Category: Donations

As the title says. I need support for September. The reason being that this month seems to be rather more difficult than I expected, August was also difficult for me. I only get (for now) around 247000 ISK a month in social welfare, in other currencies that’s about 1732 USD, 1727€. That is not enough because in Denmark I pay for most bills for 3 months at the time and few bills monthly. I wish all bills where monthly, but that is not how the system works in Denmark (there is a slow change to paying monthly, but many companies continue to require three month payments).

Currently, I got a surprise phone bill (because I assume that all bills that I get at the end of month, is what I have to pay, this phone bill arrived at the start of September, with payment due soon) and that’s a problem because I can’t afford to pay it as is. The amount is 796 DKK (107€, 107USD). Then I have to buy food for the rest of the month.

I am waiting on extra payments connected to my social welfare. When they start I don’t know, because that is in a system that doesn’t update me on progress and is between Denmark and Iceland social welfare system (this is government stuff). Until this payment start, that are going to bring me to local Danish social welfare income level. I am going to have problems. I am trying to control this best as I can, but sometimes I just don’t manage to do so, since my income is low and that is a problem. I hope one day that I won’t have this problem, but that day is not this month. Sadly.

Thanks for understanding and the support. 🙂

Update 1

Thanks to donations. I can now pay the phone bill and have enough left to buy food for few days.

I always hate to write this type of article. But it can’t be helped in my situation. Currently I am broke due to extra cost of buying new hard drives for my main computer so it remained useful and I still have some more hardware to renew and buy in next few months. While I have installed Google Adsense its going to be a while until it starts working for me properly. Since until I am back in Denmark I’ll run it in low mode and I might have to disable it for few weeks so I won’t go over few limits that Google Adsense has until I have moved back to Denmark (complicated reasons I’ll not write about currently).

I hope people can support me and my work here with donations. It helps me keep working on this website and keep everything updated when something happens in Iceland. Thanks for the support.

PayPal

I have to keep PayPal as it is the only way to let people donate to support my work. I’ll switch to Danish PayPal once I have moved back to Denmark. I don’t know if I am going to have have the monthly donation possibly since that option did only have little usage.

Bank donations

If you are donating with a bank. Please update your donation information to my Danish bank account. Information can be found on my donation website here. The reason for this change is increased economic instability in Iceland with the currency (ISK). That is among many other things has been making my life difficult during the last few months.

Article updated on 13-October-2020 at 02:46 UTC.
Article updated on 14-October-2020 at 03:53 UTC.

The month of May is going to be really difficult for me financially. The reason is the same one as in April. I have to pay the extra tax in Denmark for the year 2019 (two months). The good news is that I have one month left of this payments. The last payment is going to be in June and after that I should be clear of any more tax payments in Denmark. I might have to pay next year (2021) for the 1,5 months I lived in Denmark of the year 2020 but by that time I won’t have this huge amount of payments as I do now so it might be a less of a problem for me to pay it by then.

Current situation is that I am completely broke and have been for several days now. That situation is just bad. I am currently tracking the activity on Reykjanes and Reykjanes peninsula as it develops and changes with time. Along with the usual activity that I monitor in Iceland.

Thanks for the support. 🙂

Update 15th May 2020

Thanks to a donation that I got was able to buy food for several days (I just placed in the small freezer I have) and to take it slightly easier for few days where I live in Iceland. I have resolved the current problem from June in such a way that I hope June, July and August won’t be too bad months for me. I had to delay finishing paying the Danish tax because I was unable to afford finishing paying it in June as I had hoped. That is just how this is for now for me. I hope that by start of next year (2021) I am going to be free of this problem with money. At least for a little while.

Update 27th May 2020

Turns out that June is not going to be better for me because now I also have to pay Icelandic taxes on top of Danish taxes. I don’t know the total taxes I have to pay in Iceland for the year 2019 since that information is not released until 28th of May. I am hoping that July is going to be better but that depends on when I pay the Icelandic tax. I might delaying paying it until 1st of July because I can’t afford this month and one extra day of not paying is not that bad but it gets delay interests on top of the amount that I need to pay. Delaying payment until 1st of July also means that I have to pay double that month. I’ll see how to deal with this problem. Because this is a problem for me.

The good news in all of this financial mess is that I am slowly reconstructing my financial system in such a way that instead of being debt based, they are going to based on what I can afford to pay without getting me self into debt. It is going to take some work to keep and run but it is going to be worth it in my own view.

Update 28th of May 2020

I am now looking into lowering my website hosting costs. This would mean moving my website to a different type of hosting. I am currently checking to see if I can use WordPress.com hosting platform for this since hosting there only costs $25/month or $300/year. Compared to $235/month ($2820/year) that I am currently paying. The hosting costs is a part of my financial problem and as part of my reconstruction that costs needs to go down from what currently is. I don’t know if I would be able to provide any updates for my webicorders since that setting would not allow for it since that requires a ftp setup and a folder for the html website. I would need to host such website my self at later time.

I am going to move to a VPS hosting (55GBP/month) that is cheaper and add cloudflare account (free or $20/month) to my domain to handle all the traffic spikes I get when a volcano erupts in Iceland.

Turns out that VPS is too small for my websites. What I am going to do is to switch to a cheaper dedicated server located in the UK by July or August. I am also going to start working again because current situation is ridiculous and I cannot maintain this. I didn’t plan on working this summer but this is what I need to do and this is what I am going to do.

This is not a long story. But I had a extra tax bill to pay with Denmark and few other bills and that did result in this and there are still three weeks (almost four) weeks left of April. Donations do help me a lot in keeping this website running. Like many other website and YouTube creators I’ve only been able to keep this website running because of the support I’ve been getting with donations. I had to add advertisement back because I can get some extra income from those even if this are just advertisement from Amazon.

Please remember to support my work if you can. It helps me to eat this month and just doing the normal stuff (there isn’t a lot to do in a small town, but anything helps).

Thanks for the support.

Update 17th April 2020

Since I am getting really few donations in the rest of April is going to get really difficult for me. I don’t know yet how I am going to deal with this problem but I just have to hope that something shows up.

Update 28th April 2020

It is still few days left of April and I’m still broke. I got donations and they helped me to buy food for a day or two. I think that recession following covid-19 is hitting my donations like everyone else that depends on this type of income. I am hoping that May is going to be slightly better for me but its too early to know for sure when this is written. I am hoping to have some type of balance back by June when I finish paying the Danish tax I have to pay for the year 2019. I don’t know if this is the last payment of tax for Denmark, if not then I don’t have to pay anything until the year 2021 as it now is (when the year 2020 tax report is due). After that I won’t pay any more taxes to Denmark because I don’t plan on moving back to Denmark.

This is a sticky article.

It takes a lot of hours to maintain this website. Its a lot of work and I spend many hours checking current earthquake data and sometimes hours searching historical records about a volcano or an area in Iceland that is having an earthquake swarm if such data is available. The issue is also costs of hosting the website, since with increased traffic I have had to get larger dedicated hosting. Most months I don’t get enough donations to support that cost.

This endless problem with money because of low social welfare that I’m on and lack of donations means that I’ve not been able to replace my failed earthquake computer (new motherboard +memory +cpu) or my failed server computer (failed for unknown reasons). This has also delayed my seismometer upgrade from my current hardware to Raspberry Shake hardware. I did get donations for it but I didn’t get enough donations to get that project finished. I am going to finish it next 3 to 4 months if no delays happens since I am going to be working next summer. I do need a new earthquake computers for the Raspberry Shake set-up (two, one Windows and one Linux). I don’t have any idea how to do this at the moment due to lack of money. Having no money is also really stressful when it is a problem for a long period of time as has been the case for me for several years already.

Living in Denmark is slightly cheaper than living in Iceland. As is clear from 2017 data from Eurostat. I am also going to be living in a cheaper apartment compared to last time I was living in Denmark (I think its called a condo). I’ll also be debt free in Iceland and that means less financial pressure for me. The exchange rate is always going to be a issue with Icelandic Krona. That is why I hope that I can move paying for my dedicated hosting from ISK to DKK, in the long term it might be more stable and cheaper. Since the the DKK/USD exchange rate is stable compared to ISK/USD exchange rate.

I removed the banners because they are not getting used. According to a Last Week Tonight with John Oliver the click rate of banner advertisements is just 0.17%. It is possible to continue to support me by using Amazon, all the banners have now been moved to Support with Amazon page.

The best way to support my work is with donations by using PayPal or by using bank transfer if you are in the EU and don’t want to use PayPal. All the information can be found here. I don’t want to go subscription because this is information that needs to reach everyone regardless of economic status if something major happens in Iceland.

I want to thank everyone that has been supporting my work with donations. They have helped me to survive the months I’ve been broke.

I am going to update this article in the in the future.

I am once again having money issues. The reason now is that I moved to a new dedicated server in February and I am paying down my debt at a rather fast rate (so I can finish paying what I owe the bank this year), normally there is a thin balance in this, it just doesn’t take a lot to upset that balance. It isn’t free to run this website and never has been. I did try to use Amazon as an advertising revenue since Google Adsense never did work well enough for me I felt (Google is difficult when moving between countries as I’ve been doing). I do get social welfare from Iceland but since Iceland is the most expensive country in Europe (source) that income doesn’t go that far from me. I made the chose to reduce the Amazon advertisement since I was not getting a lot or sometimes no income from having those advertisement. It continues to be possible to support my work by using Amazon. It is now on the page Support via Amazon, there are all the advertising banners that need to be clicked before item is bought from Amazon. I get a small precent of each item sale price (buying an item and returning it does not work, if an item is returned what I get is just withdrawn from my Amazon account).

I don’t need many 10 and 20 euro donations to help me with the month of March or any other month of the year. Donations also help me doing daily things, like buying food and feel less stressed with the money problems that I am having. There is a lot of work that I put into this website and monitoring what is going on, even if I am having major hardware issues at the moment due to failed computers (motherboards) that limit what I can do (it is not possible to send me hardware to Iceland due to costs, donation for that are welcome, please mark them with a written note).

I don’t want to set-up Patreon as many people have done to support them self in the creative works. The reason for that is I don’t have any way to offer rewards as is often on Patreon and I feel that PayPal and direct bank donations are just good enough (for people that don’t use PayPal).

Thanks for the support. 🙂