Alright guys, weve fast reached a place where the running and maintenance and well, popularity, of this place is making itself incompatible with holding down a full time job- which means I need to bite the bullet and try to make a living off this place or yanno, seriously consider walking away.

Ive really loved developing this place, growing it and spending time here and I hope you guys have been enjoying it too. Because this is a place that has grown because of you guys and for you guys, I dont want to give you the impression that Im just grabbing for the cash or gouging but, like Ive said many times, servers dont pay for themselves and unfortuantely, contrary to popular rumour, we dont actually have 9 houses and need to be able to feed the kids and pay the mortgage. Shocking. I know.

Read the rest of this heart-felt appeal- and a new competition- over the break.
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So, up until now, TooSerious has been a labour of love but Id love to be able to have the freedom to dedicate more time to the place and really realise its potential but I need your help to get there. I really dont want to walk away or let the place fall into disrepair cause hey, Im quite excited about maybe having the opportunity to make TooSerious even better. Ive got a whole bunch of ideas on improvements Id love to add and a list as long as my arm of fixes and tweaks that would add at least 40% more awesome to the joint and Id love to have the time to get them in.

To this end, over the next couple of days, youll probably notice some new ad spaces popping up over the site. Yep- Ill be cramming them in where-ever I can fit em! Now, before I go on, I just feel the need to say- a part of me hurts to be "selling out", but I reckon were hitting a good balance here.

So, firstly, were going to try to keep the sponsorships for the newsletter which, Im hoping, means well be offering you guys some great deals- and personally, I reckon the last one worked out pretty well. What well also be doing though, is for those of you who dont mind checking the little box on your profile page, well also be doing the occasional advertising newsletter. For these, well get sent an ad with a deal a company wants to offer you guys that will be relevant and hopefully useful and then we send out the email. Your email addresses and details stay with us at all times, they wont be too frequent and well only send them out if we think that theres something in it for you guys whove signed up to get them (think, free bets and discounted booze) so... not just useless spam.

Now, heres the deal- Ads that pay well dont sign themselves up and the best way we can bring onboard advertisers wholl pay the money to keep this show on the road is by having more registered users. I know that theres a bunch of you out there who have friends who read along but arent signed up, and we really want people who use the site and play SuperCoach in here to keep growing our community and keeping it fun, so I thought we could make a game of this registration business.

Im going to kick off a referral competition hopefully on Wednesday. He who brings in the most friends wins. And, hopefully, well be able to dredge up a few prizes for a few randomly selected people whove joined in and given their support to the site.

For my part, Ill be making some referal links and buttons to put on blogs and in signatures for forums but... we need something to play for so Im going to put out the call for sponsors. If any of you guys have a business that youd like to promote whilst giving us a big assist- heres your chance! You can donate the goods and products of your business like <a href="http://www.iscent.com.au/">iScent[/url] did last year with the perfume giveaways or you can make like Shaun from <a href="http://www.bladerunnerpropertyservices.com/">Bladerunner Property Services[/url] and use your hard earned to donate something fun if your business doesnt lend itself to giveaways directly. (By the way, check that sight out if youre in the Mornington Peninsula area and need some garden maintenence- they have been fantastic sponsors and supporters of this place!)

So thats it, ads, opt-in emails and a drive to raise the number of registered users, thats not too bad is it!?

That said, theres other ways you can help support TooSerious:

1) Register! (Yes, talking to you Lurky McLurker!) Youre helping us out and getting all the benefits that come from logging in- you can upload your teams so that you can use all the tools to their best advantage as well as being able to join in with the discussion on the blog and in the forum.

2) Sign up for the newsletters and emails. The newsletters will always have some extra content in terms of articles and some nifty tools that are relevant to the issues of the week, really Im looking forward to building this newsletter up- Its good fun to write.

3) Advertise with us! If you have a business, we have some space to promote you. Get in touch.

4) Donate. As always, we are extremely grateful for those of you who choose to support the site directly and donate. You guys have made it possible to get this far. There are a bunch of benefits for doing so like being able to upload unlimited teams in the league tracker and joining in the donor topics in the forum as well as the warm fuzzies you get from being able to help keep TooSerious up and running.