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Salutations, Gaians! We are introducing a new method to directly purchase project tickets! Similar to pledges and seasonal styles, each purchase you make directly supports Gaia and allows us to grow and go further. Today we’d like to offer you all this opportunity to obtain some of your favorite project tickets, at this lowered price. Project Tickets will still be available through existing means, but with this new method, we hope to use your direct contributions to get closer to building an even better site. Many of you suggested this idea for project tickets, and we want to thank you for your valued feedback and suggestions— we hope to continue working with you all to build out various features for Gaia. If you've ever wanted to create an item to make your look all your own, then now's the right time! Be sure to get yours by 11:59 PM PDT on August 31st while supplies last! Don't forget, you'll get a load of stars with every purchase!
Update, due to all of your wonderful feedback and interest, we are adding more tickets to the store. Check out the additions and restocks below:
The Project Tie-Dye Ticket lets you recolor one item of your choice in one of many color schemes! Click HERE to read the ticket's redemption rules and how to submit your order.
The Beautician License lets you recolor your favorite hair item in 8 custom colors! Click HERE to read the ticket's redemption rules and how to submit your order.
The Accessory License lets you recolor your favorite accessory item in 8 custom colors! Click HERE to read the ticket's redemption rules and how to submit your order.When I buy a project ticket, where does my money go?
Beyond fixing old features and building new ones, all of your contributions directly help us as a company. Whether it goes to the little things, like office supplies here and there, or the big things, like server costs and payroll — it all benefits Gaia and helps us grow. With project tickets, it goes beyond just the team that’s replying to your e-mail, but it covers all aspects of the product. Without listing out every detail possible, here are a few things to consider when you look at the price of a project ticket and wonder what’s up with the price and wonder where all of that cost goes.
This list isn’t absolutely everything, but it does give you an idea of costs for Gaia Interactive that people don’t take into account:
- • Rent - the office space is central for in-house employees that come in from across the Bay Area. A lot of Gaians ask us if we would consider moving to a town in the middle of nowhere, but that’s a pretty big ask for employees to pack up and move their entire lives. Having this space allows us to have the convenience, comfort, and room to work and have meetings. And as nice as working remotely is, some things just need to be done in person.
• Servers, internet, internet, supplies and internal equipment - We use various programs, computers, tablets, and various office supplies. We’re glad we switched over to AWS, it was definitely a great investment for the long-term.
• Employees - there are many different employees that are invaluable to the company! From artists to developers, operations to customer service, accountants and community outreach, each employee does irreplaceable work for the company, and we need to make sure we pay them fairly.
• Insurance - Every full time employee at Gaia is provided health insurance, which does cost money to offer. It may be expensive, but we prefer to keep employees healthy in times of need!
• Item creation - it’s not as easy as drawing a picture and telling the computer to make an item. There’s the cost of the artist’s time to design and produce the item, the cost of paying people to set the item up online, to write the copy, to get marketing graphics done. When Gaia’s main source of revenue relies on these items, it's no wonder we produce so many to try and maintain revenue to pay people!
• Gaia Online as it is now inherited a lot of debt from the previous management that we are still trying to pay off. We are still trying to pay off loans and past employees as best we can.
This isn’t a full picture of the costs of operating a business like Gaia and what goes into maintaining the site we love, but we hope that it helps people better understand why our prices are the way they are.
Your direct support of Project Tickets will allow us to allocate more resources to the artists, making the queue time shorter for you. Your support of any of our products from GCash, Pledges, and Angel Subscription is huge and every single purchase - no matter how large or how small - helps us immensely. It pays the bills, it pays our hard-working employees, and it keeps us thriving and evolving into a site that we hope you love.
Our intent with project tickets are the same as it’s always been - to allow Gaians to create and design cool items that everyone can enjoy! Here at Gaia, we love dressing up just as much as you all do. We hope you continue to support us, and support each other so we can keep making items and more! Improvement and growth comes in many forms, as we continue building upon the site and our Mobile App, we can’t wait to unveil all of the projects coming up and we hope you all are just as excited as we are!