Donation Goal Explained

Thank You

First of all I would like to thank everyone who has donated to help support the map since the beginning. I started the map about August of 2016 just for myself and then slowly started to share it with a few friends who still played Pokemon Go. In December it took a matter of seconds to spread like wildfire when I first shared the link on a Pokemon Go Facebook group. I found it being shared all over Indianapolis as well as user groups and reddit forums all over the place. Don’t forget you can feel free to Like, subscribe, and share this page on whatever platform you use to share with your community.

Indy Beginning

Get it? In the beginning? I crack myself up. Anyways, I don’t know how many people used the site in the beginning but I know it was a lot. Especially since the server kept getting overloaded with requests and crashing. It also was very expensive to run the map. Quick background on the costs at the time. I was spending $5-10/day just on a service that solved captchas on my accounts that Niantic detected as bots. That cost was only for scanning 2-3 areas of the map. With some improvements in the scanning I was able to reduce that significantly but it came with other costs. I have to pay monthly for other services to keep the captcha rate very low.  At the time of this post I pay about $150/ month just for the services directly related to running the map or supporting the developers who continue to write it. This cost does not include the stack of servers in my spare bedroom (A.K.A. Office/Datacenter) running 24/7/365. The power alone I calculated costing about $75 a month which is almost half of my power bill and doesn’t include the extra A/C unit running in my “datacenter” to keep it extra cool in that room.

Ok… And…

Ok, enough techy stuff. Why the goal? Because I spent exactly that just last month on upgrades. I bought 3 servers from ebay and enough RAM and storage to host the map for [hopefully] every major city/town around Indianapolis and potentially the entire state. It will also give me the resources I need to allow more people on the site without making it “slow.” So here I am putting $2300 up front to cover for you all to use the site. Keep in mind, my site, as long as I can keep it this way… will remain “free.” Free to people who use it and can’t donate due to whatever financial reason, free to those who don’t want to support it, but nonetheless, free. No subscription required. Supported and made free because of me and because of you. You are the reason it is free, without your donations, I would have only scanned my home location and surrounding my location only. I don’t need to scan Indianapolis and every other city. I do this because I want to support the community and because the community supports me.

P.S. I hardly play much anymore. A few times a day and keep a few gyms and going on 7-day streaks but eventually for that complete pokedex. I honestly spend more time on the map than on Pokemon Go.

How do I help?

Well if you haven’t donated before, you can open the link here and donate any amount. It will send you to paypal so you can put in a CC or bank account. Make sure to watch after you complete the payment for a final “Thank You” page where you can fill in anything from “You are awesome Mike” to “Please scan this location X,Y,Z” And if you are donating to a specific area you can fill it in there. Remember, as of lately I have been adding new areas for a combined donation of $50. Still if you can’t donate… DON’T WORRY! YOU CAN SHARE THIS POST! Maybe someone you know will

What is in it for me?

So glad you asked. When we hit this goal… which we will. I plan to in some way or another turn Gyms and Pokestops back on. There. I said it. How awesome would it be to see the gyms and pokestops again? AMAZING! YES, I know! Check this out, it’s what the map could look like!

Disclaimer: I am doing my best to grow this map as much as possible but also to keep this as stable as possible. Nothing is guaranteed but one thing is. ..I will continue to do my best to keep it running as long as the donations keep coming.