2019 Donation Drive

UPDATE: 28th Dec 2018 - After only 38 days of the donation drive running, the goal was not only achieved, but completely smashed. I cannot thank everyone enough for their help! This has been a completely mind-blowing experience, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that this goal would be achieved, and so quickly. Peoples' generosity is completely astounding. Thank you all so much! I will do my best to keep CTGP updated and loaded with new features going forwards!

The original text of the pastebin is to follow:

Hello everyone!

I am currently running a donation drive, where I am attempting to raise £2,400 before January 7th, 2019. Let me preface this by saying that I absolutely hate asking people for money, I'd much rather people donate because they want to, rather than because I request it, but unfortunately I do not think I have much of a choice anymore. Twitch and YouTube are my primary source of income, but even combined they simply do not earn a lot of money. If I'm lucky, I'll get around $100 from Twitch per month (and that includes bits and subscriptions), and £65 from YouTube per month. Combined, after converting to GBP (since PayPal enjoys taking a cut when converting), that comes out to around £143/month (or around $183 USD). That's not bad for a hobby on the side of a full-time job, but needless to say, it's not enough to live on by itself. Considering I do not have a different job on the side, that is a very low income. I do have very cheap rent, fortunately, so I can just about get by, but I can't continue in this manner forever.

This is not intended to belittle the extremely generous donations, Twitch bits and Twitch subscriptions that I have received over the years, I appreciate those more than you could probably ever know. I thank every single person who has EVER subbed, donated or given bits to me, no matter how small, or how large. You guys are the reason I am still hanging in here!

CTGP development and Twitch streaming occupy the bulk of my time, and I consider those to be work. Those few instances where I also upload videos to YouTube I consider to be work as well. I invest a lot of time into all of these, for example, in the month of October, I did around 85 hours of Mario Kart-related development work (a lot of that was on that updated Wiimmfi patcher project), 12 hours of which were streamed (Error Code 60000 skip). On top of that, I did 18.5 hours of other Mario Kart/CTGP streams. I did not upload any videos to YouTube in the month of October. Combined that's about 103.5 hours of time dedicated solely to Mario Kart Wii and the community around it. If a full-time job is 160 hours per month, obviously I didn't do that amount of work, I did just over half of that. But if you break down the amount of money I typically earn within that period, that comes out to earning £143 (~$183) for 103.5 hours of time, which is about £1.36/hr (or $1.77/hr). Ouch! To compound the issue, I'm much more likely to earn money if I'm doing streams or uploading videos, but if I'm doing those, I'm typically NOT working on CTGP (or other dev work), which is the very reason most people watch/follow me in the first place.

My logic throughout the years has been, "Oh, well, nobody's asking me to do these streams, videos, or work on CTGP; these are just things that I thought to do on my own, so I can't expect people to pay for them". For the longest time I've been accepting this level of income for that very reason. It was just fun seeing peoples' reactions to what I put out, and doing the dev work. But the truth of the matter is that people definitely enjoy what I do, and the stuff I put out, and I'm actually WRONG, people ARE asking me to work on CTGP: people request features all of the time, suggest tracks they want to see, ask me when I'll stream next, or put out a video. But I cannot convince my brain of that at all, it has proven to be a tough thing to override. There are at least 50,000 unique CTGP v1.03 clients out there, and those are just the ones with Internet connections that we can see! CTGP usage is at an all-time high, with approximately 2,000 different people using it every day. My Twitch is growing, too, albeit slowly. Surely that indicates a demand for a service that I help to provide, but can I convince myself of that? Nope. This is why I have never brought any of this up in the past, and honestly, the only reason I bring it up now is because I feel backed up against a wall.

So, you may ask yourself, why don't I just go out and get a different, reliable job? There's a few reasons, the most important of which (to me) is that my fiancée, who you may recognise as MrsBean35000vr on Twitch, is an American citizen, while I'm British. She lives in the USA, and I live in England. She's currently working and studying at a university in Indiana, and her ability to move between countries is therefore extremely hindered. I, on the other hand, am not tied down to a job that requires me to be in England. This kind of work is IDEAL if I want to visit and one day marry her, especially if a long-term goal would be to move in with her, it'd be very good to have a job that I could take with me. Secondly, if I DID go and get a job over here, that basically kills CTGP's future development. Development work is something I enjoy doing, but it takes it out of me. I'm the kind of guy who will throw himself at a task for 8 hours at a time, forgetting to eat (yes, that happens a lot while working on CTGP). I burn out pretty easily as a result, but I can't stand to work any other way. Putting myself at a task for only 1 or 2 hours just irritates me, and makes me more likely to make mistakes. If I'm doing an office job or something, I'm not going to have the time to do solid work on CTGP. And no, there's no way I'd use my time after work to do it: I'd definitely burn out and just want to relax. Thirdly, another topic related to my fiancée, she suffers from pretty bad depression, suffering from very bad lows that can occur seemingly at random. To me, being able to drop everything and spend time with her immediately is extremely important because of that. This has been especially true in recent, where certain events have been causing her to relapse pretty badly on a semi-regular basis. I'd hate to be in the situation where that occurs, and I'm off at work and can't do anything about it. It's bad enough if it occurs when I'm asleep. Thus, I really want to make Twitch, YouTube and CTGP development work as a job. Properly work, rather than just scraping by.

So, why exactly am I trying to raise £2,400, and why by January 7th? Well, I am actually going to be flying out to the USA to spend time with my fiancée on that date. I will be out there for almost 3 months, returning home on March 27th 2019. I would like to have a fund for use in emergencies, and also, given the length of my stay, to show to the border guard if they ask me how much money I have on me. My actual intent is not to spend this money in the USA at all, aside from helping to pay for rent while I'm out there and buy food. I want to try to make this money last through the WHOLE of 2019. It would be the equivalent of having £200/month extra for the entire year. That may not seem like much, but for someone who's been existing on £143/month and not necessarily even being paid on a monthly basis due to earning fluctuations (I got nothing this current pay period from either YouTube or Twitch), that kind of money would be an incredible relief to have. If we can't meet that goal, that's okay, I don't realistically expect to be able to meet it either on such short notice, but any money donated during this period would be extremely appreciated.

So, if you have any money to spare, and you appreciate CTGP, or my streams, or my YouTube channel, please consider donating at https://www.twitchalerts.com/donate/mrbean35000vr. All donations, no matter how small, are greatfully received. There is a minimum £1.00 ($1.28) donation restriction on there, because otherwise PayPal takes a cut so large that I may not get any of the money. You can donate in any currency you want to! If donating doesn't work, Twitch bits or subscriptions are also greatly appreciated, and will be counted towards the goal (I will add those manually at the end of each stream)! Remember that people in the United States can earn bits for free by watching adverts on Twitch, and that Amazon Prime comes with a free Twitch subscription that you can use on any Twitch streamer. This includes during the one month Amazon Prime free trial. So even if you don't have any money to spare, it might be possible to help out like that! Unlike regular donations, there is NO minimum on how few bits you can send. Any are appreciated! They all add up over time!

During this donation drive, I will be streaming as many days as I realistically can. Keep an eye out for me! It'll be mostly Mario Kart, but I'll try to bring development work along as well, so you can see a bit of what goes on behind the scenes!

Thank you all in advance!
- Robert Chadwick (MrBean35000vr)