I was guessing something along the lines of Magic Mike, but as the saying goes:
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Iād be willing to do a sustaining membership model like a lot of public radio stations have. At some point Iād like to know where weāre at on operating costs as traffic builds. Thank you, @LockeCJ for fronting the initial costs. Iām still waiting to see how this experiment develops, but a fiver each month wonāt break the bank.
Anyway, Iām 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 whoāve thrown their hat in the ring would be wise since weāre aiming for a more ground-up approach that the old BBS. Just my 2 cents. And to be clear, Iām not volunteering. But Iāll certainly help defray costs.
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you could bake buns for footlong hotdogs, and then, you couldā¦ well, did you ever see Bachelor Party?
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Add me as someone whoād 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 oneās 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 wouldnāt 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 Iām 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 Iāve 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 itās 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.
Iām 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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Obviouslyāgiven the sourceāa clam-bakeā¦
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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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āI was a Regular and all I got was this stinking badgeā.
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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. Thereās 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 theyāre obsessed with building. Our goals, as I understand them, are different. Weāre our own audience. This doesnāt have to be expensive unless we make it expensive by marketing it to strangers who arenāt invested in what weāre trying to build.
To the extent that we do grow, I think itās 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. Letās 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 Iāve always coveted about BoingBoing isnāt the ad revenue, but the platform it provides its contributors to promote projects in which theyāre personally involved. Dean Putneyās book of WWI photos might not have been possible without BoingBoingās reach. We could not only do that, but also collaborate with one another, along the lines of a hacker space.
Iām 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 āboingedā) 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 āco-opā 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 membersā 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 isnāt going to earn much. Iām assuming that when weāre talking about profits, weāre 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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I agree. Revenue neutral is what I think we should aim for. But that shouldnāt stop us from being popular.
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I also think we should focus on keeping the lights on and not get overly worried about the possibility of getting way more popular than we expect and accidentally making some money.
Perfect is the enemy of done.
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Patron is a thing we can do now. It can set up recurring payments. It can do one time payments. Letās just do that now and we can always do more stuff later. This gets funds to @LockeCJ to get the lights on now.
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Patreon?
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