Donations
Why Support Avlis?
Avlis is a free roleplaying game that runs through Neverwinter Nights (NWN). Every year, thousands of players enjoy our servers for countless hours. Behind the scenes, however, there is a lot of work needed to keep everything running. Servers require computers. Computers require electricity. Online games require internet connections. Communities require webhosting.
All of these things require funding.
Back when Avlis first started needing "large" amounts of money to keep running, Orleron and Silk incorporated Blackparadox Enterprises, LLC for the purpose of keeping the records on funding Avlis straight. All the money required to run Avlis comes from Blackparadox's bank account. None of that money mixes personally with Silk or Orleron unless the mixing takes place through proper channels for transferring money from a corporation to an individual.
But where does Blackparadox get the money needed to keep Avlis running? From YOU, the dedicated players. If you are reading this page, you are likely interested in donating to Avlis, so see below! As you may hear me say often, playing on Avlis is free, even if it costs us money to let you play. However, we ask that you realize we cannot do this without you, and that you drop a couple coins into the tray every so often. If you go out to a movie or dinner, chances are you'll pay $30 for every evening you do that and you will only get about 3 hours of enjoyment tops. In that light, it is not all that bad to send about $5 our way once per month if it will not affect your personal finances. Just a thought!
How to Support Avlis
I want to list here all the many possible ways to donate to Avlis. Some will cost you nothing.
PayPal
A straight out donation through PayPal is easy. From the front page of Avlis' website, you can click on "Donation Info" and look under PayPal, or just click here:
To do it yourself manually from your own PayPal account, simply send money to this email address:
exec@blackparadox.com
Bill Pay
The other thing you can do is send a single or monthly check to Blackparadox through your local Bank's Bill Pay feature. Almost every bank has an automatic Bill Pay feature that sends out a check in the mail regularly to your creditors. By entering Blackparadox's information into your Bill Pay, we will get a check from you. You can do this manually once in a while, or set it to automatically send us something every month or so often.
To get the information, go to the Avlis boards and send a PM to Orleron asking for Bill Pay info. He will set you up with everything you need, and chances are you will be able to log online to your bank's website and enter it in right away.
World Forge Magazine
Subscribing to World Forge Magazine is the most recommended way to donate to Avlis. Firstly, you gain access to a decent website that features other campaign material, both from Avlis and other worlds. Go here:
http://www.worldforgemagazine.com
Secondly, even if you do not want to look at the material on the website, subscribing to World Forge Magazine is an easy way to charge a few bucks a month to your PayPal or credit card account and forget about it. You will not have to constantly remind yourself to donate. It will just be deducted from your PayPal or credit card automatically each month or year until you cancel.
Furthermore, you can pay what you like and control your donation: Subscribe for $5, $10, $20 per month or $50 per year.
Finally, you get perks for being part of the club. You get a title on the original Avlis boards, and you get access to a new set of forums on the World Forge Magazine boards where we frequently talk about things that are not seen in public, with regard to Avlis. The players on these boards generally have more voice in the community because of their status as supporters.
Download Firefox
If you look at the bottom of the webpages on the Avlis website, you will notice a Firefox link. Every time someone downloads and installs Firefox on their computer for the very first time, we get commission for the referral. This is something simple that you can do that costs you nothing. This program is part of our Google Ads which is another source of revenue for us.
Sign Up for Free Trials of Stuff
This is the least-used, but most lucrative possible way to donate to us. Go here:
http://www.avlis.org/portal.php?getpage=sponsors
On that page, you will see numerous banners. Many of them ask you to sign up for free trials. Every time you do, we get good money, and it costs you nothing. For example, any time someone signs up for a free trial of GoToMyPC.com, we get $10! Not bad. The thing is I picked those banners carefully. All of them are free trials for things I think you might find useful, like GoToMyPC which lets you access your PC remotely from any web browser, or XDrive which lets you have access to an online disc drive. There are also popular places to shop, like EBay and ThinkGeek.
So by signing up for trials and/or buying from these links, we could possibly get a lot of money, plenty enough to run our servers, and it costs you nothing in terms of paying us something directly. Doing this requires a credit card, most of the time, which should not be a big deal for most people. If you are the kind of person who does not use credit cards or PayPal at all, you will not likely be able to support us by most methods above.
Buy Avlis Merchandise from Cafe Press
Everyone likes to take a piece of their favorite server home! Cafe Press is a great website where you can buy t-shirts, mugs, mousepads, posters, and all kinds of other objects with various Avlis logos and symbols on them. As an example, we have t-shirts with almost any Avlis deity symbol on them. You can sport the shirt with your favorite deity. Some guilds also have their logos on shirts, and you can get in on that action too.
For every piece of merchandise you buy, you get something as a keepsake and you get us a couple bucks in support.
Go here:
http://www.cafepress.com/blackparadox
Get an @avlis.org email address
For a PayPal Donation of US$20, you can get an alias email address for avlis.org, i.e. (your_boards_name)@avlis.org for example. Up until now, such addresses were only given to Team members, but I'd like to open them up to everyone so we can show our solidarity as a community and identify ourselves as a group. Smile
At this time, we can only accept the donations through PayPal. If you do not have access to PayPal, have your friend register the address for you. In fact, you can buy an address for yourself, or for anyone else as well. Orleron reserves the final right to determine if an alias is ok for use or not.
Here is the process:
1) Click on the PayPal donation link on the front avlis.org page, or go here: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick&business=exec@blackparadox.com&item_name=Avlis%20Donations&no_shipping=1
2) Send a donation for US$20 per alias you wish to register.
3) If you see someplace on the PayPal donation screen to put in a custom message, type in your boards name and the alias you wish to create @avlis.org. Then type in the email address you wish that alias to point to.
For example, my address is orleron@gmail.com. My orleron@avlis.org address points to orleron@gmail.com. If you send email to orleron@avlis.org, it will go to my orleron@gmail.com account.
4) If you do not see someplace on the PayPal screens to type in that message, then PM that information to Orleron on the avlis.org boards instead.
5) Wait for the alias to go in. Orleron must manually add the email alias in, and he cannot do it until he gets home from work, so please allow up to 5 business days for your alias to go into effect.
Voila! That's it! After that, you should have a working @avlis.org address for as long as we remain alive as a community. Hopefully that will be a long long time, made longer by having people acquire our address aliases!
Please be sure about the email address and alias you make. Changing the addresses is a tedious process once they are made and Orleron makes no guarantees about how fast that can be done.