LFGSS survives by donations

fuck advertising and there are no decent brands.

those of us that use here just need to dig a little deeper when the time comes, which sounds like soon.

and those that sell via classifieds should have to contribute. though imagine that would be impossible to enforce

One thing I have wondered is whether it is worth using Patreon.

As a platform, with fees and payment processing the deductions are closer to 10% than our current PayPal only method which is only payment processing at 2-3%.

But... more visibility might make it a lot easier for people to see what the donations were doing. i.e. it would say $n per month. And when people cancel[1] then at least that knowledge would be public and it wouldn't need me to go... uh, we're probably at risk, it would only need Wiggle to change and we're going to be fucked pretty quick.

I do wonder whether the benefit of greater transparency is worth giving up 8% of our existing donation revenue.

Part of me thinks: Yeah, that would help a lot. The rest of me thinks, if every £ is precious, why give 8% to Patreon when we're doing OK running it ourselves like we have been?

And of course, if we did swap to Patreon, we'd lose a load of donors in the swap (people are inherently lazy and wouldn't set up on the new platform).

[1] which happens all the time gradually... if we're not adding new donors regularly then we're always losing some... we need to add 10-20 per month at the lower end £1-3 per month just to stay still

the visibility thing is interesting - could a thing in the side bar summarise "predicted costs this month vs predicted donations/income this month" and also show last months actual costs vs actual donations? As you've said there are fluctuations in monthly costs with some annual things, so it might need a bit of additional info about that. Or some kind of visual/graph. I dunno. I think it would be useful to see.

I’ve been browsing the forum for more than a year and wasn’t aware of the economics behind it.

I follow the threads I like and beyond that I only go to current projects.
Because you locked it on the today page (that I rarely go to) I found it and have immediately set up a recurring donation.

My point is, just let us know and we’re happy to help. :)

Still in awe that the monthly thing suddenly worked. Happy 2018, forum! Apart from unhcr and avaaz, this is the only thing I contribute to financially on a regular basis. Feels alright.

bring back rep but make it more like reddit gold.

FWIW, my work (non cycling, but also 'special interest') pays a few sites a monthly fee for basic ads to run (adblockers probably hide them). The sites don't provide any analytics of their own, we just send over files for them to implement, and I just monitor it through the usual channels. It converts reasonably well, so there might be scope for some advertising income for LFGSS without too much outlay in terms of workload (I imagine, don't know how hard it would be to edit sidebars or banners). The sites we use are not forums, more like blogs I guess, and are not ad-heavy.

Just have some ads running down the right side of the page. If you don't like Paddy Power then simply don't click on the ad. Simple.

Why would they be mutually exclusive? Does Patreon allow no other source income?

Why would they be mutually exclusive? Does Patreon allow no other source income?

If not all people used Patreon we wouldn't have gained transparency. If we haven't gained transparency why give up the extra n%?

The only value in considering Patreon is to give up some £% in return for transparency. But that would need to cover most transactions to be useful.

Not a bad idea.

Some kind of rep and tipbot system where the forum could take a slice. You could even use Doge to do it.

If not all people used Patreon we wouldn't have gained transparency. If we haven't gained transparency why give up the extra n%?

There will be a set of LFGSS users who routinely use Patreon and would be happy to add LFGSS, and simultaneously can't be bothered to set something up with PayPal. By having both methods available you're just lowering the barrier to donations.

You'd probably want to nudge people towards PayPal though.

I get that it wouldn't help transparency but I guess you could always publish something on LFGSS.

But my 24” lo pro frame people and i’ll give all the monies to the forum:

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/303319/#comment14033089

I have always wondered why we don’t support paid-for promoted classifieds. With classifieds out of the way in their own section they wouldn’t disrupt users who don’t use classifieds. But I understand this would take some (non trivial) development effort.

Sounds like you want to use Steem for that. ducks

Monthly subscription set up - spend so much time on this site that can’t justify not helping! Very easy to set up, think took about 3 buttons on my phone to do - no excuse not to!

I don't actually know what steem is. Ducks

Monthly donation setup.

How about a street fighter style health bar at the top showing yearly operating costs versus anticipated income from donations. Extra points for going all in and styling the whole site in 8 bit glory...

Great idea, I’ll change my avatar to Raiden.

Just have some ads running down the right side of the page. If you don't like Paddy Power then simply don't click on the ad. Simple.

The problem with ads is that they would be determined by an algorithm that would explore the interests of users based upon the other sites that they visited. One need not delve far to see that this would mean that a casual visitor to the site would be beset by some most disturbing images.

By the way, an interesting peice of trivia is that the word "algorithm" derives from Al Gore, the inventor of the internet.

Two days too soon.
https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/201580/

Your suburban bliss has moved you further from the beating heart of modern life than I would have imagined. While you are pottering about in your shed and pitching your numerous tents on your vast lawns, Liars Wednesday has become everyday "fake news". Why keep something so wonderful for just one day out of seven?

Why keep something so wonderful for just one day out of seven

I might try that line on the wife.

Ice cream waffles everyday for breakfast.

The PayPal account went from nearly empty to £750 this month... which is a huge difference, more than double the typical number of donations.

There's still a couple of end of month PayPal bills to come out, but these are the smaller bills and there's also a couple of days left where a few smaller donations arrive... we'll probably end this month around ~£750, and that will be brought down to around £350 within the first week of the month (the larger bills arrive)... but we're now roughly 1 month ahead of costs rather than month-to-month almost zero.

Thank you to everyone that made a donation this month, it has made a difference.