Category: Support

I’ve been getting a lot of comment saying that I should not ask for donations to run this website. Many of the people who say this also say that I should just get a job to support my self and at the same time I should write on this website for free. I have explained it several times before, it is a lot of job to work on this website. Maybe its not a full time job while things are quiet in Iceland. But I do write other things too. I write short stories and put them on the internet for free. I also write about earthquakes in Canary Islands and Europe. I also write about space occasionally. Along with writing about Falkland Islands if I find something interesting to write about there (it’s a small place and is usually quiet).

That is a lot of writing and a lot of material that I am putting on the internet for “free” for people to read and enjoy. It is understandable that I want to get paid for my work. Who doesn’t want to get paid for it’s hard work. I surely do and a I am sure that the people who read this website want to get paid for there hard work in whatever field they work in.

It is also an interesting fact that since I am a low earner in terms of Google Adsense. I don’t get any support from them. If I want to be able to qualify for support from the Google Adsense support I have to earn equal to $20 (or a 109 DKK) a day for several weeks before I qualify for such support that is provided with an email. That is more traffic that I am ever going to see on my website between eruptions or earthquakes swarms in Iceland. It is my best guess that I am never going to reach such traffic levels any time soon. Just to hit the minimal payment threshold each month I have to have traffic of 30,000 page views per month. Something like that has not happened since the year 2011, after the activity in Katla volcano that summer. I have in fact no hope of making a decent living just by having advertisement income. As I did explain in earlier post about this matter. Going advertisement free also makes this site and my other websites easier to read it has less distractions from the advertisements. Overall it makes my website more friendly to people who read it and enjoy it. I also don’t risk having some advertisements that might not be so family friendly after all. It makes me happy to be free of advertisements for good and I am sure that many readers agree with me on that.

Putting up quality content on the internet costs a lot of time and money. This website and every website that I run costs money and time that is connected with working on them. It is true that I don’t spend equal time on the websites that I have, but traffic is not equal between those websites and that is the reason why I spend different amount of time on my websites. I have it as such that websites with more traffic gets updated more often. This website has always gotten the most traffic and for that reason I update it the most. Writing a article takes time, sometimes a really long time. Good example of this is this article here (I update it regularly also). Writing it took close to 9 hours, along with finding the sources and the information about the eruptions in questions. I have not written articles like this often mostly because it takes a long time and I feel that current activity should be watched more closely than historical activity. I do write this type of articles when needed, in connection with an eruption if I feel the need to do so. To explain why a volcano is like or to explain if it has done this in the past for instance. Looking for information, science papers (that often cost money that I don’t have) is a lot of work. I can spend hours just looking for such data, checking to see if it is any good for what I am writing about. So my work is not just writing about volcanoes, it is also checking the information that is available, historical data, studies into the volcano or the earthquake swarm in question to see if this has happened before in historical times.

Most of my work so far has been not paid, in fact I have been volunteering with my self when since I started working on this website. That also explains why I am broke all the time almost every month of the year. I don’t get the income to pay my self a salary for my work. It has been like this since I created this website. I do sometimes get a large donations, but they however often do not mount to nothing more than just one month worth of income and only last me that long. I am always thankful for such donations. They do help, but I need something more stable in the terms of income from this website and my other websites that I run. I cannot continue to live this, being always broke and having to worry if I can buy food this month or not. As is my current status and has been for the past year for me. I do not plan to change this website to subscription website. Since it is my believe that science needs to be available to all. That however does not make it free to publish and running it. Since nothing is free in reality.

I do get income from social welfare in Iceland. But that income is low and I am not even making by with that income since bills and debts needs to be paid. The sad fact is that social welfare is nothing but a poverty trap for people in Iceland that can’t work or are disabled in some way. It has gone so bad now that many people on social welfare in Iceland now cannot buy there medicine or go to the doctors in Iceland. I am on so low income that once I have paid all my bills I often barley have money for food or if something comes up I don’t have money for it.

I have a passion for earthquakes and volcanoes. I also have passion for writing, so I love to write about earthquakes, volcanoes and other geology phenomena out there. But I just can’t keep doing it for free. The world simply does not work like that for any of us. We all get paid for our work regardless what we do. So I find it is not far of some people demanding that I just get a day job and at the same time keep updating this website the same way as I do now. The reason why I did start this website was to keep people informed about what is happening in Icelandic geology as it happens. This was just one year after the eruption in Eyjafjallajökull volcano. Since information about geological activity in Iceland is most of the time not easy to find in English and people often do not know what is taking place when earthquake swarm happens or a volcano in Iceland makes a noise.

I also want to ask people who say to me “just get a job”, not to say that. It is quite insulting to my work here. As I did explain here above, writing is a lot of work and that is not going to change. I also came across this comment here (Ars Technica article) about the same thing and I agree with the point this comment is making. I’ve been told on several occasions just to get a job in order to keep this website alive. As explained above that would not work. Since it is a lot of work to keep this website up and running and properly updated, same for the other websites if something interesting happens. The Paypal donation button is back, I found an answer (paypal-community.com) that tells me that I can use it without any issue.

If you like my website. Please remember to support it so that I can keep working on it. Thanks.

Update 1: If people want to check Google Adsense policies they can do so here. What they are going to find is that Google Adsense policies are quite strict and hard to comply with.

More reading about world without on-line advertisements

The end of the free lunch—again (The Economist)
Pay Me for My Content (New York Times)
Clive Thompson on the Problem With Online Ads (Wired)

Update on this post

Please see here why I am no longer advertisement free (for the moment at least).

Post updated at 16:20 UTC on 15-Januar-2014.
Post updated at 18:58 UTC on 19-March-2014.

This website and all the websites that I run are going to be advertisement free too. All I ask in return is that people support me with donations. The reason I am doing this is simple. Having advertisements doesn’t pay for me and annoy my readers, slow down the loading time of my website. I still need to make income and that is why I am going to ask for donation. In return, people get me work on earthquakes in Iceland, Europe, Canary Islands and other sites that I now maintain. I rather want to have 50 or 100 people donating 10€ a month rather than having advertisement on by websites. Removal of advertisements from my geophone website is going to take few more days, since I can’t edit the websites at the moment.

If I wanted to have my living off advertisement I needed to have the traffic levels of BBC News. Possibly double that in reality. I did also see this post from SMBC Theater Facebook page that explains this with advertisement quite well.

A number of folks like to say “I like ads because it means you get money!” The problem is it’s a lie. Even making $200 sketches we never off-set costs from ads. Even with hundreds of thousands of views in a week. Literally never.

The only reason we were able to make SMBC Theater was DVD sales, Crowdfunding, Zach kicking in from the comic’s revenue, and some old prize money I had from screenwriting. Also, everyone worked as a volunteer. For four years. That’s thousands of man hours unpaid. That’s how SMBC Theater sketches AND Starpocalypse got made. We never did this for the cash.

People have a conception that online ads = big bucks. It’s bullshit. Online ads can support kids shouting into webcams, tiny groups of kids making things in their apartments, and companies that abuse the folks that work for them. Even Freddie Wong had to go outside advertising to fund VGHS and he rakes in millions of views a week. Why do you think there’s not a “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia” (notoriously the cheapest professional-level show in the last decade) supported by ads online? You’d need 5 times the traffic Gangnam Style got to support it.

Ads make viewing our stuff less pleasant for our audience while fooling them into thinking they’re supporting us. At the same time it forces us to filter ourselves to be more attractive to giant corporations instead of making the most interesting stuff possible for you guys.

Love an artist? Buy their merch. Donate to a Kickstarter. Go see them in person. Or just tell all your friends about them – most indie artists don’t have a marketing budget. Watching ads supports companies – not artists.

AND THAT’S THE END OF OUR ANTI-ADVERTISING SUNDAY PROGRAMMING! Back to dick jokes tomorrow I promise!

SMBC Theater Facebook post.

In my view this says it all. I don’t need advertisement, but I do need income from donations. Thanks for the support!

So life goes on. At least I am trying to pretend that is what is going on with me. The fact is however that my life is not much of a life since the fact is that my money issues drag along with me for now and I am sure it is going to drag along with me once I have paid all my debt down (moving is expensive as was the case for me 1 year ago). The problem is the crazy economic policies in Iceland, currently the exchange rate for Icelandic krona (ISK) is 21,98 against DKK (Danish krona). That means I am paying 22,73 ISK for 1 DKK (at Visa exchange rate) and that is not making my life easy. It has also been unofficial policy in Iceland to keep the disabled and people with issues (like having an Asperger’s syndrome that makes it really hard to me to get a regular job that pays decently) at poverty levels. That is no surprise since it comes from a dark history in Iceland that took place mostly before the year 1970. Back then it was custom to keep poor people poor by economic means or by force if nothing else worked.

Kids of poor people where sent to other farms to work (this took place mostly before the 1900, but it did last something towards to 1940 – 1960ish. I am not sure how long), disabled people where forced to live on farms and if nothing else the state paid the farmer who hosted the people an minimal amount to take care of them. But for most part, poor people and often disabled people where slaves in Iceland (before 1900). The laws that require people to hire them to an farm and work there have de-facto never been removed from Icelandic laws to this day.

What this to do with my money problems and issues. The Icelandic culture (you are never going to get many Icelanders to admit this) retains many of this old view on disabled people, the view that people disability is somehow there own fault and they should just accept what they are given from Icelandic state. Even if it is so low amount that there is no possibility to survive off this amount. This is done intentionally and here is a good example of this. Way back in the year 2004 when I started to live on my own I just got around 89.000 ISK (541,26€ on today exchange rate, at the exchange rate of the year 2004 it was just 1016,21€. Today that is 964,54€ or 158.600 ISK, in euro my income has not increased at all) as an disability welfare from Icelandic state. It was not until 2006 – 2007 that welfare got up to barley liveable levels and then in the year 2008 the economic collapse came and my income did go straight to hell in terms of how much I have to pay the bills and such things. The reason I moved to Denmark (to start with. My plan is to move to Austria when I can, not sure when that is going to happen. I want mountains and earthquakes since I cannot move to Azores Islands for several reasons) is to avoid this issue, since I am sure that Icelandic economy is going to collapse again soon in few years time.

I am stuck in a trap, the trap is normally called poverty trap [see also Poverty]. So far my attempts to break out if have turned out to be fruitless. I am not going to try and give up on this since this is my only change to change my life. But at the moment it is not going so well. I have low income of this blog due to low traffic (no eruption or earthquakes taking place in Iceland or Europe at the moment) at the moment. I am sure my income is going to increase temporary in terms or advertisement income when next eruption takes place.

Until that happens I have to count on support from my regular readers. Since without that support I am not sure I can do this job. Since it is a lot of work to keep track on what earthquake swarms and volcano are doing on daily basis. My work schedule is most hours of during the week, even when I take a break from writing on this blog once in a while. My other work can be found here below, since it is a links to my other websites.

Jón Frímann bloggar (Icelandic, English, Danish (soon), German (soon))
Jarðfræði bloggið (Icelandic version of this blog)
Canary Island geology blog (Canary Island geology blog)
Europe geology blog (Earthquakes and volcano activity in Europe)
Spacewatch (blog about Space related matters)
Falkland Islands blog (All about Falkland Islands. Work in progress)
Jón Universe (My fictional short stories. Updated regularly)

Information on how to support me can be found here. I have written all the instruction on how to send me a donation there as clearly as I can. Thanks for the support!

This is the new bank account for donations. If you have been using the other bank account you can continue to do so, it’s still active and can be used without any problem at all (I have no plan to change that).

New bank account:
IBAN: DK3579100001662199
BIC/SWIFT: SYBKDK22

If you want to send donation to me with Paypal you have to send it to my email address (jonfr@8930a1.talbot.shared.1984.is). If you want to donate to me every month you can use the button on this website to do so. Thanks for the support.

Update 1: I no longer have Skrill account since they did terminate it for some reason (unable to change currency or something of that nature). So please do not try to donate using skrill account at this time. It just won’t work since I currently do not have an account with them. I am looking into this situation and I plan on creating new account with skrill soon, but it’s going to be on different email address due to security reasons (at skrill) I cannot use my older email address.

Blog post updated at 15:42 UTC on 15-October-2013.

Today (11-October-2013) I found out that Sydbank had closed the account I was going to use for people to support me here. I am not sure why that is, the best explanation I got was that it was not correct account type I was using or something of that nature. I have already got a new account (the correct type) to use.

For that reason if you have sent an donation to me to the provided bank account it is going to be returned to you since that account has been closed. There is nothing I can do about this, it’s out of my control. I do not know if your bank applies any fees if this happens. That is between you and your bank to find out.

Update 1: This account number that I use here (below) is the same one as I told people to use few weeks back. So if you have donated with that bank number before there won’t be any issue at all.

If you want to support me directly you can do so with this account (until the new account is up and running). It’s active and I have no issues with it. If you want to donate with other ways it is still possible to donate with Paypal directly via email (jonfr@8930a1.talbot.shared.1984.is – It is spam protected here). Currently my Skrill account is not ready for use yet, but I am working on it.

IBAN: DK7979100001594574
SWIFT: SYBKDK22

More details can be found here. I am sorry for any inconvenience this might have for people who are trying to support me. I have complained to Sydbank about this and I hope this won’t happen again. Thanks for the support.

Blog post updated at 14:54 UTC on 11-October-2013.
Blog post updated at 15:43 UTC on 11-October-2013.
Blog post updated at 16:08 UTC on 11-October-2013.
Blog post updated at 19:34 UTC on 11-October-2013.

I have decided due to Paypal poor record and history to stop using them. There was also the issue regarding the donation button that is was not supposed to be used for donations, as the donation button was for tax except charities (why the hell do they have it on normal accounts?). I have also issue with the risk that Paypal might close my account of I start to collect large amount of donations for one reason or other.

I am currently opening up an account with skrill.com, at this moment I am in an validation process and I do not know how long that process is going to take. Once I have finished the validation process with Skrill.com I am going to add donation buttons from them to this website and other websites that I have.

For the moment my Paypal account is open and donations can be put into it by using email address only. It’s also possible to donate to me and my work directly and secure with my bank account information. That information can be found here with more details.

Support/donations needed: My current situation now is that I have no money at all for October, none. Today I did spend the last of my money from donations to buy as much food that I could to be sure that I had something to eat for the next few weeks until the start of November. My problem however is that I do not expect this to be any better in November, it’s going to to the same hell hole of money issue and not being able to afford anything at all. I don’t really know if I am going to starve this month. I have done my best to prevent it as is, but I only have so limited amount of food in my freezer and fridge and I am not sure how long it’s going to last. Any support is welcomed since anything is going to help me. Thanks for the help.