Just One Look Forum Archives
Ways and Means
Developing countries seem a good opportunity to promote the act via radio or even TV. You can reach a masses of people for very low costs.
Just an idea...
Yes, we want to get to the point where we can do advertising on TV and radio. Billboards too. There are many things we can do to get the message out. The only thing that stops us from doing it is lack of money.
If you click on the world map that is at the bottom of all the pages on our website, you will see that we already reach lots and lots of people all over the world. Through our live help widget, we receive messages from many different countries, like Pakistan, Kenya, Ethiopia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Qatar, Mexico, US, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Maldives, Brazil, Rwanda, Georgia, New Zealand, Australia, UK, South Africa, and lots of questions from India, to name just a few. I reply to each one of the messages personally.
Quite some time ago you said that you are doing a crowdfunding project and also publish a book. What happened to that. These can provide good sources of income, I think.
And also how about government grants? Or what are your plans about getting money...let us hear about it so we can find ways to contribute!
Peace
Dear JaJa,
Thank you for your question!
I think you must know this by now but, for everyone else who reads this, John and I do all the work here. We are the only employees of the Just One Look Foundation.
We are a 74-year old man and a 56-year old woman working from our home office. We work at least 50 hours a week on our computers, seven days a week. No weekends and no vacations since 1999. In the beginning, when we were still in the spiritual circle, we used to be able to pay ourselves a little less than the minimum wage, but we have not received any pay at all since the last quarter of 2015.
We are still working on that book you mentioned. We ran a crowdfunding campaign on a platform called Generosity but we did not raise enough money to get professional help with the book design, typesetting, cover design, and book promotion, so the project had to be placed on the back burner for a while
But I have too many other things to do anyway, such as producing, filming, recording, editing, and posting new content on our blog, our podcast, and our YouTube Channel; creating subtitles for our YouTube videos; designing and making new products for our store; scheduling, producing and running webinars and in-person meetings; maintaining the website; posting regularly on a number of social sites; maintaining the computers, book keeping with QuickBooks; providing customer support by email and by phone; replying to messages in the Live Help widget; answering phone calls; maintaining the forums, and replying to emails, to name just a few of my regular tasks.
John is just as busy with the foundation's financial management; replying to letters and emails; learning how to create a responsive website, maintaining the code backbone of the forum and the website; taking care of all the numerous filings with the Internal Revenue Service and the State of California that must be done every quarter; writing a new book that will present our work to the world in its entirety, and much more.
Regarding income from books, we have several ebooks available in our store and one print book that was self-published in 2010 through Lightning Source.
In our experience so far, a self-published book doesn't seem to bring in any meaningful income. If you don't have a publisher and a publicist behind you, it's really hard. For example, in the entire year of 2016, the combined income from print books and Kindle ebooks sold through Amazon and other online venues all over the world was a mere $241.65. The gross income from our own store (before credit card fees were deducted) was $1,769.00, and about 85% of that was from mp3 downloads.
The crowdfunding campaign also has been delayed, for the same reason: not enough time to get it finished. We are still working on it.
Here's an idea for anyone who is unable to make a personal donation to help support our work. How about throwing a fundraising party, a bake sale, or maybe a bingo party? People could be asked to pay a small fee at the door, knowing that the money raised will go to support a worthwhile cause.
If you are an artist, you could try to sell one of your pieces on eBay and have the proceeds donated to our organization. The money raised can be sent to us from anywhere in the world through PayPal. If the money is sent from one PayPal account to another, PayPal does not charge us the processing fee, which is 2.2% + $0.30 per transaction (their reduced fee for charities).
We want to submit grant proposals but, without professional help, it is a daunting task. It takes many, many hours of work to research the foundations and organizations that might be open to reading our proposal, and many more hours to write a proposal that will have any chance of even being read. With both John and I permanently occupied with keeping everything running, there is no time left for any of that.
Basically, we need to raise money to be able to hire someone to help us raise money... You see the problem?
And right now, we are not even making ends meet.
Carla
Donate on eBay
We are a registered with eBay for Charity. If you sell or buy an item on eBay, you can choose to donate the entire sale price or part of it to our organization. Simply log into your eBay account and choose the Just One Look Foundation as your favorite charity.
Thank you for working so hard, Carla. You inspired me to give a donation. I'm so grateful.
Thank you very much, Jackx!
