[Broklynite]

konamouse wrote:

I like the idea of subscription model that would make uF ad-free while lurkers, visitors and non-subscribers see PPV ads.

That seems reasonable. It doesn't decrease the usability of the site at all for anyone, and generates revenue from all players.

[konamouse]

I like the idea of subscription model that would make uF ad-free while lurkers, visitors and non-subscribers see PPV ads.

[Broklynite]

I'm not saying to become completely reliant upon ads, but a few bucks wouldn't hurt. There are two basic forms of ads. Pay-per-click and Pay-per-view. PPC tend to pay more, but relies on people actually clicking on ads (you can ask people to but most don't bother). Pay per view is how a number of sites make a few bucks, just having modest ads on sidebars that will pay the person every time the page is loaded. And they do tend to allow you to track numbers of views, etc.

Advertising on google is very easy and works well. As I said, I set up an online store some years ago. I was able to easily drive thousands of people to my site every week with a simple, cheap text ad. This works for spending a little to potentially get a good return, as well as spreading the gospel about ARGs.

I still like my ideas of people paying a small fee to trade thru UF. I don't think it would bring in much, but it would help. If I had something to trade and it cost me a dollar to make sure I didn't get screwed, I'd go for it. It would be completely optional tho, keep in mind. Also paying a dollar to have what you have and what you want in trade in a specific trading thread- it would help keep currently available items visible and out front.

Is there some sort of auction item donation page? I can't seem to find it.

[rose]

I'm curious, for all the people who have suggested advertising, is there any wya to find out exactly how much it could bring in? I remain completely opposed to the idea and will resist it as being a last resort if we can't raise the money ourselves...but say we did go with advertising - how much are we talking about and how reliable is that revenue.

Due to the economy all of my friend's businesses who have relied on advertising are really hurting. They have lost revenue they counted on because the advertisers simply aren't there. I'm talking about magazines, film, TV, radio, newspapers and the net- it would be a false step to decide to take in advertising and then have it be canceled or dropped.

I think that would put us in a bigger bind - if we start relying on outside sources instead of funding ourselves- what happens when that outside source money dries up?? Then we are up a creek without a paddle.

We need to stay independent of that possibility. (along with my other repetitive arguments that this is a community. )

As Nighthawk said, we raised plenty of money just for a sock puppet game - why shouldn't we be able to do the same here?

Again, I understand there are a lot of students- but plenty of people here have decent jobs and could probably afford a minor contribution. That is why I think that contributions should be voluntary-- no one should feel like they don't belong just because they don't have a few dollars to spend.

[WolfHawk]

I haven't been around much lately. Was restructured out of a job in November and have yet to find another. Got student loans so I can work on my master's degree. Hoping to be able to keep my house.

Even when I was working I didn't have much in the way of disposable income. I also know a lot of kids/students follow this forum and play the games. I remember my time as a young student - I had no disposable income at all. I have to say I could deal with a banner ad or some sidebar ads.

Being unsure about the physical setup of unfiction I am assuming there is some type of access to lawyers. Could an advertising agreement be written up that specifically states that the advertisers cannot dictate content?

Because the advertisement is not directing people to unfiction, but rather, unfiction is directing people to the advertiser, should an advertiser be unhappy with something said in a forum and threaten to pull their ad, let 'em. It's not like network television where people get mad about a program and threaten to stop watching a specific channel. (Like that has ever really worked anyway.) It is their loss. Particularly if uF already has other advertisers who just want eyes on their ads.

[rose]

I commented about keeping the work to a minimum. I did mean keeping the work on Space and the admins to a minimum. I think that my comment was in response to ideas like those about making changes to the servers, forums and selling email addresses that seemed like they would just add to the burden of work on the administration side of unfiction.

I think the iphone app is a great idea. Maybe someone here already has the software needed to make an app?

About advertising the forums to get more people here: Maybe we need to work on getting the people who already know about and use the forums to be engaged in voluntarily supporting the forum?? I'm not sure how to go about this. There are always a huge number of lurkers - how to get them more involved has always been a mystery to me. I don't know if we need to be more welcoming, supportive, nicer? I think we already provide a service that has value - what we need to do is generate some revenue so that service can continue.

I do think that we've taken a great first step by having this discussion on funding. Until Space posted how much it costs and how much time he and others put into it, I had no idea what it takes in resources to keep this forum going.

I don't think we should add the cost of advertising to get more members to this mix at the moment.

I don't like the idea of having a separate place in the forums for contributors to talk to each other. I just like the idea that everyone sees the stuff posted here...but I don't know what others think of that idea.

I looked around a bit and really there are only a few funding models out there: voluntary contributions, selling goods or services or advertising. I think we just have to decide what mix of this we want to use.

[SpaceBass]

Re: question

[FSURobbie]

Nighthawk wrote:

Only reason I don't do that now is because the iPhone DevKit requires a Mac. What's ironic is that I'm already a member of the Apple Developer's Group.

thebruce wrote:

And ditto nighthawk, had I a Mac, I'd certainly be playing around with App building. Want Windows SDK!

So get a Mac...

In all seriousness, if you guys want to consider the app idea we could definitely make it happen. One other point though, Apple wont cut you a check until your app has made over $150, so we would have to be pretty certain the thing would take off otherwise we might be wasting cost and time.

thebruce wrote:

A comment was made about keeping complexity and work to a minimum. I disagree.

I'm with you. Quality sells every time. Putting in extra work and lovin' makes a product great and sets it apart from competitors who are simply trying to get something on the market. Whatever we decide, we need to do it and do it better than anyone else.

[jessie1326]

thebruce wrote:

A comment was made about keeping complexity and work to a minimum. I disagree. IF someone is willing to put lots of work into something that will help support UF, then by all means, I say. Honestly, if you don't put effort into something you want money for, people will notice. If more effort and more people go into something that's done or created with quality and dedication, chances are more people will be willing to put up the dough for it. But of course, less work required to make money is better, but I don't think ideas that take lots of work should be pushed aside, at least until it's found that no one will actually do the work =P

I agree. I think the concerns about keeping work to a minimum are well-meaning folks who want to keep the work that Space and other admins have to do at a minimum, and I think that's a good plan. However, it doesn't mean that fundraising ideas that require additional work should be discounted -- there are a lot of people, myself included, who would gladly contribute time, creativity, and effort to help pull off some of these ideas. There are, of course, many who won't/can't -- but hopefully those folks will contribute funds!

[thebruce]

Quick OT insert...

Tenshi Akui wrote:

Maybe the app could include some mobile versions of some of the decoders also offered on unxfiction, for those code breaking emergancies? Just an idea if code one for you if I had a clue how to lol.

slikydge wrote:

I also think this is a brilliant idea!!! an unfiction app - but a specially designed one for every ARG, I'd pay $5.00 for that!

Actually there is an iPhone app "ARG Tools" created by brianenigma with some ARG Tools and links, and it's free. =)

But I agree, an Unfiction app would be nice, and perhaps that would be a good opportunity to provide a subscription? If you have the app, you get some nice features, but if you want push notifications on select threads or forums for example, it would be offered in a subscription.

And ditto nighthawk, had I a Mac, I'd certainly be playing around with App building. Want Windows SDK!


A comment was made about keeping complexity and work to a minimum. I disagree. IF someone is willing to put lots of work into something that will help support UF, then by all means, I say. Honestly, if you don't put effort into something you want money for, people will notice. If more effort and more people go into something that's done or created with quality and dedication, chances are more people will be willing to put up the dough for it.
But of course, less work required to make money is better, but I don't think ideas that take lots of work should be pushed aside, at least until it's found that no one will actually do the work =P

[Nighthawk]

slinkydge wrote:

I also think this is a brilliant idea!!! an unfiction app - but a specially designed one for every ARG, I'd pay $5.00 for that!

Only reason I don't do that now is because the iPhone DevKit requires a Mac.

What's ironic is that I'm already a member of the Apple Developer's Group.

[Caseys_Mom]

question

[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.

[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:

Quote:

"ARGNet also assures that any advertisement for products or games that appear on the site will be clearly marked as an advertisement, and that at no time will we accept advertising that attempts to disguise itself as a text-based news article."

I bring up advertising again because so many people have brought up the idea of access to an ad-free site through a monthly subscription. I don't mind monthly subscriptions, even though I assume the revenue stream for a subscription would be minimally effective. One of the longest running podcasts, This Week In Tech, offers four options for donations ($2, $5, $10 recurring, one-time donation) and while I listen to it (and two other shows on the network) weekly, I have not ever paid for it. Mind you, the host(s) of the show(s) have never pleaded and begged for money either, and so I assume they aren't hurting for cash. When Ira Glass of This American Life told me before one of its episodes that the show needed X amount of dollars to keep up with its hosting and production, and that they needed my help, my guilty conscience ponied up a small donation fairly quickly.

This leads into the Funding Meter that many people here have already suggested, which I like because of the (a) guilt factor and (b) visual nature of it. "Holy crap, you need that much? Well, here's my donation to fill in that segment of the bar.

As far as the idea of sponsorship, I'll also poo-poo that one, since I do think that sponsorship of the site (rather than advertising on the site) would be perceived as a Bad Thing.

I had one slightly odd idea, in regards to a members-only forum section, and it was probably mentioned already but I glossed over it. What if subscribers to a recurring payment plan had (opt-in) access to a separate Thank You section of the forums, which wasn't really meant to be used for anything in particular other than to allow contributors to talk with other contributors? Not a secret club, not a hidden area for hardcore discussions, just one small space for subscribers to have all to themselves.

The idea of "the value of this site" has been a pervasive theme throughout this discussion, and I'm glad for that, because regardless of whether you are a casual lurker, a dedicated contributor, a writer of ARG news, a producer of content, a marketing executive, a lawyer, or any other person who finds value in this discussion space, you should feel obligated to do your part in funding this discussion space based on its value to you.

[slinkydge]

diszaster wrote:

At the risk of being unpopular(er), I'm going to make one last push for sponsorship

I've got to agree with this in some way - I mean how much free advertising are these companies getting out of th ARG's they are running. There must litterally be hundreds of followers that don't sign up on the forum but still use it to reference. Let's face it a movie advertising budget could easily afford a few hundred dollars a month to cover the extra usage the forum will be getting from their ARG - what about sending out a request to the movie bods to request a little help to keep it going?

There's plenty of room at the top of this page to fit some more sponsership logo's in and a bit of well placed country defined advertising here and there wouldn't be so bad!

FSURobbie wrote:

I'm part of an iPhone dev team at my job and a simple app wouldn't be hard, but you have to buy a one time $99 dollar dev license for app deployment on the iTunes App store. Designing a web app is free, and also will work on any smart phone, but you lose certain features like push notification. If we wanted to design a native uF app for deployment that one time license cost would have to be factored in.

I also think this is a brilliant idea!!! an unfiction app - but a specially designed one for every ARG, I'd pay $5.00 for that!

EDIT: in fact I'd love one right now for Super8 please.