Announcement Monetizing Squat the Planet (1 Viewer)

[Matt Derrick]

thats quite a lot, why dont You charge 10 dollars/year to stay a member? That would give You 130 000 dollars/year if everyone payed. That should be enough I think.

well, as i've stated in the OP I don't want to put up a paywall or anything like that, this info should be free to anyone regardless of their income.

I will start to support You now by buying a bandana and the book, do You ship to sweden?

i shipped out a bandana to sweden last week, was that you? i definitely ship overseas.

 

[Matt Derrick]

Regarding incentives, I'm not interested in stickers or postcards -

yeah, i think that's how most people feel. i'm thinking about bringing back the donation bar, and maybe having 'milestones'? basically where we raise the money to pay the bills ($50) and then anything beyond that can go into my burrito fund, and it would be represented with a progress bar and different colors depending on where we are at.

if i did that, i'd toss the tiers idea and just have one supporter level and just sell stickers/patches online as per usual.

 

[Matt Derrick]

well, i put the donation widgets back up and used the tiered system i was just describing. if someone could give some input on whether that's better or not id sure appreciate it

 

[Juan Derlust]

I suppose 'milestones' might appeal to those who're so inclined
- any excuse to use my favorite contraction...
Joking aside, I for one appreciate your forthrightness on this prime existential issue.
I used to be the membership chair for the local palm society - a non-profit plant club; members were charged $45 a year or $110 for a three-year membership. We put out a quarterly journal - a huge expense (all the old timers refused to go to digital). There's an international palm society - they host palmtalk.org You can check out their model

 

[Matt Derrick]

okay, so an update for everyone, based on the donations and voter poll in this thread, it seems that allowing everyone to donate once in a while is the way to go vs any kind of subscription model. this does makes sense given the kind of culture surrounding stp.

i've managed to combine the two in the 'milestones' system i mentioned before, just using the same donation system we had, but making it a little more clear that once we pay the bills for the month that we're still taking donations for my the work I'm putting into StP each week. this is taking the form of the 'buy me a beer' and 'buy me a burrito' progress bars that now appear after we've met the 'paying the bills' goal.

upon switching back to donation model (from subscription) we've already gotten several very generous sized donations, so i feel like this is a pretty good compromise between the system I was trying out at the beginning of this thread and our old system that folks seem to be more comfortable with.

honestly, it also takes less effort on my part with the not having to ship stickers/postcards and whatnot. i will still be shipping stickers to anyone that earned them (only one person so far) and will still be making the stickers I was showing off in our discord and making them available to buy in our etsy shop.

so thank you to everyone for helping me find the best way to go about this, i think this will be the best solution for things going forward.

 

[Matt Derrick]

oh, i forgot to mention that i've changed the length of account upgrades for people that donate money to StP.

with the subscription model is was per month, so upgrades were only good for one month.

since we're moving away from that, i've extended the length of account upgrades from 1 month to 3 months. so from here on any donation will get an upgrade to their account for 3 months.

also, there are no more tiers or levels, any donation gets any account upgraded to the same level as everyone else, with all benefits included (i will be slowly creating new help pages explaining each perk and how to use it over the next few weeks).

 

[Juan Derlust]

Analyzing site activity will likely show only certain members even reviewed this thread, perhaps two dozen people (I'm sure all the moderators); anyway, my point is it'll always be an effort to 'gain sustainability'. I don't have any answers, but your transparency on the matter is probably a good thing. I didn't get here until a couple of years ago but I'm blown away how long you've stuck with it. Everyone who visits here has access to a device - maybe it's a library terminal - who knows? Regardless, most visitors can afford to contribute something at some point.

 

[lazerskull]

Do u do Venmo I'll gladly donate. Yeah if everyone donates and you get rich could u buy us a cool ranch / retreat / community center where we could all hang out

 

[Matt Derrick]

Do u do Venmo I'll gladly donate. Yeah if everyone donates and you get rich could u buy us a cool ranch / retreat / community center where we could all hang out

Someday perhaps... Someday...

 

[noordinaryspider]

I'd much rather toss you a few bucks here and there than get locked out by proprietary javascript or google ads; I'm on Linux and not into phones.

I wish I was stable enough to shove a sandwich in your face, but the way my life goes it makes more sense to shove a bunch of them in your freezer to tide you over for the times I just don't have any funds at all.

Total newbie/serial lurker here rabbit-trailing from some anarchist political theory forum or another, so I wouldn't have found you if you were subscription-only.

 

[Matt Derrick]

I'd much rather toss you a few bucks here and there than get locked out by proprietary javascript or google ads; I'm on Linux and not into phones.

I wish I was stable enough to shove a sandwich in your face, but the way my life goes it makes more sense to shove a bunch of them in your freezer to tide you over for the times I just don't have any funds at all.

Total newbie/serial lurker here rabbit-trailing from some anarchist political theory forum or another, so I wouldn't have found you if you were subscription-only.

I appreciate the input, but going 'subscription only' was never on the table, just a patreon style funding model.

Doesn't matter anyways, since it didn't really work out and folks liked the donation model better, so I went back to that.