Finally! You can support IR on Patreon now!
posted Wednesday, November 20, 2019 at 6:54 PM EDT
Regular readers will probably know by now that times are tough here at Imaging Resource. In a declining camera market, it has become increasingly challenging for an independent and in-depth review site like ours to survive on ad and affiliate revenue alone. With much less advertising money to go around these days, we've had to contemplate the possibility of closing the site just a few years shy of its 25th birthday, although we absolutely want to continue. (And with heavy hearts we've already had to bid a sad farewell to some of our freelancers -- and close friends -- alongside whom we've worked for many years.)
But while the future looks bleak, we've absolutely not thrown in the towel yet, and now have a way for you to help us keep running as well. Behind the scenes, those of us who remain are still fighting to keep the lights on and the reviews rolling out. IR founder and publisher Dave Etchells in particular has been very hard at work on securing a long-term future for the site which he created way back in the early days of the digicam market. And since announcing our potential closing, we've heard from many, many readers who've told us that they want to do their part to help secure IR's future.
Perhaps the best way in which you can help is to donate a little cash to the cost of keeping a streamlined and more efficient IR running. It costs quite a bit to perform the in-depth testing on which we've built our reputation, with not just server costs to think of, but also the costs of running our office / lab and manning it with a full-time staff who do all the grunt work required to test each camera which comes in the door, then turn those lab testing results and real-world experience into coherent, engaging and most of all fair and balanced reviews.
But we still have a lot of regular readers, and if every one of you was to donate just one dollar each month, that would help to sustain the site for years to come without needing us to rely on ad revenue at all. Obviously, persuading every reader to take the time to donate even just a dollar a month isn't a realistic goal, but if a reasonable fraction of you were to donate a little more -- perhaps just the price of a cup of coffee or two each month -- that would be enough to keep the lights on. (And while one-off donations will also help and are very greatly appreciated, it's those regular donations which will do the most to help in the long-term.)
Now, there's a way for you to provide that help we so desperately need, all with a minimum of effort on your part. Back when we first published the news of our potential closing, we'd told readers that we were preparing a Patreon campaign which would allow for regular, monthly donations at a level which you can personally afford. Unfortunately, with that campaign needing to be set up by Dave -- who has been thoroughly run off his feet trying to secure the site's future and also working on sponsored content from a recent trip to Japan -- it took a little while to get that campaign running. (And while Dave had been intending to pen a status update in which we'd also publicly announce the Patreon campaign going live, that article too has had to be pushed back a little.)
So rather than delay any longer, we're announcing the Patreon campaign in this article instead. You can still look forward to a personal status update from Dave in the not-too-distant future as well, but in the meantime, please do take a moment to consider what you can personally afford, and what a continued Imaging Resource means to you personally -- and then click here to set up a regular Patreon pledge of your own. With your help, and that from readers like you, we very much hope to be around and providing meaningful, impartial reviews for years to come.
For those of you who prefer an alternative to Patreon, or want to set up a one-off donation, you can also support us via PayPal; here are some donation buttons for that:
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You can also subscribe for a periodic amount on PayPal; it'll credit our account with the amount you select until you tell it to stop doing so:
On behalf of all of us here at IR, our deepest heartfelt thanks for every cent you kindly donate. It's very, very much appreciated!