Please Help Our Image Generator Network

If you cannot afford to make a donation, please add our link http://www.ImageGenerator.org somewhere (email to a friend, web page, forum, etc) to help spread the free web based graphic tools. If you have a blog, please make a write up about this site and upload some sample images or just make some fun pics to post on weblog pages. We only want people who can afford to donate and you are in no way forced to give up your hard earned money (least you get paid for your hours of work). You can also find some "image generator" graphic links HERE (you just copy HTML code).

DONATE CASH:

Please make a small donation to help keep the free web image tools up and running. It does cost the web owner over $250.00 a month to keep these tools FREE to you and everyone else in the world. When you make donations, money goes towards buying hardware (upgrades) or dedicated hosting service costs.

We need some monthly (reoccurring) donations to so this site can provide free hosting for created graphics (50GB of bandwidth is needed daily). Below are the buttons (form) for setting up a automatic monthly donation (it will bill each month until you stop it):

PayPal is the way I accept online money transactions (have had this account since 2001 or so) and they accept fast credit cards securely of if you have a member account with PayPal, you can pay with money in your account (PayPal acts like a  bank, I even have a debit card in my wallet).

So far we only have Google ads and Adbrite (Adbrite generates income of $5 a day for example), but you can have your text or banner ad show up on certain site (every page of domain). Email Please@SpareSomeChange.com for request (describe your site and domain name you wish to target). Prices will range from $5 to $100 per month, depending on the traffic (top of page ads are doubled in price).

The www.FotoTrix.com network consumes huge CPU (8 CPUs needed) and RAM (8GB) resources to do the photo merging/blending and special effects ( intense image manipulation scripts that save and recalculate every pixel) and the more popular it gets, the more resources it needs. Right now about 5,000,000 page views a week without any paid advertising or charging fees to users (free to use)! Already there are 2 servers ($6,000 worth of equipment) and 2 high speed lines involved, 1 is all "supped" up here at home (dual quad core with dedicated business high speed internet line) and another dedicated server hosted at Brinkster.com that requires more upgrading (needs to become a dual quad core with 4GB RAM, but I cannot afford this yet), but the internet speeds are 5X better than my home biz line. Due to such high traffic, I have 3 also different shared hosting web hosting accounts to handle individual tasks (like one is used just for graphics and another is used for PHP script calls only). These sites are rated in with the "big boys" as far as the amount of bandwidth used (according to Time Warner biz class security department who investigated bandwidth "abuse"). I have lost many shared hosting accounts and internet lines (tried many DSL) for using too many resources, and this is with me only using it for a small part of my network (basically told my sites are too popular and use too many resources).

I know most of the pages lack design and style (they are pretty much ugly). You will notice that the main domain name has a layout but most pages into it are just tables and text (with lots of ads, my only real income). Well, this cuts my bandwidth down a lot as if each page had extra neat graphic layouts, it would consume another $40 to $60 a month in bandwidth costs to run all my 75 various websites. Plus it would take longer for each page to load and it would add to server resources and possibly cause server upgrades. Some day I will hire students to come in and fix up my mess, I prefer making the complicated programming that does the data manipulations (the hard stuff is what I enjoy) rather than web layouts. I can do nice layouts, see www.GigahertzInc.com for my corporation page as proof I am capable (but I do not find it enjoyable or as easy to be motivated). Also for what the sites lack in looks, they make up for selection (no other photo manipulation site has so many templates), many days have been spent just making and setting up these photo templates in PhotoShop!

Servers, networking appliances and software cost about $5,000.00 for home (dual quad core Zeon, 4GB RAM) that replaced a server I had paid about $3,400.00 for in 2000 (you cannot run sites like www.FotoTrix.com's network on a desktop computer or even a dual core server, you need equivalent to 8 CPUs, higher RAM, faster hard drives, etc) web and database servers. I also pay about $100.00 per month for a dedicated web server (dual core, 2GB RAM), but this needs upgrading to keep up with current demands. I pay about $25.00 a month for the 3 shared hosting accounts. I pay about $20.00 a month in domain name renewal fees. I pay about $150.00 a month for my home business internet line (cheaper residential lines are not allowed for servers, almost as fast as fiber line but quarter the price). I have spent almost 15,000 hours with computers (software testing, image editing, programming, maintenance, networking, upgrading, etc) and probably 5,000 hours has been set towards all my image makers (that's $100,000.00 worth of my time). There's also the costs of my home office (electricity, loss of space, desktop PCs, software, etc) probably totaling over $5,000.000.

So you can see that it adds up as an actual investment. I started 10 years ago making websites on free hosting but they had many ads show up on my pages and not many features, but I decided that I wanted to be the one making money on ads so this meant setting up my own network at home (I have full control at home, I can run FTP, any software installs, install plugins, run email servers and so much more than a regular web hosting account back in 1998 would allow). Also setting up my own server at home almost pays for it's self in a  couple years as where renting dedicated servers with 8 CPUS range in price from $499.00 to $1,299.00 a month (plus other fees here and there, even more years ago).

So far small donations, personal monies from my pocket, magnet orders and sponsor ads have paid for what is running now (my $100,000.00 of labor was a donation). If I have more money to spend, I can get more bandwidth and servers to offer more services and features (like free hosting of images for blogs, send as ecards, ratings, email friend your creation, upload your own templates, slide shows/photo albums, membership community forums, etc).

Some stuff I need: NAS 1TB storage for backups (each single backup is almost 10GB). 500GB IDE hard drive for desktop PC. 1TB SATA hard drive for server. UPS for minor power outages (which can create larger issues). New battery for old LifeBook B3020D laptop/tablet (touch screen). 32GB USB Flash thumb drive. 8x10 dye sub photo printer.

I am the CEO of a technology company called Gigahertz Inc. (oh that sounds impressive, but it's my own corporation I started myself, cool name though). I am just a disabled guy who is also an "at home" father (my wife has a job) of a 4 year old son. I have been developing these sites now for 5 years. I make a bit of money (about as much as when I was on disability) and have been able to stop collecting disability from the government (now I can be a contributor instead of a tax payers burden) for a number of years, but this is still not enough to really keep these sites going (more popular they become and the more features I add the more money I have had to put in).

My skills: Networking (used to do NOC for a telecom for a calling card business), server maintenance/admin, PHP programming, Visual Basic Programming, ASP.net programming, web design (most of my sites only have main page with a design then rest of pages are lacking design), editing graphics (Photoshop pro), digital photography and I can do just about anything on a Windows PC (if I come across something I cannot do, I figure out how to do it).

My dream: Get a T-shirt/Garment PC Printer (the Brother GT-541 is at least $10,000 used, but it is the best), I would be set as I have thousands of fun t-shirt ideas. I wish that someone would buy me the printer and I paid them per t-shirt until "debt" is paid off. I also think it would be fun to developed software to use fun templates to make real live photo booths (like those little booths you pay to get instant photo strips in the mall) and the photobooth PC software could be sold to use with computer webcams (great for weddings, parties, flea markets, etc) for home use (my www.SIllyWebcam.com is a web based software solution for capturing live webcam video in still images inside fun template scenes to give you an idea). I have the mind and will to do great things, just not the money (proper investment into me could allow me to hire a student(s) and get things going. I would love to see a small variety of my t-shirts sold in Wal-Mart some day with a tag that says, "Get More @ AddictiveTShirts.com or make your own!" (they would advertise themselves). Yes, I do own www.AddictiveTshirts.com, but I never developed it as I had a deal on a used Brother GT-541 (time payments) not go through (so I started www.FotoTrix.com instead as the templates I made there are perfect size for making smaller fridge magnets that I can make now with a 4x6 dye sub photo printer).

My Email is Please@SpareSomeChange.com (yes, it's real).