ItL's new Gaming Store!

[Maxine MagicFox]

http://www.intothelabyrinth.net/updates ... NQLQnw.php

:3 I hope you all will do your very best to support us in this endeavor! It is run by Amazon.com, which is used by Atlus USA.

We also have other things in there that aren't Atlus products.

And the money that is earned from this will all go to ItL itself (better forums... ItL Radio...). As a matter of fact, :\ my bank account is definitely not even connected to this. This is all Archaic's idea. ^_^

[Kimiko]

Uhm, the just redirects to the front page..

[Maxine MagicFox]

*stares over at Archaic* That might have something to do with his code for the store to figure out which side to take you to. The US or the UK.

http://www.intothelabyrinth.net/store-us.php
http://www.intothelabyrinth.net/store-uk.php

I'll let him know. *Sigh*

[Archaic Sage]

I'll be a little more specific than Maxine.

When you click on the link that we've provided, if you reside in the US then you'll automatically be diverted to the US, and if you live in the UK, you'll automatically be diverted into the UK store. If you live outside of either of those two countries, you'll be diverted back to the homepage. For the moment we don't have any other affiliations with any other website as, well, this is just a new thing for us and we want to see how well it'll work before expanding to PlayAsia and alike.

We added the links to the other Amazon areas because the script that I made will read about 90% of all users IP addresses, but 10% is enough to mess people up, so make sure you are in the right store, if you're not then you can jump across to the right one at a click of a button.

We sell much more than just Atlus games, on the US store we do have a section for Atlus games, but we also have sections for Anime, Music, and all other games as well. In the UK it's the same, but we've also included Manga but not Atlus games as they don't exist as a company in the UK.

The reasoning behind this is to try and gather enough funds together to first improve the forums. At the moment, as you all know, we are suffering from Spambots big time. We're getting more than five a day registering and a few of those actually post images and adverts - which simply isn't acceptable. However, both VBulletin and IBP are both expensive pieces of software, well over $160USD, which is too much for me to pocket alone.

We also in the long run were looking at creating an ItL Radio, as Maxine explained on the main news post. However, this is very expensive. To run an illegal radio station, as it probably will be to start with, is expensive. We're looking at an excess of $40-60USD per month, and that's with a poor audio stream quality (64KPBS) and with under 50 users at any one time.

With the bill of the server on top, I can't afford to do these things. Therefore we need to gather funds to improve everything that you want. We could go down the various different free forum options, like SMF, punBB and the hundreds of others, but none of them are very good. Even SMF, which is easily the best board to choose for free boards is hard work when you're not used to it, and it just doesn't have the same quality as paid software.

All money that is generated through advertising revenue or affiliate sales revenue will be ploughed back into the site. If we suddenly start making a fortune, which is unexpected, then I'll be taxed on it anyway so it's not really in our best interests as of right now to try and earn a fortune. Just enough to try and break even.

Which will be a lot. At the moment the server bill monthly is only $15USD, as it's a shared server. So at this moment in time, for a year, I pay $190USD, which is affordable to me. However, to buy VB is like $160USD, which is like 80% of our annual bill (as of right now) then on top of that we need to pay a yearly renewal fee of 20 or 30 USD on top. Again, that's affordable to me, but paying that much cash for VB isn't.

With the radio, even in it's startup will be a lot in the long run. Even at 40USD per month that's 480USD a year. Which is nearly 4 times what I pay now for ItL, and that's just too much for a site. That's for an obscure game that only hardcore people like.

So that gives you a brief overview of the ItL finances, so we're in a great shape as it stands, but if we want to better things (which we do) we need to spend some money - money which neither Maxine or I have.

[Archaic Sage]

OK, we've made a quick fix to the redirection of non UK/US people. It goes to Play-Asia, and although it's not the best method we could use, it's the best we have for right now. It will change shortly to something a bit more attractive soon!

[Maxine MagicFox]

[Kimiko]

Amazon USA would be fine for me for music (and I think DVDs too). I've bought a lot of music from there in the past. For games I'd have to go with the UK Amazon though, as they won't ship those outside their respective regions. I'd rather buy things from the USA though, since it's much cheaper there, even before $→€ conversion.

So, why not provide both links so people can click whichever they want?

ETA: The store looks nice
Got me scared there for a sec though, listing Rhapsody.

[Maxine MagicFox]

that's what we're setting up at the moment, Kimiko ~_^

And that's my feeling, too.

[Archaic Sage]

The Amazon stores will list everything from the categories that we've defined. So you may be unfortunate enough to come across a High School Musical game. But just ignore it XD.

[Maxine MagicFox]

*pats her hands* Done! And done!

[Kimiko]

[Archaic Sage]

[Kimiko]

Ah okay, that's good to hear.

One other thing, the bottom of the page, where the Prev-numbers-Next navigation links are, is sometimes cut off. It's probably on your end since it doesn't happen if I use the http://astore.amazon.com/intthelab-20/ URL instead of the http://www.intothelabyrinth.net/store-us.php one.

[Maxine MagicFox]

[Archaic Sage]