I think for most people, that will be the biggest motivating factor. I'm not sure how much the perks actually move the needle for someone that is currently unwilling to pledge.

I don't expect to ever really be in a spot where I could pledge but I would say for those that do I imagine a youtube downloader would be nice I used to know of a good one but that's been gone for a while now. I also doubt most people want an AI model I know in the past people have talked in the discord server about not liking you using AI so for a patron thing I doubt that would motivate people.

Once again not really my place but I think downgrading to the $200 a month option sounds really nice for you to break even or sometimes profit if the only thing we'd have to lose is the CD games I doubt that a lot of the RGR that gets used is the CD games especially after you had to get rid of most PS1 games but you would know if that's true a lot more than my guess lol.

tgags123 : Thank you for your pledge! That depends on how much of the server I'm willing to "borrow" out. I could add a pledge where someone could have their own hosted game server on my server. Of course it'd have to be a pledge of somewhere between $50 and $100.

SonicOlmstead : The AI thing, noted.

I'm not really sure honestly. I should generate a report at some point to see which systems are the most played. The $200 downgrade, if I choose to do it (which is probably more than likely unless I get enough Patreons) would happen early next month after the TdV was over so that the site downtime wouldn't affect the TdV.

I have been working on a script recently that will reduce the amount of space the music in the Video Game Music Room takes up. Anything above 128 KBPS would be compressed to 128 KBPS. I also discovered that it's possible to detect looping in a song, so I could also have cut the song after it's looped once, which would also save space. If there's a 3 minute song but the song itself is only 30 seconds (which is very common for NES), the song would get cut at the 1 minute mark, reducing the file size down to 1/3 of its original size.