Marker,

First, please note that it wasn't me that did anything. We have moderators - helping out for free, giving freely of their own time to help make this a better place for all. They know the basic rules, and follow them as best they can.

The basics, just so we're all clear:

We have NO problem with someone offering anything for FREE. We're very pleased when someone offers free accommodation or mechanical assistance or whatever for travellers - and we hope that the giver would also receive help when on the road if needed too. WE - that is you me and all motorcycle travellers - help each other out and WE make it a better world to travel in for us all.

When someone MAKES MONEY by posting on HU, we don't feel that it's fair if we don't receive a part of that.

TedMagnum is right - sort of tongue in cheek - to an extent it IS all about the money on this subject.

Where there is NO money involved, NO problem.
Where there IS money involved, it needs to be FAIR.

Just so everyone understands: HU has been MY FULL TIME job for 11 years now. Susan has been part time all of that time. We have a couple of part timers to pay. A website the size of HU is incredibly expensive to host.

It all adds up to a LOT of money invested. And we have YET to make a decent wage out of it. If I had NOT started HU back in 1998, I'd be comfortably retired now with the money I could have earned. Now, it's going to be many years before I can retire.

So when it comes down to it, WHY should we work for nothing? WHY should we allow someone else to MAKE MONEY off our work, and we should get nothing in return?

We continue to run it because we believe in what we're doing, and we have many thousands of people who would be very upset if we closed the site down. BUT - just like every single person out there - we like to eat, we'd really like to be able to afford a nice house, a vacation every year, and one day soon "retire" and work a little less hard - 10 hours a day 7 days a week gets to be too much sometimes. And our last vacation was 4 years ago.

We'd like to do it all for free - but the plumber that came today wants to get paid, so we can't work for nothing either.

So FAIR is important - not only to all the users of HU, but to us too.

Having said all that - if indeed you, Marker, make NO money from hosting travellers, then let me know that, and you're welcome to post your signature again.

If you do make money, please remember FAIR.

__________________
Grant Johnson
Seek, and ye shall find.
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Inspiring, Informing and Connecting travellers since 1997!
www.HorizonsUnlimited.com