Greetings everyone!  It occurred to me that since this is the gift-giving season, we should share with you that GA does have a built-in Gift Card system that you can use to gift Premium Content (or credit for eBooks).  

But first, let me get to the why Premium?

Everyone who has been on the Internet for awhile and is familiar with the other story sites like Gay Authors knows that there are basically 4 business options out there:

1. A private or small group that covers the cost of running the site and everything associated with it.
2. Advertising covers cost of running the site.
3. Donations cover the cost of running the site and everything associated with it.
4. Freemium Model (GA), where there are tiered membership and advertising with most content being free.

The biggest site out there is, of course, Nifty.  They have advertising, but they mostly run on donations.

When Gay Authors started 15 years ago, we also ran on the good graces of others.  I found that trying to juggle grad school and never knowing if the bills were going to be covered month to month on Gay Authors was just too stressful.  I decided early on that we were going to hitch our wagon to the advertising wagon, and, when we started making enough to cover the cost of the bills, we stopped taking donations.  Now, advertising tends to fluctuate a lot day to day and month to month.  For a long time, we were able to keep our growing costs under the curve of the fluctuating ad revenues.  However, we eventually hit the point where the costs of running the server were exceeding the revenue we could get to cover it.  At that point we faced a situation where we had to decide whether to go back to a mixed advertising/donation model.  From the beginning, and to this day, I'm not comfortable with that model.  I want to provide value to our members with an explicit promise, that if you pay for premium, I'll keep the doors open.  We'll provide you with additional content AND we won't show you ads.  This has worked very well over the years.

What you get for Premium:

• You keep Gay Authors Open for Everyone.
• You get to browse the site ad-free without hurting the site like Ad Blockers do.
• You get additional stories that aren't available elsewhere.  Or, they might be available as paid eBooks.
• You help authors that are involved in Premium.  We compensate authors via different options like buying rights to use the story for Premium, by advertising for the author, helping the author with self-publishing through services.  We also are an honest to goodness publisher with our own block of ISBN numbers that we can assign to eBooks or other options.

You can also use the Gift Card system to purchase a membership for your friends who might not be able to cover the cost of a subscription.

The Gift card option is right on the front page of the store:  https://www.gayauthors.org/store/

• To get one, just click the Buy Button.
• Then, select the color for your gift card. 
• Fill in the card.
• Select the amount.  (The prices correspond to the various subscription options for Premium)
• Choose to send via email or print it out.
• Add to cart.
• Select your payment method and checkout.
• If you used email, you're done.  If you printed, you have a redemption code for the gift card amount.  Share that with the person you wish to gift it.

Redeeming the code is easy.  "Redeem" is right next to "Buy" in the picture above.

Click redeem and enter the code.  It will put credit in your account which will be visible in the store, and you can go make your purchase.  The system uses account credits before billing anything else.

Thank you all for supporting Gay Authors through the years! 

Myr