The COSTS of MountainWings
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Many have wondered, 
"Why does MountainWings cost anything, I thought e-mail was free?"

The major cost of MountainWings is advertising.  Most subscribers found 
out about or subscribed through Tell-A-Friend forms on other websites. 
It costs us to advertise on other sites and that is currently our major expense, 
making contact with the people who receive MountainWings.

Hundreds per day join MountainWings from forwarded e-mails or Invites from
current subscribers, but thousands join per day from advertising.

A product can be the greatest in the world and it can be exactly what you need,
but if you don't know about it, it is as if it doesn't exist.

How do you think you or the friend who told you about MountainWings found us?

Advertising, and advertising is not free.  It was expensive to find you.

Another expense is actually sending the emails each day. 

Although sending email appears to be free, it is not.  Everyone pays for the 
service that connects him or her to the Internet.  When you click "SEND," 
it takes a few seconds for your e-mail to send.  Now multiply those few seconds
by a million e-mails and you will see that it is not quite so simple to send a large 
number of e-mails.

MountainWings needs an extremely high speed Internet connection, we need to be
able to send at least two thousand e-mails at a time, around 200,000 per hour, and 
we need a lot of bandwidth to send that many every day in only a few hours.  

MountainWings needs the internet speed of several hundred dial-up connections to
send over a million emails in a few hours.

That costs money.

The least expensive service, www.mindsharedesign.com, which we used to use to 
mail MountainWings, is $7,999.00 per month for our current list size and the PRO 
service package that MountainWings requires.  That's one dollar short of $8,000.00
per month and this is the cheapest service by far, other services are $10,000 to 
$30,000 per month.

Remember, MountainWings sends over 35 MILLION e-mails per month.

We now rent our own server and bandwidth.  We purchased the software to 
send our own emails.  The software was $12,500.00 plus $2,200 per year 
for the technical support contract.  Soon, we will also need to upgrade to the 
next level of the software as MountainWings grows, which will cost another 
$7,500.00.

The total amount of actual money spent on MountainWings since it's beginning 
in January 2001 is over $150,000.00.  Approximately 25% of that money has 
come from donations and t-shirt sales.  Fortunately, more people are donating 
to help, so it is easing the load.

I spent the money personally, not one penny came from the church. 

Yes, I could have bought other things with the money.
I could have bought a larger house, a yacht, a plane, more clothes, a fancier car,
jewelry, a very good home theater system, or a pool.  The list of things I could 
have bought is very long.  Or, I could have just kept it in the bank or invested it, 
but I don't believe there is anything that I could have done more worthwhile.

The above list would have helped my family.
MountainWings helps thousands of families, including my own.

Although the costs have been fairly high for an individual 
(as least that's high for me and very high to my wife), 
MountainWings is a mission.  It is an investment in people. 
It is treasure stored in heaven. 

If MountainWings has changed and saved just a few lives, it is well worth it.
See the issue: To the 84... NO!

Another major element of MountainWings is time.

MountainWings receives hundreds of prayer requests each week and many 
e-mails that need answering.  The website maintenance, the mailing list software 
and hardware maintenance, plus screening and writing the issues take a 
tremendous amount of time.  Anyone who runs a fairly large and constantly 
changing website and mailing list is well aware of the time it requires.

The monetary value of the time spent by all involved is actually more than the 
cash spent.  I still feel it is time well spent.

I hope this answers the question about the costs MountainWings incurs.
The biggest point is not how much it costs, but how much it is worth, 
for truly the Divine inspiration of MountainWings has changed lives.

You'll notice at times I say "I" and at other times "we."

It is a Divine mission.  I am not alone.

Pastor Nathaniel Bronner