The title says it all. You can support me in one of three ways:

I did try looking into Flattr as an additional payment method, but since it’s for businesses I needed a business number, which I don’t have.

Patreon and Ko-Fi supporters get access to a private Discord channel. Of course, I’m open to any other suggestions as far as perks go. Ko-Fi donors also have the choice of choosing a one-time donation or a recurring monthly billing cycle. Please note that if you choose to donate via Liberapay, I will know who you are, as I have anonymity disabled. Why? Because I want to send you a personal thank you if you choose to donate. (I can reverse this decision though if there is enough demand for it.)

Just to give you an idea of the costs involved with keeping LGC around, here’s a breakdown.

I’m using my own server on my home network, and hosting the site with open-source software. The only “cost” there is the slight increase in the electricity bill, keeping the server on 24/7.

Keeping the linuxgamingcentral.com domain name is $20/year.

The linuxgamingcentral(at)pm(dot)me email address is powered by ProtonMail. This is roughly $40/year with the Mail Plus subscription plan.

Plausible Analytics is currently $200/year. If I ever get more than 100k monthly pageviews, I will have to upgrade my subscription, which would tack on another $100/year. Yes, this is rather expensive, but I chose to go with Plausible rather than Google Analytics, for reasons that I’ve stated way back in March. Basically, it’s for your privacy. Even though Google Analytics might be “free” in a sense, it would collect a lot more data than just what you’re clicking on…you would become the product.

Plausible Analytics

Altogether, it’s $260/year for the base costs. This does not include the games or hardware that I pay for for review (unless the article states otherwise), nor does it cover my contributions to content creators and FOSS projects. It also doesn’t cover the voluntary time and effort that I put forth in making sure the site is consistently getting updated with new posts and information to read. This is just the primary meat and potatoes to keep LGC around. It’s really the Plausible Analytics that are taking the bulk of that bill.

Now, I know for a fact I would never get enough patrons to cover this. Nevertheless, if you do decide to support me, even if it’s as little as $1/month, the fact that you’re donating means more to me than your money. It means that you appreciate all the work I do to keep you up-to-date on everything going on in the Linux gaming and Steam Deck world.

I have put a link in the navigation bar. As I’ve said before, my goal will be to keep donation reminders or links as least obtrusive and annoying as possible. Believe me, I know the feeling when I visit certain websites and the Patreon link is all over my face. It doesn’t help that not just one website does that, but multiple websites do. Every six months or so I’ll have a dedicated post – or perhaps a Toot on Mastodon – reminding readers that keeping LGC around does not come free, and that will be it. There won’t be a “Support me” link anywhere on an article, be it at the beginning, somewhere in the middle, or the end. Just the link in the navigation bar and that’s it. I hope that’s fair to everyone.

Even if you choose not to donate, you can still give me support in other ways. For example, if you find an article that you like, sharing it on social media, YouTube, Discord, etc. helps me out a lot, especially if you have a large amount of followers. I need all the traffic that I can get, and sometimes I get tired of spamming my own posts (I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve annoyed a few users over on r/linux_gaming for self-promoting my posts either).

Once again, thank you for the support.