by Rick Scaia
Exclusive to OnlineOnslaught.com

It's that time of year, again, people:  when I ask you to spare a few bucks to help fatten up the OO Coffers, so that we can live off the reserves for another 12 months.

Simply put, running a website of this size involves expenses. Yes, you might have to deal with a few pop-up ads and those Amazon.com banners, but those really only put a mild dent in the costs of running OO (and don't think I don't know that a lot of you use pop-up blockers!  cuz I use one myself, dammit, costing myself literally pennies a week!).  But here's the thing:  OO has also never once considered a "premium" or "subscription" service that would REQUIRE you to pay for content.

Your donations are completely voluntary, and despite a series of delays resulting in the pledge drive taking place during the holiday shopping season, my hope is that OO Nation will still step up to a respectable percentage of Donating Readers. If that happens, there's no reason OO should ever have to invoke a required subscription fee or become an unvisitable mess of advertising and forced spyware downloads like some other bigger wrestling sites.

The short story of how we got here: in the Fall of 2001, CBS SportsLine abruptly decided to get out of the wrestling business, and without even a courtesy phone call to me, shut down WrestleLine.com. After a few weeks of pondering what to do, my need for daily ego-gratification from legions of readers and my confidence that said readers would step up and help out with a couple bucks every year meant that OnlineOnslaught.com was born right around Survivor Series 2001, and has been growing and evolving ever since.

Now: will OO shut down if you, personally, don't donate? Of course not, we're operating on a slightly grander scale here... but I'd caution that if thousands of individuals decide, personally, to "let somebody else do it," that's where we start to get into trouble.  Maybe those of you who are here a few times a month don't get enough out of OO to justify whipping out the credit card...  but the flip side of that is that those of you who are here a few times a week might need to realize that *you* are the "somebody else" that might need to step up if we're gonna keep things rolling here.

I know that I selfishly run a website that I, personally, would enjoy visiting.  The end result is something I think almost wholly unique in the "wrestling website genre."  I know other websites justify their "premium" sections by promising you access to special audio features and news stories published BEFORE they are in the Free Section. And I always wonder how hearing idiots SAYING dumb shit about wrestling is any different from seeing them WRITE dumb shit about wrestling.  In my rare visits to other sites, the only REAL good reason for paying the money is because if you're a member, then you might actually be able to browse more than 1 page every 3 minutes because of the ridiculous level of advertising on every page.

I think OO nails the mix of news (usually RELATIVELY timely, but always accurate and more importantly, limited to stuff that ACTUALLY MATTERS) with outstanding analysis and opinion in a way that nobody else does... and in deference to maintaining a pleasant browsing experience, we do it with fairly non-intrusive levels of advertising. I think that really does make this a unique place; one, I daresay, is worth supporting!

Which finally brings us to The Plea: I, myself, happen to think that you get more good at OO in one month than you'd get at some other sites in a year, and if you're paying $5 a month for them, then maybe you should donate at the level of $60 per month here! But I realize that's delusional cockiness, and not much more.  So instead, I just openly admit that a few bucks per visitor is really all it takes to cover costs for a year.

At the same time I say that, though, I'll also tell you that while OO's readership continues to grow a little bit bigger each year, our best "pledge drive" was in 2002.... so more and more readers are just assuming "hey, somebody else will cover me." I'd hope some of those penny-pinching readers might step up again this year... but if they don't, I at the very least now that they'll be appreciative to those of you who don't just donate the bare minimum, but who go above and beyond to make sure things keep on running smoothly.

Once you decide what you want to do, you can also choose between a few payment options....  First, you can donate through Amazon.com by clicking HERE (all you need is a credit card).  Or you can pony up the dough with your PayPal account by clicking HERE.  Either way, it works about the same: you pick the amount, be it $10, $1,000,000, or something wacky in between, and it goes on your credit card or is charged against your PayPal or checking account.  

For those of you who prefer to avoid such Virtual Transactions, but would still like to donate (cash, check, money order, whiskey; all legal tender, if you ask me, although the cash or checks will probably fit better in the PO Box), you can mail me at:

Rick Scaia
PO Box 212
Dayton, OH  45409-0212

Thanks in advance to all who choose to help out...  with your assistance, we'll be able to guarantee that I will be begging you for your money for many years to come!

E-MAIL RICK SCAIA
BROWSE THE OO ARCHIVES

Rick Scaia is a wrestling fan from Dayton, OH.  He's been doing this since 1995, but enjoyed it best when the suckers from SportsLine were actually PAYING him to be a fan.

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