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by Mz
4911 days ago
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I think it depends a lot on context. I used to participate in a free forum. The founder was brilliant at choking off all possible avenues of monetization while bitching endlessly about wanting to make money (edit: mostly to help cover costs, not necessarily profit per se in his case). He did not want to ask for donations and he also did not want to commercialize it. However it was quite popular and outgrowing its hosting solution, which led to lots of complaints of slowness due to traffic load. I thought he should have posted a notice saying "The site is slow because we need to upgrade from x server costing x amount of money per month to y server costing y amount of money per month. When I get enough donations to cover y for a year in advance, I will happily upgrade. Until then, quit your bitchin." Then any time someone complained, link to the notice (with donate button, naturally) and tell them "Put up or shut up". Similar to the webcomic author whose audience was whining he wasn't updating enough and he said "I make x amount at my day job. Match that." Much to his shock, he had $4000.00 in an hour. He said it to say "shut the fuck up". Instead, he ended up quitting his job and doing the comic full time. So where do you have demand? Find some way to charge for it. That's what I am trying to say. List your assets, list where you have demand, list different ways that might get monetized. Tie pay to what people want from you. Best of luck. |
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Does this story continue? Getting a bunch of money from a one-time plea or stunt is drastically different than a recurring revenue stream; I'd love to hear how well he did after he started doing it full time (and how he chose to monetize; still donations?).