Concerning affiliates, I wouldn’t be opposed to having a single link that people could deliberately make their purchases through if they want to support the site.
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insert this gif
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I think it would be nice to leave room for the occasional, totally transparent, totally unobtrusive sponsored post. I’m thinking something like the “jumbotron” spots on maximumfun podcasts. You do run into pricing challenges, though, which could be uncomfortable, as any posts would likely be friends and friends of friends for quite a while…
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i’m guessing bake sale? 
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I was guessing something along the lines of Magic Mike, but as the saying goes:
whyNotBoth.gif
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I’d be willing to do a sustaining membership model like a lot of public radio stations have. At some point I’d like to know where we’re at on operating costs as traffic builds. Thank you, @LockeCJ for fronting the initial costs. I’m still waiting to see how this experiment develops, but a fiver each month won’t break the bank.
Anyway, I’m confident that will be the comparatively easy part. The biggest challenge is going to be getting consensus on moderators and trust level policies. For mods, I think some democratic election of those who’ve thrown their hat in the ring would be wise since we’re aiming for a more ground-up approach that the old BBS. Just my 2 cents. And to be clear, I’m not volunteering. But I’ll certainly help defray costs.
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you could bake buns for footlong hotdogs, and then, you could… well, did you ever see Bachelor Party?
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Add me as someone who’d be willing to sign up for a monthly donation.
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The problem with monthly subscriptions is when one has potential instability or fluctuations in one’s income; unless the sum of the donation is substantially low.
For instance, I could always be counted on to kick in two bucks a month consistently, as opposed to 10 or 20 bucks, which I wouldn’t be able to guarantee.
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Ditto. Hopefully a few dozen regs putting in a couple bucks a month could cover hosting costs, at least for a while. If we get bigger, well I’m in the same position you are as to what I can pitch in.
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Amazon links will work if you float reviews in a way that can catch on social networks. I know this, with appropriate disclosure, is the best way to generate zero-bullshit revenue for a new website right now.
Edit: for clarification.
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Interesting. I always thought affiliate revenue was chump change. That was a conclusion I reached from the early days of the web, before social media though, and I can see how that might have changed with all this sharing that the kids are doing these days.
I am cautious about affiliate links, but not against them. I think bb reviews were often great, and honest, but sometimes it felt like they were driven by the affiliate link rather than having the link as a bonus. That commercialism is one of the reasons I’ve been less excited about bb recently (which is why, I assume, @redesignedchose the title for this thread). I think a community driven site, where everyone can contribute reviews, and choose to include (or not) an affiliate link to help the site, would fall less in to this trap, but who knows where this will be in a year. If it’s afffiliate links today, is it paid content tomorrow? Clickbaity titles and articles about Kadashians over Cardassians?
Ultimately this is really about how we are formed; is this going to be a for-profit site, which aims to maximize revenue regardless of expenses? Or is this going to be a nonprofit site that seeks (and is legally obligated) only to raise only the money necessary to keep the server humming? The third option is a hybrid, for profit company that holds a social mission over profit; a so-called benefit corporation or LC3.
I’m leaning toward the latter. A for-profit company might just end up being driven by greed to pursue revenue over community. A nonprofit is generally a lot more work to create and manage, administratively speaking, and is hamstrung in many ways. A benefit corporation reflects the community created ethos of this site, but still allows flexibility in terms of business models, investment and shareholders.
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Obviously–given the source–a clam-bake…
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This guy funds multiple employees producing multiple podcasts per week on Patreon donations and (if I remember right), two short add spots per program.
The nice thing about Patreon for this type of thing is that payments can be recurring.
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What would we do with any profits?
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I hereby submit that in the (unlikely) case of any profits being made, any and all funds be used for the production of stickers and patches.
Kidding. Maybe.
But I do like patches.
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“I was a Regular and all I got was this stinking badge”.
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My guess is that a dollar or two per month mirco-subscription would be more than enough to cover hosting for a small website/BBS. There’s no reason we have to go on social media pandering for more traffic than we can afford.
That seems like a last resort to me. Online publishers do affiliates reviews to monetize the large audiences that they’re obsessed with building. Our goals, as I understand them, are different. We’re our own audience. This doesn’t have to be expensive unless we make it expensive by marketing it to strangers who aren’t invested in what we’re trying to build.
To the extent that we do grow, I think it’s worthwhile to at least attempt alternate models that are more amenable to high quality content and user experience. People are tired of every website they visit directing them to Amazon. If we conceive of ourselves less as an online magazine than a club whose object is to build an oasis from click bait and trolls, then users will think of themselves as participants with a stake in its growth, rather than as passive consumers being monetized by a private enterprise. That desire for a sense of collective ownership, remember, is what brought us here to begin with. Let’s stay true to that.
That having been said, if we had an Amazon portal that we all did our shopping through, that by itself might cover the maintenance costs of the site for the time being.
What I’ve always coveted about BoingBoing isn’t the ad revenue, but the platform it provides its contributors to promote projects in which they’re personally involved. Dean Putney’s book of WWI photos might not have been possible without BoingBoing’s reach. We could not only do that, but also collaborate with one another, along the lines of a hacker space.
I’m not sure what type legal entity is best-suited to that, but it strikes me as a worthy incentive structure.
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BoingBoing gave a game company I was involved with a huge lift when it first got started by pimping on the front page for me, so I can appreciate that sentiment. Not sure how one can build that into a revenue model. Though that kind of effect (being “boinged”) is obviously dependent on having reach beyond the hundred or so folks we have here.
One thought I did have was that, were we set up as a corporation, that every member might be a shareholder in a sort of “co-op” model. There are revenue negative co-ops (I live in one), where every shareholder has to tithe according to their shares. There are revenue neutral co-ops, where a membership fee (and usually some work-trade agreement) covers expenses. And then there are revenue positive co-ops, where owners are paid out according to their shares. Perhaps some kind of model like that would work, and arrangements like the one you suggest could be reached to benefit the co-op as a whole, either with an eye to reducing costs to members or even putting revenue in members’ pockets.
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But the same would be true of any other kind of revenue. A site with a few hundred people just isn’t going to earn much. I’m assuming that when we’re talking about profits, we’re talking about an imaginary future where this site is popular.
What I was driving at, though, is that I prefer a negative/neutral model where people would benefit as a by-product of their involvement, rather than a for-profit model where people become preoccupied with maximizing ad revenue.
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