eFront Goes Under

D-Day's Just Around the Corner!

eFront Media, the company that we all grew to know and love (cough cough), is officially being lowered into their "another failed dot-com" burial plot. All their servers are being shut down within days, as they can't scrape up enough money to pay hosting bills. Needless to say, they still haven't found enough money to pay the people who worked for them full-time or were hosted on their network. However, since I'm used to not being paid by networks, I can't say that I'm really shocked. Sure, I could see a labor lawyer and attempt to sue them for the thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars they owe me, but since the company is penniless, there's really no point. It's time to pack up the ol' files and move along again.

What does this mean for Something Awful? First off, I won't be shutting down the site. I have too much fun writing and updating throughout the week, and I thoroughly enjoy everything I do here. It's a fun job for me and a great way to release whatever horrible creative energies I have built up inside my grotesque and malformed soul. However, there is a major problem: this website moves between 30 and 50 gigs of traffic a DAY. Hosting will cost between $1500 and $2500 a MONTH for the necessary bandwidth, plus an extra $3,500 for a decent server. Unfortunately, I don't have a good enough full-time job to plunk down over $33,000 a year for something that doesn't make me any money in return. That's what's called a "bad investment," or as bankers refer to it, "getting fucked in the ass by gigantic clowns that repeatedly beat you over the skull with a strip of sheet metal and carve swastikas into your spine."

This leaves me with the following two options:

Donate money to keep the 404 error guy from being on the same page as awful, disgusting pictures, like banner ads of naked women. Okay, maybe this isn't the best sales pitch.

The Internet banner-ad industry is a bust, folks. In the 15 months I've run this site, I've only gotten paid for five of them. I'm not bitching about this, as I've been emotionally jaded to the point where having all my skin torn off by the demonic printing press from Robert Englund's "The Mangler" would probably end up only slightly annoying me, but I'm merely stating a fact. SA serves up over 350,000 pages a day, and I've yet been able to receive one month's sufficient salary from it. The networks are drying up faster than the Sahara, and none of them are known for paying affiliates on time or in whole. After being with Gamefan (and not getting paid), then going to eFront (and not getting paid), you can probably understand why I'm not interested in joining any new networks. As for micropayments or subscription-based payments... that just won't work. They're too easy to bypass and simply aren't effective enough. Perhaps in a year or so, the technology will catch up and make it a viable option, but it won't work as is. Plus I have issues with charging people good money to read Jeff K., money that they could've used to fund Communist uprisings.

So these are the only two options left for me: donations or porn. If you want to donate to this site and make it ad free, then feel free to send however much money you feel this site is worth. Then add $100 to the total because Paypal won't accept negative figures. Ha ha! I'm injecting humor into an otherwise humorless situation! Thanks for playing along! Please note that I'm not begging for money or demanding anybody pay anything for this site. If you want to donate money and would like to see this site without porn ads, then I would appreciate it. If you don't want to donate and you don't mind seeing dirty pictures on each page, then go with that. I don't really mind not pocketing any money from this site; everything I write here is done because I merely love doing it. However, I simply cannot afford the $30,000+ a year that it costs to maintain it. I wish I had a full-time job which paid me a shitload of money, but I don't. I also wish I had a full-time job which allowed me to shoot laser beams from my eyes and burn down convenience stores, but I don't have that either. If you'd like to offer me either of those, email me right away. Especially if its about the laser beams one.

So that's what that is. Donations or porn. I know it's a pretty crappy set of choices, but there are no other options right now. Maybe some day when I've knocked over a bank, I'll be able to pay $30,000+ a year so I can entertain people, but until then it's either donations or porn. This website will continue to live in some form or another and spread the awfulness. If it will be with porn ads running across it is up to you fellers. I plan on using all the donations to pay for the server bills, so you don't have to worry about me using them for trivial things like food and hot water. Besides, hot water is overrated and is only for those "fancy lads" that you see in the "700 Club" videos and at popular WWF events. If I get enough money for a month of hosting, then SA will be ad-free for a month. If I don't get enough money, then you'll probably be greeted by "HOT NURSES THAT KNOW HOW TO PARTY" every day. To give them fair credit though, they really do know how to party.

If you'd like to donate, click here. If you don't want to donate, then click here. All donors will be listed on a "SA Sponsors" page, and the top 10 biggest donors will be given links on the right column bar (if they want to be linked on every page). I can include a graphic if you'd like. Also, I can put up a picture of a dead horse and include the text, "THIS DONOR DOES NOT KILL HORSES," even if you secretly do. I'm flexible like that. Plus you can pick the top five people you hate, and I'll put an ancient Egyptian curse on them. So choose your own adventure and do what you'd like to do. I thank you from the bottom of my black heart, unless you're sending me an email explaining in painful detail how much I suck and my website is the equivalent of digital mucous. In that case, I think you're a horrible monster and I pray for your death.

Also, for good measure, here's another series of words that you can click on to donate to the server fund. And if you want porn, you can probably find it here.