unforum

[amandel]

*Shaking in my boots posting after SpaceBass on P#4* Am clueless about badges, other external validations etc. Being the weekly sponsor on occasion just seemed like a responsible thing to do and the only viable option to keep uF autonomous.

A flat yearly subscription has the advantage of being a gauge to plan expenditures per annum. While I might believe this is necessary I'm hoping that the amount would only be a small financial burden for each member.

[VeritasK]

This might be unfeasible, But have two versions of the site.

Ad-Free and Not-Ad-Free.

Same exact Site, one with an Ad on it, one without any Ads on it.

Members can then select to Enable ad's or not.

Only negative would be some people would think "Hey, I don't need to donate, I just opt in to the ads."

[diszaster]

[redct]

That was one hell of an inspirational post on P4.

My two cents:
Advertising

It can be done. Look at other people who have successfully monetized their community without a conflict of interest. The two examples I can think of are Reddit and TWiT (podcast/online tech radio). They both accept advertisement and derive a large part of revenue from it, and there seems to be no editorial conflict of interest.

Monthly meter

I'd kind of call this the PBS approach (I'm sure other nonprofits worldwide do this too). Basically, set aside a portion of the year for a pledge drive and encourage people to donate. I don't see much of an issue with this.

Merchandising

Would make money, but it's kind of uneven.
[/b]

[Euchre]

Take a few moments to consider a few sites, and a few questions relative to them.

Twitter hosts no overt ads. Twitter does not offer advertising services in the sense of banners or space on its pages. It is worth millions, if not billions of dollars. People inside and outside of the company are still not sure how to monetize it. Regardless, it has an obvious value as noted above. No competitor has even come close to supplanting it. On a smaller scale, this could be a fair description of uF. Is there any other site that cover the expanse of chaotic fiction (ARGs, virals, etc.) that has or is able to come close to the consistent results uF has?

YouTube was not the first, or initially even the best video hosting site on the internet. It surpassed all others, and proceeded to become hugely valuable. A rich community arose within, but as larger interests became involved this community became virtually eradicated, and certainly obfuscated. The decision was made to use various advertising means to monetize, as well as various partnerships. Ever since, the signal to noise ratio is horribly biased to the latter. The site is largely treated like a public toilet, with a large billboard on the side.

Google makes as much or more money from sources other than advertising than most people know or will ever see. What is worth more than CPM is never having to question if the people a vendor wants to 'click' will do so. Ask yourself where that magic comes from.

Wikipedia begs and pleads for money on a regular basis. It is almost completely created, supported (in a technical sense), and maintained by volunteers. Despite being the first resource people go to for research on a topic, it has almost no credibility as a source of reference.

Now, after pondering those, consider again if slapping subscription fees or ads is really an answer to an enduring solvency of the uF we presently know.

ETA: And after spending more time crunching on this idea and subsequently discussing it in chat, one of the key ideas I'm trying to draw from the above is...

[rose]

The main thing that strikes me about this discussion is that SpaceBass (and the admins) has been covering the out-of-pocket costs-- pretty much alone-- for years. I am at least as opposed to advertising as he is, and I do think we can cover these amounts - say $600 a month ourselves. ($600 would give a $100 cushion to work with) We've basically been getting a free ride for a long, long time.

Maybe there is a bit of a misunderstanding, I don't think Space is about "monetizing" the site at all, he wants help paying for the hosting and other costs, which is only fair -- and probably long overdue. Space isn't providing this forum for "users" and asking things of them--maybe people who feel that Space has asked a lot from players here, are just a bit burned out - -(though to be fair, I missed seeing the fundraising requests for ARGFest )-- this forum is a place for people to meet, play games, share ideas and make friends. (eta - I just read euchre's spoiler so we are thinking on the same lines.)

I feel that if we don't care enough to invest in this forum and keep it going, maybe we should let it go. I'm in no way willing to do that, and I will fight for this forum forever, but, it really is up to us to make unfiction work. (Or Space should just decide to turn this into a business and make some money on it, instead of pouring cash into it - but I don't think that is an option he is interested in pursuing)

I think that now the community knows more specifics about these costs, we should be chipping in to pay them. And, as I've now said three times, forgive me, I know that we can do this. I don't know if the community is getting smaller, and if it is I'm not sure why, but I think we can work on growing the community at the same time we are investing in keeping our forum going.

I don't know if anyone has more ideas, but after reflection, the voluntary monthly or 6 -months or annual subcription--with or without a badge of honor-- sounds the best option. It will probably be the simplest to implement and raise the most money. I too like the idea of PBS modeling for fundraising. Allow access to everyone, have certain fundraisers for costs.

I think $6 a month is cheap ( for a while I was paying $10 a month for Mr. A's in that one browser based game) as is $50 a year; and, probably most of us could come up with it - or at least enough of us to make a dent in the cost Space is paying.

Heck, playing ARGs and meeting my friends here has profoundly changed the way I view the world--how much is that worth to me in terms of dollars and cents? A great deal. Still, that is my valuation. No one is saying that if a person doesn't contribute they will be judged. I'm never going to tell someone else how to spend their money.

In addition to the voluntary subscriptions - we can do an annual fundraiser and sell t-shirts or merchandise as needed. Those projects will take more work and planning to get off the ground, the subscriptions can be put in effect pretty quickly, I think.

edit: you know, whatever we decide about monthly subscriptions, etc, why not plan an annual fundraiser anyway? I propose the founding of unfiction anniversary for that date.

[Nighthawk]

If the collective here can come up with over $7K to fund one man's sock fetish, I'm sure we can come up with something to keep this place going.

Is a Kickstarter fundraiser plausible? The way I see it, not much to lose there.

I do agree that the $100 sponsorship entry point is kinda high, and probably a deterrent for most people giving (in the past, it has been a deterrent for me). If you lower that entry point I'm sure you'll make up for it in volume.

[diszaster]

Since we've discussed ways of getting money into the site, and clearly disagree, I thought I'd throw in some ways of reducing the cost of the site.

-- Trimming down? I don't know what the stats are on the other pages that make up the unfiction site. Would load/traffic be alleviated if those other pages were somewhere else (like the updates)? The Rot-it thing does seem like a resource-heavy engine when it's used.

-- Call to users to clean out their message boxes? Making the message boxes smaller?

-- Locking threads that really aren't, and are not believed to become, active? This might also lighten the load for volunteers keeping an eye on the really old thread for spammers.

-- Encouraging users to find alternate places to post ginormous image files while still using the forum for discussion of those ginomrous image files. Not demanding, encouraging.

These seem like small things, but I can't help but think that in volume, they might make SOME difference. I'm sure there are other ways that actual Web people can come up with.

[redct]

I'm not really acquainted with the mechanics of running a large site, but I'd have to imagine that most of these would be negligible. Google saves hundreds of thousands with every byte it takes off its search page, but we're not quite at that traffic level yet.

The one I think that would do the most for bandwidth (I'd need some stats though) would be offloading images. There are plenty of image hosts like imgur that have an API you could work with. Heck, I wouldn't be opposed to hosting images for uF—I have terabytes of unused bandwidth and hundreds of GB of unused space on my hosting plan.

Another option would be switching hosting companies. I have a feeling something like MediaTemple's (ve) server would be a bit cheaper, but I'm going to bet Space has already investigated that end.

All of these, though, are just ways to treat the symptom.

[Euchre]

Monetizing doesn't have to be to generate revenue to make someone rich. The most successful not for profits have to operate through a monetization plan. The difference between a good not for profit which doesn't exploit its patrons and a bad one that does is when it runs like a business as opposed to running as a business. If uF runs itself like a business and considers how it can monetize itself, the patrons - the players - never have to think about how they are going to pay to play. Consider that in my previous examples, nobody has to pay to use those sites. Compare how each has tried or managed to make that possible, and what it has done to each site.

[vapor]

[slinkydge]

[jamesi]

Late to the party, as usual...

enaxor's post addresses what I consider to be one of the more important aspects of this community, in terms of my own observations over the years, and that it is a small group of people are continuing to contribute (services, cash, swag, etc.) over and over again. And while I love all of those people to death, there's only so many times you can go to the well before the well is dry.

So, what is going to convince the 90% of silent audience members that it is worth something to them to have this resource readily available when they need it? What can Unfiction offer to those who visit once or twice a week, lurking in the truest sense of the the word? More than that, how can Unfiction glean revenue from the thousands of guests that visit the site every day without ever registering?

My ideas echo many of the ideas already discussed in here, and at least one flies in the face of Spacebass' call to action:

Advertisements on the site that go away when you subscribe. Even a frugal Canadian clicks on banner ads from time to time. I know you hate the idea of ads, Spacely, but I've been suggesting them for a few years now, and I still think they work without selling out. Yes, you have your qualms about ads and I totally get that, but I think the potential revenue stream here far outweighs any perceived biases for certain games. When I was running ARGNet, we also had a policy against running ads for games, and I had many discussions with a certain puppetmaster about why that should change, and in 2009, after internal staff discussions, we changed the policy:

[Broklynite]

If I may put in my own two cents worth here about a few ideas:

1. I don't think T-shirts will net much, period. I say this because a few years ago I set up an online buisness, then closed it down a year later. Didn't make one thin dime, lost a couple of grand. Not one item purchased. I did it the hard way, with buying good quality t-shirts at wholesale prices, contacting silkscreeners, etc. I did this because I looked at cafepress and the model there was ridiculous. Cafepress charges $15 per t-shirt, so you have to go above that price. But $15 is a bit of a magic pricepoint where people are concerned for shirts. You'll get more people buing a $15 shirt than a $20 shirt. Thing is, on each of those $20 shirts, you only make $5. Even ignoring that, if you went the cheaper and more difficult route like I did, you'll sell only a couple a month (because how many shirts do people really need?) and your profit will only be a drop in the bucket.

2. I dislike places where members have to pay in order to access areas which are actually important. And if it isn't important, what's the point of paying to get access?

3. Ads can be tricky. Some online magazine or newspaper (I honestly don't remember which) recently pleaded with people to please turn off their adblockers. Most of us these days have many of them installed, and don't even think about it anymore. But those ads being blocked means that the site won't receive one thin penny from the advertisers. I personally don't object to ads within reason- ads on the side, things that aren't popups or overlays or anything. But that's me, and I do understand how that would change the philosophy.

4. I know this is probably not going to be a popular idea but...swag donations. When I went to the TRON imax thing a few months ago, I managed to snatch a couple of extra shirts. I was going to give them away to fellow members but my sisters ended up snatching them. But I would have been happy to donate them to UF, who could in turn have auctioned them off to fellow members. I think most of us would be happy to pay reasonable prices for these things. Plus it takes out of the equation some of the difficulties we've occasionally had with swag swaps. Actually, there's another thought- if you have swag and you want it guarenteed, pay a sort of escrow fee for UF to hold the item until the other item comes in. Or perhaps people could say something like I have this t-shirt and am willing to trade it for this item. They pay UF somethign reasonable (a buck?) and anyone who has the other item and wants a shirt can click a button and automatically set up the trade.

Yes, I know we do trading for free in the forums. The idea here is to add a measure of security to the system, or just make the trades more straightforward (rather than going through pages of swag threads and not knowing what is still available, going to one page where everything that is available and desired is listed)

5. As has been previously mentioned- we're doing the advertising for these companies. Why aren't they at least chipping in to you folks?

6. I like the amazon click-through and would be happy to.

7. Have you considered doing a little advertising yourselves? Get some more warm bodies in here, more people excited, more people donating.

[Caseys_Mom]

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