Taking care of business

The site rental for this address, which is $15 per month, is now due. When Fred handed the site over, it was paid up until November and he generously absorbed that expense, but now it's time to finance ourselves. We have two different options:

1. Apply for new ads, which, if successful, would make the site self-funding again.

2. Have an ad-free space which was paid for by community contributions. This would involve a 'donate' button. If we didn't get enough donated we'd have to put up posts soliciting for more money at intervals or go back to the ad plan; if we got far too much donated, we'd take a vote on which charity to donate it to. [Note: Most boards use PayPal to handle electronic donations.]

Which do people prefer? Please vote; lurkers as well as regular posters should feel free.

Money Matters

How should we fund the board Run ads Rely on donations Current Results

---

 

The Board Administration Team
(hapax, Kit Whitfield and mmy)



Comments

[Jarred]

Is $15 per month the only operational expense associated with keeping this site going?

[MercuryBlue]

I would cheerfully contribute the entire $15 every month. I shouldn't, I'm not entirely sure I could, but I would. I will throw a couple dollars in the pot every month, if that's what we end up doing.

Also, Jarred's question.

[MercuryBlue]

Also also, I think it's called Dwolla? I have not yet looked into it, obviously, and have no idea if it would actually suit our needs, but it's supposed to be an ethical alternative to credit cards.

[MercuryBlue]

And to Paypal. Complete thought, then hit Post. And it is called Dwolla, and it rates its own Wiki page.

[Barry]

Go for donations; if that doesn't work, then try ads

[sarah]

I'm up for donating a couple of dollars every month, but I also know that there are people on here who can't.

[The Board Administration Team]

The three of us have discussed possibilities among ourselves, and feel it's only fair to point out that if a way can't be found to pay the bills, we three will end up having to choose between dipping into our own pockets to the tune of $180 per year or else closing down the site. We won't do anything without warning, but given that we're already donating many hours of work to keep the place going, we aren't willing to cover all its costs ourselves either; we all have our own bills to pay. So, if we really can't find a way to pay for the site and have to choose between paying by ourselves and closing down, we will, with regret, have to close down. This is the position of all of us; if the site's going to exist, it has to be self-financing one way or another. We're nice, but we're not that nice.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

If the costs become prohibative, Wordpress.com provides a free service. I'd like to see it stay here, though: changing the domain would probably mean even more technical headaches. But moving to another blogging platform is an option which does exist.

I'll probably be able to donate a bit occasionally. I'll have a credit card as of some time next month.

TRiG.

[Kit Whitfield]

Personally I prefer the idea of ads. My reasons:

1. It's more dependable. We could set up an automated system that could be guaranteed to bring in a predictable amount of money at predictable intervals. That could be relied on to carry us through the times when everyone in the community was broke.

2. It's less likely to cause us drama. You never know who's going to come along and donate, and money is an emotional issue for many people. There's always the possibility that someone could donate and then take offence at something, feel they're not getting their 'money's worth' and cause a BIG scene.

2a. If there was that kind of drama, it'd most likely be me, mmy and hapax who got it in the neck. If we have a 'donations are non-returnable policy', we could get harassed to break that rule; if we rule that donations are returnable, it could throw our whole payment plan out. Either way, we are the place where angry e-mails, threats and general headaches are most likely to be sent, and I wouldn't enjoy it.

3. It could create tensions between the donors and the non-donors. Donors could come it over non-donors (again, there's no guarantee that only nice people would contribute); non-donors could react to being disagreed with by claiming that donors were a clique; new members could feel that they had to donate to participate or that the place was 'owned' by donors and hence be less likely to stay if they had a rocky entry, and so on. To avoid it becoming divisive we'd have to depend on every single member of the community being reasonable at all times, and that's asking a lot of any group of human beings.

The ads have never been obtrusive, and my fear is that the emotional drama that money can create could get a whole lot more obtrusive than the ads. If the community votes for donations I'll go along with it, but I do want to make the point that money and drama can go together and not everybody handles it well.

[MaryKaye]

As a slightly dissenting view, I'm a poster who finds the ads at Patheos offputting--so often they are pushing exactly the opposite of what Fred's post is advocating, and it feels slimy.

But avoiding drama for TBAT is important, and if ads are the way to do that, I can manage.

[Mmy]

@sarah: I'm up for donating a couple of dollars every month, but I also know that there are people on here who can't.

This whole issue of money is something that has been of real concern to all three of us.

Kit has mentioned a lot of the things we have been debating -- but I think that Sarah's comment highlights something really, really important. I don't ever want anyone to feel that they have less say on the board or that their opinion is of less worth just because they don't donate. Or they don't donate as much as someone else. And yes, the mods would keep things confidential but we can't stop people from telling other people on the board.

[brjun]

If we go with ads and they are annoying enough people, we can switch to donations. If we go with donations and we don't get enough money, then we feel terrible and there is potential for drama.

I, also, would be willing to donate. But, I am convinced by Kit's post. I really like how nice, reasonable and accepting this community is, and I wouldn't want to jeopardize that.

[Lonespark]

I think ads are a better way to go. The content here is certainly worth money, but I think a donation model potentially leads to insecurity and more drama than necessary.

I'd be open to the idea of a donation drive for a specific thing...so then maybe an annual drive to raise the 12 months would be ok... It worked for The Wild Hunt for a while, in conjunction with other sponsorships...

I feel like we are a small-time operation here and not looking to grow and expand much, so unless there are lots of wealthy lurkers who can be counted on to sponsor stuff, ads seem better. And sponsorhip leads to the idea of influence, and we DO NOT WANT that. Whereas a pledge drive type-thing seems a bit less like that to me, but still getting money out of people who need for other stuff.

[Lonespark]

I agree with MaryKaye that the ads at Patheos are horrible. But that's one price we might pay, and I personally think a steady funding source is worth it. If another dependable source that's not too problematic can be found, that could potentially be better.

And thinking of donations and pledge drives, I was thinking maybe we could harness the financial power of the readers here to do something, like for a charity...didn't Fred do something for tree planting once? Maybe we could have a quarterly or bi-annual or yearly donation drive for some worthy cause...but not have that fundraising be connected to keeping the site content going?

[Pthalo]

And yes, the mods would keep things confidential but we can't stop people from telling other people on the board.

We could always cultivate a culture that frowns on that sort of behaviour.

My take: combination of donations and ads:

Have a donate button which goes to a page (probably in the just_the_faqs section) which explains that any money given is given with no strings attached and no refunds. If you can afford to donate and want to, you may, but it's a donation, not paying for a service. At the bottom of this short explanation (such that it all fits on one screen), there's the donate button which takes you to paypal.

Puts ads up too. As donations increase, once you have $180 in the coffers[1], start decreasing the number of ads slowly, making sure that the combined income stays above $15 a month.

[1] that way, if donations were to drop off, you would have an entire year to work out a solution: increasing ads, reminding people, whatever, before it became an emergency.

[Kit Whitfield]

And yes, the mods would keep things confidential but we can't stop people from telling other people on the board.

If we did end up with donations, personally I'd want to stipulate certain things at the outset - such as 'Donations are non-refundable and if you regret it later that's your tough luck' and 'Donations must be anonymous, and any post that mentions that you have/haven't donated will be automatically removed by TBAT.' The latter would, I think, be best for the community, but it would also require us to be eagle-eyed and heavy-handed, which isn't an attractive combination, and if someone was already mad about a money-related issue, would probably make things even worse.

[Yoder]

I mainly lurk, but I'll commit right now to chip in on hosting fees. That said, a diversity of funding sources would definitely make the site more secure. And ads aren't the only option—what about an Amazon affiliation?

[Pthalo]

I acknowledge that there's a risk that the culture will change, and maybe I'm just naïve, but I think if we collectively work to prevent our fears from being realised, we have a good chance of success.

[Kit Whitfield]

We could always cultivate a culture that frowns on that sort of behaviour.

I think we already do - but the frowning would in turn probably lead to a lot of flame wars, which I don't think anybody would enjoy. :-(

[Kit Whitfield]

@Yoder - could you explain how an Amazon affiliation works?

Note: there have been some issues raised about their treatment of employees, which brings me to another issue: can we have any kind of ethical policy when it comes to ads?

[Kit Whitfield]

Another point: if we did go by donations, the idea of donation drives seems to me a better idea than a constantly-present 'donate' button. It would give us more financial predictability, for one thing, and might reduce the sense of entitlement any unreasonable bod could get from donating, because if they said 'I donated' the answer would be 'Yeah, you and a lot of other people too.'

That said, I still prefer the prospect of ads, because you can never predict when someone's going to go off the deep end, and because some people can't afford to donate and I wouldn't like to have them feeling like they're not full members.

[Pthalo]

@Kit: I like that solution -- maybe only the sentences that mention having donated would be removed from the post? So if someone made a long post about...cats and politics and then wrote "and i just donated to this board" at the end, only that sentence would be removed?

I think it's best to require donations to be anonymous -- you'll see the person's name when they donate with paypal, though, and their e-mail address too. You could have a form e-mail that you send, thanking them for the donation and reminding them about the cultural rule of keeping donations anonymous.

[Pthalo]

I think we already do - but the frowning would in turn probably lead to a lot of flame wars, which I don't think anybody would enjoy. :-(

I think we already do as well, so continuing to do so wouldn't require much change. But it's true, the flame wars aren't really fun.

I don't like ads personally -- I never click on them so the company's paying for the ads aren't getting any business from my having seen a link, and usually have adblock on, but have turned it off for this site now. I do want to support the site, and if my viewing advertisements can make a small contribution, then I'm happy to do it.

If we do have scheduled donation drives, which is a good idea, I'd recommend (except in emergency) not holding them in November-January. I'm not Christian, so I don't know, but my guess is that funds are tighter for people with Christian relatives around that time of year. Maybe March? I mean, you probably need funds before March, in which case *this year* we should hold one sooner than later, but after that, we could hold them every March for the beginning of spring/autumn with a target of $180, and anything over goes to some charity (community vote on which).

I'm not attached to March, I'm just throwing it out there as a potential month in which there aren't any expensive social requirements placed upon large swaths of the population. There are other such months in the calendar too.

[MercuryBlue]

Kit: You'd link to various books on Amazon using links with your referrer ID, and we'd buy the books, and part of the money Amazon gets from us buying the books would go back to you. I don't know offhand how much. But you'd have to link to books fairly often, I think, and we'd have to buy them through your links fairly consistently, oh and Google 'Amazon rank' and 'Amazon employees heatstroke'. Amazon keeps screwing over authors who belong to marginalized groups, not to mention its own workers. I think becoming an Amazon affiliate would be both impractical (as the sole means of supporting the board, anyway) and unethical.

[sarah]

[[mmy: Kit has mentioned a lot of the things we have been debating -- but I think that Sarah's comment highlights something really, really important. I don't ever want anyone to feel that they have less say on the board or that their opinion is of less worth just because they don't donate. Or they don't donate as much as someone else. And yes, the mods would keep things confidential but we can't stop people from telling other people on the board.]]

Yeah, that is important. I like the idea of anonymous donations, like Pthalo said. And maybe ads will be more dependable and keep things equitable around here (and honestly, the ads we've had in the past sometimes make me laugh).

[sarah]

Hmm, did I get caught in the spam trap?

[sarah]

Oh, never mind. Damn computer. Or dam Firefox, or Typepad, or something.

[Ross]

I like the idea of advertisements because I do not like the idea of this place being beholden to the financial goodwill of those of its guests who can help.

But I like the idea of donations because if there were a paypal button over on the left, this issue would be moot until November of 2012 right now.

Something about this discussion makes me kind of uncomfortable, and it would be entirely worth $150 to me right now to not have to have it for ten months.

[automaticdoor]

I really agree with Kit and sarah's points. I think most people who are really, really opposed to advertising have ad-blocking set up anyway.

[Deird, who would try to donate if we went with that option]

I'd prefer ads, I think.

[cjmr]

Yes, most people who are really, really opposed to advertising have ad-block set up. But I would feel really guilty about having ad-blocking set up for THIS page if it meant I was free-loading here.

[Jarred]

I really agree with Kit and sarah's points. I think most people who are really, really opposed to advertising have ad-blocking set up anyway.

Actually, my opposition to ads is based in a concern whether ads would provide the necessary capital to support the site. When I knew people who were looking to support sites with ads*, they found the revenue generated wasn't that great. In a few cases, I even heard the phrase "pennies per click." Note that's not "per click," not "per view." A few even had start begging their users to start clicking on the ads just to bring up the revenue. And to be frank, if a lot of people are using pop-up blockers, that could conceivably impact ad revenues as well.

Maybe things have gotten better in the past few years and online ads have become a better source of revenue again. Maybe the readership here is large enough that it won't be a problem. If that's the way the community chooses to go, I hope that's the case. However, not everyone opposing hte ad routes is doing so merely out of a desire to avoid seeing ads.

[Ross]

You know what bugs me about ad-blockers? As far as I know, there's no such thing as an ad-blocker that is default-open with a blacklist. They all block all ads except on sites where you specifically allow them. Which means that if I want to avoid aggressive pop-up porn which also crashes my browser, I have to screw innocent websites out of their ad revenue unless I want to manually whitelist every one of them.

[hapax]

I'll be honest, and say that I'd rather not go the Amazon affiliate route. I know a lot of sites do that, including sites of people I find admirable, but ... Amazon squicks me out.

Aside from their questionable work environment, the very real problem of "burying" troublesome books and farming reviews, and their problematic use of customer data, Amazon's leadfooted business model has led to continual fights with the publishing industry, and public libraries keep getting caught in the middle.

There is also the issue that many states have looked at the possibility of trying to collect sales tax from Amazon, and using affiliates as surrogates for the process. We do NOT want to get caught up in that mess, if somebody actually figures out a way to make it stick.

[MercuryBlue]

A few even had start begging their users to start clicking on the ads just to bring up the revenue.

And somebody I know had his Google Adsense account canceled because at least one person was clicking madly and Google decided that that was spam. Or some such thing.

If we do ads and it's pennies per click, ain't nobody getting money out of me, that's for sure.

I refer all y'all to essays I can't look up the links for at the moment, as they're on Dreamwidth, but go to http://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/tag/ and the tag you want is 'web 2.0' or some such, and if I recall correctly there's a multi-part essay on why ads bad.

[Ross]

@MB: I've heard complaints from time to time that if you are a small-timer, Google is liable to declare your AdSense account abused and cancel it any time you threaten to *actually make any money at all*.

The thing they accuse you of is not exactly spam, but rather of having something automated simulate a human clicking on the ads, and their metric seems to boil down to 'The ad gets clicked more often than we expect from a page ranked as low as yours'

This may not be an issue for a site like this that gets, if not a huge amount of traffic, at least a consistent moderate volume, but it's still skeevy. (And unfortunately, probably unavoidable since there are entire countries out there for which "Defrauding paid internet services" is a thriving cottage industry)

[Lonespark]

I said I preferred ads, but I guess I was assuming some things that I shouldn't. I will back up and start over.

I prefer ads if we have a good reason to think they will provide consistent revenue such that TBAT won't have to worry about site financing. If not, there's no reason to bother. It seems like we could theoretically get ads here at least some of the time that at least some of us actually wanted, but I don't really know how these services work, so maybe I'm totally off base.

Otherwise infrequent pledge drives seem like perhaps a reasonable way to go. Maybe we could also consider asking at the end of each post, or each post by a new author, or...something? I really don't want folks to feel hounded for money, but maybe something like "Do you think this content is fantastic? Why not throw a few virtual coins in the pot to keep this place open?" would be ok?

[Pthalo]

@MercuryBlue: I remember that essay! it was a good essay.

Why Monetizing Social Media Through Advertising Is Doomed To Failure part 1
Why Monetizing Social Media Through Advertising Is Doomed To Failure part 2
Why Monetizing Social Media Through Advertising Is Doomed To Failure part 3

I don't think of Slacktiverse as a Social Media...company, so not all of her points apply, but the "if advertisements are not relevant to what a person is doing right then, they're not going to click on them" part seems relevant.

[Wysteria]

I like the idea of running a few plain-text ads (not colorful/flashy/glaring, basically), having a donate button, and a subscribe button. To expand on that, Subscribe is an option Paypal offers for buttons and it means that people can give a little bit every month, and cancel the subscription at any time. It lends reliability of cash flow in the way donation buttons/drives sometimes don't, and means that the effort involved in remembering to donate every month/season is much lower. One can set ones' subscription at any level - a dollar, two, five, ten.

[Pthalo]

@Ross: If you use Firefox's Adblock Plus, it can work exactly as you said. Go into Tools -> Add-ons and under Adblock Plus select "Preferences". On mine, there are three things "My Exception Rules" -- which show the sites I've whitelisted, and "My Adblocking Rules" -- which show the stuff I've blacklisted. The third one is the "Filter subscription:" is the one that blocks ads you haven't specifically white-or-blacklisted. Unticky the "enabled" checkbox and it'll be like browsing without adblock, except whenever you do see an advertisement that annoys you, you can right-click it to blacklist.

[MercuryBlue]

Thanks, Pthalo.

[Pthalo]

np. i think other parts of the essay would be relevant too, i just can't remember them right now at the moment and don't feel like rereading it just now. the "doesn't quite fit" part is small -- for example with a site like dreamwidth the solution to "ads that won't well" is to provide paid features like extra icons or the ability to post polls and use invite codes to curb growth, whereas slacktiverse needs a different solution. But the analysis of where advertising works well and where it doesn't is interesting and relevant to this discussion, more relevant than not. :)

[violet]

*decloaks*

Disclaimer: I work for Google, though not on ads.

@Ross — I suspect that if you look carefully at people saying that Google shut down their ads for click fraud, you'd find that some non-trivial percentage of them actually were doing something very sketchy. That's not true in all cases of course, but the monetary incentives actually work slightly in the site's favor—if clicks are reversed, Google doesn't get any money, either, so I imagine the ads folks genuinely do work to eliminate false positives as best they can.

That said, I wouldn't recommend ads for Slacktivist, because I don't think they'd cover costs. You need quite a lot of traffic to justify a per-impression ads model, and clickthrough ads don't work very well on community sites like this one (versus, say, Gizmodo, where I might very well decide to buy a thing, see an ad for it, and click through).

[Will Wildman]

The infrequent donation drive sounds like a good idea, since it reduces stress over the long term - no worried about having resources to pay up month by month, and no opportunity for someone to try to create some kind of persona for themselves as 'The person who always donates every single month'. (I can't think off-hand of anyone who would do that, but there's no need to let details of reality derail my hypothetical situation.) No one's going to pull much clout by being the person who made a substantial donation ten months ago.

Ads sound like more of a hassle than they'd be worth, at this point. I've been amused by ad-spotting on occasion ("Has anyone else in this thread where we're complaining about right-wing smear tactics got the ridiculous 'What's your opinion on Obamacare?' ad banners?") but it's hardly enough to warrant financial insecurity or ethical concerns.

[Jeff Lipton]

**IF** you (and I use "you" as I am no longer a frequent reader), I would advise keeping any donations over the $15 per month as a buffer. If you get to a certain threshold (which could be $100 or $1000), anything over the threshold is donated to a worthy charity (as to which charity, you could have each of the mods pick their favorite and have a poll to pick).

This could ease the problem of boom-and-bust months.

[chris the cynic]

I can't contribute anything. It's not that I wouldn't like to, it is that I can't. As such, I don't feel comfortable being in favor of donations simply because that would be me saying, "Let other people do the work, I'll just reap the benefits." I'm not actively against donations either, if people want to make them, but I would not in any way feel right coming out in favor of them.

That said, I don't click on ads either, so unless we have enough traffic to support the site on the ads that pay you for each time they're loaded (I know such things exist, I assume they pay extremely little), I won't be contributing my share anyway.

[Mmy]

@chris the cynic: But you are a valuable contributor to our community.

First, you are a reader and without readers there is little point to writing.

Second, you write interesting and often highly entertaining posts. Think of yourself as a travelling storyteller who is welcomed to the hearth of every home he passes and who has platters of food thrust into his hands.

[Jarred]

@Mmy, that is a perfectly lovely image. I agree.

[Yoder]

@Kit

(Sorry for the delay; this is what happens when I drop in from work.)

I've flirted with Amazon affiliation, but never set it up on any site of my own, so I mainly know the theory. The idea is, someone (presumably, one of TBAT) signs up with Amazon and gets instructions to include a little snip of code in links to Amazon product pages, such as in posts about the books in question, say. Whenever someone follows such a link and makes a purchase, Amazon provides a (tiny) kickback. I've also seen bloggers set up a standing "affiliate link" in the sidebar, where readers can go to make planned Amazon purchases that, again, involve a little bit of money going to the affiliated blogger's account. I believe it integrates with an existing Amazon customer account, so it's pretty easy to set up.

That said, I fully agree regarding the squickiness of Amazon, both in the sales tax business and their treatment of warehouse workers—and this year I'd decided to buy gifts locally, even though it's mighty convenient to have gifts mailed ahead of me directly to the family I have to fly halfway across the country to give them to.

[AnaMardoll]

I'll chip in with my two cents.

I prefer a mixed approach: ads + donations. We don't know if ads will cover the $15 a month, but we won't know until we try.

I use Google Adsense with my site. It's not necessarily "per click" -- it's more complicated than that. Some advertisers pay by the click; some pay by the eyeballs. (And you should NEVER click unless you're actually interested in going to the site and reading more about the product, because Google has gotten very good at closing fake-click accounts down.) I also use Amazon Affiliates.

I make about $20 a month from Google and about $40 a month from Amazon and so far that has met my hosting needs. Now having said THAT, about $15 of that $20 Google money is off of YouTube ads from my instructional videos and about $30 of that $40 Amazon money is off of SD card purchases from my "how to root a Nook Color" instructions.

If people would like to "donate" but can't afford money, you could donate an instructional video -- or, really, any kind of video -- and TBAT could set up a YouTube account with ads enabled. Just a thought.

As for ads that undermine site content, well, I kind of like monetizing hate. But that's just me, and I realize there are trigger concerns. With Google Ads, though, you CAN blacklist ad providers. TBAT, please feel free to email me if you ever want to ask questions -- I've got a neat book on the topic that I can also lend you if you like. :)