[Coco] coco3.com and Father's Day statement

[Roger Taylor]

This is my "I bit off more than I can chew" e-mail that I've been 
wanting to send out for a while now.

Dear group,

For those who have made an order on coco3.com and haven't received it 
yet, I know who you are and am working to get your order delivered by 
next week.  There are *7* remaining mug orders to fullfill, a handful 
of DVDs, and few orders came in today.  The mug order buttonw as 
removed for a reason.

I need to explain that since 1999 I've operated the website by myself 
while holding down a demanding job and raising a family on my 
own.  Since Xmas, I received far more orders than I ever expected, 
many of which had undercharged shipping due to PayPal's silly 
mechanism for figuring shipping for shopping cart orders.  On a 
weight-based system, it's almost impossible to fairly compute a 
reasonable shipping amount, and on the mug orders I undercharged for 
almost all orders, or either got it right on the nose but forgot to 
account for my own shipping costs I paid to the mug company.  In 
short, I have paid out of my own pocket to get these mugs out, and 
have relied on current orders to help pay for pending 
orders.  Because orders are always being made, I've managed to take 
today's funds to pay to get yesterday's orders shipped.  Now, for 
software with no overhead to deliver by e-mail, that allows me to get 
several more mugs shipped out.  I was able to get 130+ mugs shipped 
almost all from newer orders for mugs and other items.  This kind of 
flow was sustained for quite a while and as of tonight I think I have 
about 10-12 total orders to deliver.  Do I make a lot at 
work?  No.  I survive on it and do a lot of driving from state to 
state which all knows eats up cash Quick.  So I do fair on making a 
living, in that I manage to eat every day and have a roof over my 
head.  That's about it folks.... nobody's rich behind 
CoCo3.com.  It's a public service web site that I vowed to sit behind 
at my desk since 1999 to do my small part in helping keep the CoCo 
community alive with a Meaningful place to go on the web... to 
communicate with old and New CoCo friends.  What's the price *I* 
pay?  I sometimes I work 12 hours days at work, get no sleep until 
midnight, and get back up at 3:30 or 4am for work.  My theory... 
people who sleep 8 hours or more a night cannot run a business or a 
busy website.  ;)  Again, I live for this stuff, and I welcome all 
inquries and submissions to the site.  I'm an information machine 
with enough area knowledge of the CoCo community to lead people to 
who they are looking for, and I get plenty of newcomers writing me 
asking where to find a person or item, or even how to join this mailing list.

Btw, what I've done to help orders in the future is: I removed the 
mug orders and have reserved them for gifts and prizes.  Floppy disk 
orders are now being handled by Jim Hickle who was kind enough to 
offer to help and has done Very well to get disks delivered 
promptly.  I'll be looking for a CD/DVD writer and mailing person as 
well and will pay fees by PayPal out of the orders I receive.  If you 
want to play this kind of part in the CoCo community and can make a 
good faith statement that you can make copies of these items, label 
them, and send a mailer out quickly as I send orders to you by 
e-mail, I will consider making you a team player.  As most might not 
know, when I take an order for $9.99 for an arcade game, and PayPal 
grabs a fee, I pay $2.50 or more to have it sent out, and with a low 
number of orders to boot, nobody's getting rich off of this stuff.  I 
am simply trying to keep a steady enough flow of small funds to put 
right back into the coco3.com web site.  If I pay $800 for a load of 
coffee mugs and realize that nobody's going to pay more than, say, 
$10 for a mug, I'm either stuck with them, or I can sell them below 
cost for the cause.  Again, nobody's getting rich, and I go out of 
pocket to fix any mistakes I make.  I have undercharged for shipping 
on so many items that perhaps it's even been an incentive for some to 
grab a few more items while they're on the front page.  :)

All in all, I'm very glad to have been a single father who has 
shipped over 1,000 items to hundreds of customers over the past 12 
months or so.  But the time has come to share some of the work to 
anybody who wants to play a part and make a little $ to help make 
sure nothing is delivered late again.  In doing this, I believe I can 
charge even less, give most of the profit to the third party, and put 
anything extra into hosting fees.

If you can find another webmaster who operates on low funds, isn't 
trying to scam the community, works for UPS, and raises 2 demanding 
young children on his own, oh.. and gets little sleep during the 
week... you've found a guy who's job is hard to replace.

Thanks to all, see you in the forums and chatroom, and have a Great 
Father's Day weekend!

Roger Taylor
coco3.com