How to fund LES? [Community Vote]

kkrajk

USD $10 per year mandatory Provider donation / membership.

Ympker

@kkrajk said:
USD $10 per year mandatory Provider donation / membership.

Regarding this, I second what others have been saying before: I don't think it is a good idea for any community, to put features for general forum participation (that includes provider tag) behind a paywall. Now, I get that some arguments are that they are making money and other arguments in favor of this would be to reduce spam/scam providers. While a paywall may keep spam/scam providers out, it is no guarantee that this will be the case. To get a provider tag you already have to apply and are being verified and if you run a company at least it would be assumed you are serious (benefit of the doubt). And so far the situation here in regard to spam/scam is fairly well, anyway. Introducing a paywall could, however, keep cool, new providers/startups (like perhaps these 3 romanian students that joined as a host the other day iirc?) away that are either on a budget or are new to this place. While 10$/year may not sound much, being a freelancer myself, I see expenses adding up and if every forum/discord I joined introduced a provider tag fee, I'd probably be turned away, especially if I had not known said community for a while (e.g. a new place). Just my two cents

SGraf

3x Hetzner CPX11 VMs w/ Backups inc. 15/mo VMs for Forum, Blog, and Dev

I'll happily sposor one or two of those in exchange for a banner

Mason

Thank you everyone for the input! Some great ideas posted here for us to chew on and discuss further.

Some feedback based on a quick discussion between Mikael and myself:

• To set us up for success, whatever revenue model we pursue, it needs to be automated (or mostly automated) so that Mikael and myself won't need to spend hours facilitating collection/tracking of revenue. Simply put, if we're required to put in multiple hours of effort into it then from my perspective, I'd rather just pay out of my own pocket rather than my time. I've got a second child on the way in the coming weeks and as a wise woman once said, "ain't nobody got time for dat".
• One thing to note, we aren't in favor of a pay-to-participate/join model -- either on the user-side or the provider-side. In theory, this sounds like it might be a good way to bring in steady revenue, however in practice, we feel that this will lower participation, stunt our growth, and drive people to seek LES alternatives elsewhere.
• We do like the idea of providers "bidding" on being the sponsor of upcoming blog posts. How this would work is that we'd post a thread in the provider's section of the forum with the title and length of the post and perhaps a small summary/snippet, then allow providers to bid to win sponsorship of said post. We'll work on the details of this further and put out some feelers to see if providers would be on-board with this approach.
• Another suggestion still on the table is a dual ads + sponsorship/patreon-style model. Regarding ads, if they do come back, I think we'll use static images and not GIFs so things don't get out of hand with "flashiness". Regarding sponsorships, we need to come up with some perks that ideally won't drive a wedge between sponsoring members/providers and regular users. Custom tags, name colors, or flair is our initial thought on that with some more thinking needed to come up with additional perks. We want to avoid sponsorship granting early access to deals as that's bound to backfire eventually with deals being shared outside the community, either publicly or privately.
• More to come as @mikho and I have some further discussions on this. We'll probably be creating a provider's-only thread soon to gauge interest in some of the items above to see if they're worth pursuing.

Again, thank you all for your inputs. I'm glad we have a community full of diverse, intelligent individuals and it's been great hearing your thoughts on this. We hope that this discussion gives a glimpse of how we'll try our best to make community-wide decisions after consulting with the community itself -- this isn't the M&M show, everyone here that participates should have a voice in how we do things and how we operate as a family and community.

Will revisit this soon(tm) after Mikael and I have a more lengthy discussion on the topic and flesh out things some more.

Much love,
M&M

Chievo

@Mason said:
Thank you everyone for the input! Some great ideas posted here for us to chew on and discuss further.

Some feedback based on a quick discussion between Mikael and myself:

• To set us up for success, whatever revenue model we pursue, it needs to be automated (or mostly automated) so that Mikael and myself won't need to spend hours facilitating collection/tracking of revenue. Simply put, if we're required to put in multiple hours of effort into it then from my perspective, I'd rather just pay out of my own pocket rather than my time. I've got a second child on the way in the coming weeks and as a wise woman once put, "ain't nobody got time for dat".
• One thing to note, we aren't in favor of a pay-to-participate/join model -- either on the user-side or the provider-side. In theory, this sounds like it might be a good way to bring in steady revenue, however in practice, we feel that this will lower participation, stunt our growth, and drive people to seek LES alternatives elsewhere.
• We do like the idea of providers "bidding" on being the sponsor of upcoming blog posts. How this would work is that we'd post a thread in the provider's section of the forum with the title and length of the post and perhaps a small summary/snippet, then allow providers to bid to win sponsorship of said post. We'll work on the details of this further and put out some feelers to see if providers would be on-board with this approach.
• Another suggestion still on the table is a dual ads + sponsorship/patreon-style model. Regarding ads, if they do come back, I think we'll use static images and not GIFs so things don't get out of hand with "flashiness". Regarding sponsorships, we need to come up with some perks that ideally won't drive a wedge between sponsoring members/providers and regular users. Custom tags, name colors, or flair is our initial thought on that with some more thinking needed to come up with additional perks. We want to avoid sponsorship granting early access to deals as that's bound to backfire eventually with deals being shared outside the community, either publicly or privately.
• More to come as @mikho and I have some further discussions on this. We'll probably be creating a provider's-only thread soon to gauge interest in some of the items above to see if they're worth pursuing.

Again, thank you all for your inputs. I'm glad we have a community full of diverse, intelligent individuals and it's been great hearing your thoughts on this. We hope that this discussion gives a glimpse of how we'll try our best to make community-wide decisions after consulting with the community itself -- this isn't the M&M show, everyone here that participates should have a voice in how we do things and how we operate as a family and community.

Will revisit this soon(tm) after Mikael and I have a more lengthy discussion on the topic and flesh out things some more.

Much love,
M&M

Congrats for the baby !!!

Mason

@SGraf said:

3x Hetzner CPX11 VMs w/ Backups inc. 15/mo VMs for Forum, Blog, and Dev

I'll happily sposor one or two of those in exchange for a banner

Hey, thanks for the offer! I'll have to decline for now. We'd like our infra to avoid sponsorships for the time being and keep things independently paid for and managed so that we maintain a purely client-provider relationship with our hosting/service providers.

SGraf

@Mason said:

@SGraf said:

3x Hetzner CPX11 VMs w/ Backups inc. 15/mo VMs for Forum, Blog, and Dev

I'll happily sposor one or two of those in exchange for a banner

Hey, thanks for the offer! I'll have to decline for now. We'd like our infra to avoid sponsorships for the time being and keep things independently paid for and managed so that we maintain a purely client-provider relationship with our hosting/service providers.

Meaning i'd expect an invoice for the sponsorship with a predefined amount and you use that money however you see fit
(most likely applying it towards the servers/infra)

Ympker

@Mason said:
Thank you everyone for the input! Some great ideas posted here for us to chew on and discuss further.

Some feedback based on a quick discussion between Mikael and myself:

• To set us up for success, whatever revenue model we pursue, it needs to be automated (or mostly automated) so that Mikael and myself won't need to spend hours facilitating collection/tracking of revenue. Simply put, if we're required to put in multiple hours of effort into it then from my perspective, I'd rather just pay out of my own pocket rather than my time. I've got a second child on the way in the coming weeks and as a wise woman once said, "ain't nobody got time for dat".
• One thing to note, we aren't in favor of a pay-to-participate/join model -- either on the user-side or the provider-side. In theory, this sounds like it might be a good way to bring in steady revenue, however in practice, we feel that this will lower participation, stunt our growth, and drive people to seek LES alternatives elsewhere.
• We do like the idea of providers "bidding" on being the sponsor of upcoming blog posts. How this would work is that we'd post a thread in the provider's section of the forum with the title and length of the post and perhaps a small summary/snippet, then allow providers to bid to win sponsorship of said post. We'll work on the details of this further and put out some feelers to see if providers would be on-board with this approach.
• Another suggestion still on the table is a dual ads + sponsorship/patreon-style model. Regarding ads, if they do come back, I think we'll use static images and not GIFs so things don't get out of hand with "flashiness". Regarding sponsorships, we need to come up with some perks that ideally won't drive a wedge between sponsoring members/providers and regular users. Custom tags, name colors, or flair is our initial thought on that with some more thinking needed to come up with additional perks. We want to avoid sponsorship granting early access to deals as that's bound to backfire eventually with deals being shared outside the community, either publicly or privately.
• More to come as @mikho and I have some further discussions on this. We'll probably be creating a provider's-only thread soon to gauge interest in some of the items above to see if they're worth pursuing.

Again, thank you all for your inputs. I'm glad we have a community full of diverse, intelligent individuals and it's been great hearing your thoughts on this. We hope that this discussion gives a glimpse of how we'll try our best to make community-wide decisions after consulting with the community itself -- this isn't the M&M show, everyone here that participates should have a voice in how we do things and how we operate as a family and community.

Will revisit this soon(tm) after Mikael and I have a more lengthy discussion on the topic and flesh out things some more.

Much love,
M&M

Congratz and best wishes for the baby, mate! Totally see why you would not want more tasks on your plate than you already do. An automated revenue model thus would definitely be useful here. All in all I think we can be very happy to have our M&M's and, of course, this awesome community to work hand in hand towards the future. Looking forward to see how this turns out

InceptionHosting

I really don't think 1 and 2 need to be mutually exclusive, I would personally chip in via patreon and it gives you a platform for real exclusive content and deals.

Adverts also really 100% do not hurt anyone, people can argue this point all they want I will just point you to an AdBlock plugin link, it is 2021, deal with it and stop crying for attention because something blinked on a screen

Falzo

@InceptionHosting said: Adverts also really 100% do not hurt anyone, people can argue this point all they want I will just point you to an AdBlock plugin link, it is 2021, deal with it and stop crying for attention because something blinked on a screen

pretty much this - unless some forum owners start trying to sneak it in anyways by looking for ways to bypass adblockers and force their blinky shite upon you ;-)

mikho

@Falzo said:

@InceptionHosting said: Adverts also really 100% do not hurt anyone, people can argue this point all they want I will just point you to an AdBlock plugin link, it is 2021, deal with it and stop crying for attention because something blinked on a screen

pretty much this - unless some forum owners start trying to sneak it in anyways by looking for ways to bypass adblockers and force their blinky shite upon you ;-)

I will disable the whole site for people who uses adblockers

Falzo

@mikho said:

@Falzo said:

@InceptionHosting said: Adverts also really 100% do not hurt anyone, people can argue this point all they want I will just point you to an AdBlock plugin link, it is 2021, deal with it and stop crying for attention because something blinked on a screen

pretty much this - unless some forum owners start trying to sneak it in anyways by looking for ways to bypass adblockers and force their blinky shite upon you ;-)

I will disable the whole site for people who uses adblockers

feel free to do that 🤷‍♂️😁 ... most likely make the community grow faster not.

HostSlick

I know Forums that bring me less traffic where you pay 25€ (or was it 50? not sure) to post a offer and also pay xx€ to bump your thread on top.
Would be a idea.
Either way, 2) is also perfectly fine with me. Sounds good.

Neoon

@mikho said:

@Falzo said:

@InceptionHosting said: Adverts also really 100% do not hurt anyone, people can argue this point all they want I will just point you to an AdBlock plugin link, it is 2021, deal with it and stop crying for attention because something blinked on a screen

pretty much this - unless some forum owners start trying to sneak it in anyways by looking for ways to bypass adblockers and force their blinky shite upon you ;-)

I will disable the whole site for people who uses adblockers

deank

You can charge me for keeping my troll tag.

7 bucks a year, I am willing to accept.

ialexpw

I like the idea of paying $x once/monthly/yearly for example and having access to "another area" of the forum. Had that before over on another forum I used to frequent and it seemed to work out quite well.

Also like the idea someone else mentioned on the ad spots where you could buy them out with a "blank" option.

bikegremlin

@ialexpw said:
I like the idea of paying $x once/monthly/yearly for example and having access to "another area" of the forum. Had that before over on another forum I used to frequent and it seemed to work out quite well.

Also like the idea someone else mentioned on the ad spots where you could buy them out with a "blank" option.

My 2c (pun intended):

A downside to such a policy is it is discriminatory towards the poor.
The upside is that it's a fair and honest way to get the funding.

Having a symbolic monthly fee would probably negate the downside to a great extent.

havoc

Ads seem like the easier route...cause you have a captive targeted audience and advertisers already essentially.

If possible can we make them static though. I personally find it tough reading text with moving stuff in peripheral vision. More ads seems preferable.

Patron...maybe to sponsor specific initiatives / blog posts? Wouldn't rely on it full time.

Perhaps allowing providers stick a jpeg banner into signature for a fee? Would be kinda ugly but think it could work

deank

Static ad is fine. I can tolerate them.

If it's animated at any degree, I simply remove it with ad block.

yoursunny

Would you rather see those flashy RackNerd and HostSailor ads, or a subtle animation like this?

---

@deank said:
You can charge me for keeping my troll tag.

7 bucks a year, I am willing to accept.

Can I have a push-up specialist tag for $7/decade?

Mason

@yoursunny said:
Would you rather see those flashy RackNerd and HostSailor ads, or a subtle animation like this?

Neither if I'm being honest

InceptionHosting

It seems to me that people who have engaged are pretty much ok with any option, no one is vigorously attacking any option so it makes sense to give people just that, options

debaser

@InceptionHosting said:
It seems to me that people who have engaged are pretty much ok with any option, no one is vigorously attacking any option so it makes sense to give people just that, options

I would support LES through Patreon (even without any perks) and still wouldn’t complain about ads.

msatt

Providers make money by selling.
People come here for sales and for info.
The more people that visit, the greater the chance of sales.
So sales should generate revenue for LES - not the consumers.

seriesn

@msatt said:
Providers make money by selling.
People come here for sales and for info.
The more people that visit, the greater the chance of sales.
So sales should generate revenue for LES - not the consumers.

I come here for the meme.

mikho

@msatt said:
Providers make money by selling.
People come here for sales and for info.
The more people that visit, the greater the chance of sales.
So sales should generate revenue for LES - not the consumers.

That is why this place never will be a ”pay2visit” community.

Mason

Just realize the poll and voting results were wiped when I unannounced the thread.... Way to go, Vanilla.

I think we have a good amount to discuss and a general concensus in this anyways

serv_ee

I'd chip in with Patreon no questions asked.

angstrom

(Sorry, I'm late to respond.)

Just to say:

• I have no problem with ads (that aren't terribly intrusive) and wouldn't block ads.
• I would certainly consider making a donation every now and then.

Dazzle

Sorry didn't read the whole messages.

I suggest a new user tag for donor. Some people like recognition.

Yeah, I registered here only to get OG tag, otherwise I'll be lurker.