Hello Loyal Readers!
Life continues to be busy and exciting. The entire month of October flew by for us; Nate spend probably an extra 8 hours a day programming, and I was coping with the end of a job that I had discovered that I really didn't like at all. Luckily, we were still able to get a few extra things done, like Grandma Joy's quilt, which she wanted all of you to see! Those are my pajama'ed feet sticking out the bottom.
November 1st was a really big day for us! For me, it was my last day of work as a clerk at Ingham County Animal Control, which was wonderful. I have been back to volunteer since and find that I really love working with the animals, but the position that I was in was so cut off from anything furry or friendly that I'm really happy that it was a temp job or I would be looking for ways to quit! What am I doing in the meanwhile, you ask? Well, that's where Nate's long hours come in.
We have started a website, which we are hoping to grow into a business. It is:
You know you want to click the link and check it out, and we definitely think that you should! First because, though it's still in development, we are VERY proud of what we have accomplished. Second because you might find an item you'd like to bid on. And third, because it runs on ads, any time that someone views a page or clicks on a supporting ad, we make a little bit of money off of it.
The main goal of the website is to make money for charities. We were working on an online charity for our local group, Mid-Michigan Cat Rescue and while searching online for a solution for a small group like ourselves, and were having a really hard time finding anything that we could use! There is one website where it costs around $800 to sign up, and then they take a percentage of your profits, but as a group we were only making around $1000 on our auction, so that didn't make much sense for us. Other groups existed, but they either had another up-front cost, or they wanted to take up to 20% of our profits!
So Nate, in his famous last words, said that he didn't think that it would be very hard to create a website that gave us all the functionality that we needed to run a basic auction site. And, we decided, that if we were having this trouble, other groups must be too, so why not make it available for ALL non-profits? So, that's what we did.
Now, if you've ever tried to do something technical, you know that things never go as smoothly as predicted. We started the site on Google App Engine, which had a very generous free quota for anyone looking to develop and host a site. However, halfway through development, they announced a huge price increase that rolled out November 7th. So, we finished the site, launched it, bought hosting with BlueHost, and are now working on porting everything over to a new system that'll give us some more breathing space. But on the whole it's been a lot of fun, Nate has learned a lot about Python and Django, and it's something that we can feel really good about.
So, please, head over to the website and help make our maiden voyage a success! Take a look at all the items that MMCR has to offer, like this adorable kitty clock (pictured below), and please bid if you find something that you like - all profits go to MMCR who really is an excellent local cat rescue! Or just cruise around and see what the site has to offer.
If you have any questions or comments, we want to hear them! The site gets better with feedback.
Love to all of you, and can't wait to be seeing the Bells and many of our other VA friends soon!
-Justine & Nate
No comments:
Post a Comment