I almost feel like a douchebag posting this. But the reason comes not from a monetary need, but from repeated requests by fellow developers in the Magento community that were wondering how they can give back something to me. So here it is: You can sponsor me. If you want. Via GitHub Sponsors or alternative means. If you want.
Reasons to sponsor me
So if I would look at it from a distance, I could say that there are reasons to sponsor me: I've been maintaining open source extensions for years (actually since 2010 starting in a dark past). And recently, the last one of my commercial extensions (EmailTester) was dropped as an income and is now being given away for free (free as in free beer, not free speech). Working on all of these extensions is now purely a voluntary task, which I'm happy to do as long as the people are still nice to me.
Besides working upon free extensions, I make money with training: In the past, mostly live trainings. Nowaways, mostly training-on-demand (plus a few long-term commitments to agencies). On top of that, I've organized various developer events in the past: It started off with the Magento 2 Seminar, next MageTestFest (twice) and then Reacticon (four times).
Those events were great but didn't make me real money. I didn't loose money on it either (well, the first couple of times I did) - so I'm already doing better than some other events out there. But there is no large enterprise to fall back to: Yireo is a one-man company, plus a team of freelancers. The first event (Magento 2 Seminar v1) costed me a month income. The last (physical) event (MageTestFest in Florence) bought me a good amount of chianti.
All in all, I'm doing a lot of things for free, out of enthousiasm for open source, the technology and the people. Maybe you find that a reason to sponsor me.
Reasons to not sponsor me
However, while I'm being honest here, I can also come up with a couple of really good reasons to not sponsor me. First of all, the trainings are good for me - I'm making a good income out of it. And therefore, I can't complain about anything. Really. I've got a nice house, a great wife, a wonderful daughter, a crazy cat and lots of freedom.
Instead, the money might as well go to better places: Food for Africa, especially now because of the growing grain crisis. Or drones for Ukraine. Or the Magento Association. Or a Yireo training.
How to sponsor me
Still, I was pressed to tell people how they could sponsor me.
I've set up a GitHub Sponsor page here: github.com/sponsors/yireo It is for Yireo, but because I am the owner of Yireo and sole employee, this ends up in my hands.
If you want to make not recurrring donations like with GitHub Sponsors, you can also pick a one-time donation via PayPal: paypal.me/yireo
And last but not least, you can buy me a coffee as well: buymeacoffee.com/jissereitsma
Or send me a postcard. Or just a smile.
About the author
Jisse Reitsma is the founder of Yireo, extension developer, developer trainer and 3x Magento Master. His passion is for technology and open source. And he loves talking as well.
