Randy - you mentioned on the biospecifics website that it costs some bucks to maintain this site. How much are we talking about and what size donations are you looking for, short of $billions.

Steve

Hi Steve,

maintaining our site and forum plus AdWords costs about 150 USD/month, not counting the related efforts because we all work for free. We also occasionally support research (within our limits), the goal being to trigger Dupuytren research rather than fully funding it which would be outside our limits. As a non-profit organization our expenses are strictly controlled by the government.

We fund Dupuytren Society exclusively through donations. Obviously there is no upper limit ... The minimum amount is set by bank charges: we pay about 18 USD for cashing a foreign check. If you wire transfer a donation to our bank account you can take care of the bank charges but probably they won't be less.

Hope that answers your question!

Wolfgang

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Randy - you mentioned on the biospecifics website that it costs some bucks to maintain this site. How much are we talking about and what size donations are you looking for, short of $billions.

Steve

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Bruce, thank you for your comments! We pondered about a Paypal account but refrained from it because of the charges when transferring money to our bank account. But if Paypal is very commonly used in the US and would bring in donations it sure would make sense.

Charging clinics for being listed is tempting but we would rather maintain our freedom and recommend only those we believe to be good. It would also exclude research clinics that aren't profit oriented and are not allowed or have no funds to advertize (like in Germany). Actually one of the initial motivations of our German web site was to publish clinics that do a good job treating Dupuytren but are unable to advertize. Essen specifically is providing us with medical info and gives us visibility in the medical community via seminars. Considering the low charge for treatment in Essen it's not a big business. Though a different picture in the US.

We are currently using AdWords but Goggle has recently started to quickly ramp up prices and it is becoming increasingly expensive. We would prefer to be better ranked due to the content of our web site and then refrain from AdWords. Though our ranking recently improved I guess we still could do a lot better. Anyone who could support us in improving our ranking by analysis, recommendations, links etc. is very welcome!

Wolfgang

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Wolfgang,
suggest you ask how many people would object to haing the forums restricted to subscribers who pay an annual fee of 25 euros or US$30.00. I for one would not hesitate to subscribe and get information involving the treatment options and experiences of others with this disease. Payment could be done through PayPal which covers all credit cards or bank EFT for payment.

The other source for funds, and I would suggest doing this in addition to the Google Adwords, is hacing a paid listing area for physicians and clinics providing dupuytren's treatments. I suspect that a large number of patients at the Essen clinic are going there as a direct result of information and contacts provided by this site.

I have done a lot of work on Google Adwords optimization (and working with a computer scientist on long tail and other strategies for keyword optimization) and would be glad to assist if you would like some help.
Bruce

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Wolfgang,

Side note - with e-store setup and merchant account you would still be paying a daily batch processing fee and a percentage fee on every transaction of about 3%. So the PayPal fees are not quite as bad as they might seem.

Bruce