Website finances and our options

[ChickPea]

Just to be clear, you're talking about the winner's map, right? Or is this a different kind of calendar than I thought it was?

*snorts* A round of applause for Mr. July!

But seriously, I do hope the calendar happens because I'd love to have something like this hanging on the wall. I think J's idea for other merch like mugs would be a good idea too. I mean, who doesn't want to drink coffee out of a Cartographer's Guild mug? That would look super cool sitting on my desk!

I had one other thought about raising revenue, but not sure if it's worthwhile or not. Would it be worth setting up Amazon affiliate links? I used to listen to a podcast (from Jupiter Broadcasting) and they were always encouraging you to go to their home page and click on a link before shopping on Amazon, and anything you subsequently bought would earn the podcast a small amount of money. They have links at the bottom of their home page to the various international Amazon sites, plus a few other sites as well. Because it's a bunch of tech geeks who listen to their podcasts, someone actually developed Firefox & Chrome extensions, so that you didn't even need to click the link, though that's probably a bit much for us. Don't know what sort of monetary value is involved, probably not much, but it might go some way to offsetting the dwindling ad revenues. If you're going to buy something at Amazon anyway, why not give the Guild a tiny kickback? I'm not certain of what's involved in setting up something like this though, and it may be more trouble than it's worth, but thought I'd throw the idea out there anyway.