It's time to monetize, the question is how?

[immamac 42832]

All,

We have had a very awesome community going strong here for the last few months and lots of posters, lurkers and guests have been familiar with each other for years. 

Currently the site resides on a pair of older servers with some room for expansion in a colocated space in downtown Austin, the current cost to keep the proverbial lights on is around 1k/mo all said and done once you count the amortized cost of the hardware, colo space, and some incidental costs associated with running a website. Now as we all know the site is able to make about treefiddy fairly easily with joining forces with any number of ad networks. My goal for Surly is to break even and have about 6 months of runway in the account before demonitizing.

That being said, there's a few options for us to pay the bills:

1. Run no ads and go to a purely donation based support model
   1. We would need at least 500 $2/mo or $24/yr subscribers to meet that goal and if we are anywhere even close after about a week after this post this will be the de facto way we will be going
   2. We could also have some whales come in that drastically reduce that number and without revealing who I will be very transparent if we have someone who has stepped up to cover expenses
2. Run ads, accept donations, turn off ads when we reach our goal for padding.
   1. Self explanatory, but we would still need roughly 200 $2/mo donators to get us through the early part of football season if we didn't want to plaster ads all over the place
   2. More ads for non-members similar to the way other sites operate
   3. No ads at all for donators
3. Sell our souls to the devil and do cool shit with the extra $$
   1. Surly tailgates all season?
   2. Stripper parties at the Yellow Rose?
   3. Ticket giveaways to home and away games?
   4. I'd estimate that at our current traffic levels and user-base at full scale monetization the site could produce close to 6,000 per month excluding any donation revenue, this number could easily be 7-8k with donations if properly managed. That gives the community and it's moderator team some flexibility in how we want to grow as this cash will not stay in the account and will not be used as "take home income" for the owner, which some of you may have figured out is me.

Now each option comes with it's set of tradeoffs and there's not really a nice way to put it, but as much as I love all you assholes I'm not bankrolling our 1k/mo habit solo. The great part about #1 is we have no one to answer to and can pretty much do whatever we want forever on this site, from there the level of control over what content and what kind of stuff we can do with the board starts to go down for very obvious reasons. With ad money comes ad network rules etc. We will never be a heavily moderated community, but some of you have been around long enough to know what happens when heavy monetization happens.

 

 

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

It's cool right now, ads aren't cool. Ya know what is cool ?  A billion dollar valuation.

[Upgrayedd 5810]

I donated before and I'll donate again.

Will the strippers come to my house every quarter like I had at the last site?

[Surly Bevo 24908]

8 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

It's cool right now, ads aren't cool. Ya know what is cool ?  A billion dollar valuation.

Drop the "Surly"

[phdhorn 6224]

I'll kick in two sawbucks and four georges.   But I only will pay in pesos.  

[immamac 42832]

8 minutes ago, phdhorn said:

I'll kick in two sawbucks and four georges.   But I only will pay in pesos.  

The paypal is set up to accept pesos

 

[phdhorn 6224]

How about shekels?

[Deej 76748]

Just never do a Reddit AMA and answer the question, "How much is the site worth?"

[Sbbruin 21825]

32 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

It's cool right now, ads aren't cool. Ya know what is cool ?  A billion dollar valuation.

[millhouse 2603]

Tree fidy per month. That is $42/year. Sticks with the theme and the answer is always 42.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

I have no problem donating 

[Tired of Lurking 637]

Voted $5 a month. I want an invite to Surly tailgates because I don't have that many friends.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

How much will it cost to get imgur to work? 

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

5 minutes ago, Tired of Lurking said:

Voted $5 a month. I want an invite to Surly tailgates because I don't have that many friends.

With that hair cut it's no wonder.

[SubliminalHorn 6779]

Sure I’ll donate, whatevs. 

[Laxtonto 12078]

Ill donate once it is decided that is what we are doing, but been holding out to see what happens....

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

Will there be tote bags ?

[Underdog 28543]

Willing to donate but only if and when the ERhine NSFW gif thread starts back up. 

[MonkeyDoughnut 10226]

I'll donate more if we get hats.... Need some Surly swag

[DaysOff 7943]

In. I donate a lot more for a shitty work related website that a vow not to renew every year. Then I do for the gouge for the checkride.

[Bobby_Batronic 1994]

What if we set a monthly fundraising goal equal to the weight of Vic’s Chola du jour?

[tx ind 7006]

Will you accept Best Buy coupons and/or ameros?

[smoky 840]

Let's invest in an Eskimo Hut

[ousux 5595]

Ads, more ads for aggy/gooner lurkers and none for donators.

 

Edit- as long as the ads are just banners, no animated shit borking my android tablet

 

 

[SDG 3319]

Give us real neg pins, to get rid of socks,  and im in (as long as paypal is an option.). 

[Laga4 1270]

Option 3 has strippers and most of us are going to hell anyway so why not. 

[G650 14229]

Donation all the way.

[Patrick Bateman 3910]

What exactly does "investing back into the community" mean?  Like everyone gets a cock ring and koozie?

[Mikey4 2476]

I'm in for $2/month if you go that route.

[clapclapclap 9000]

Ads may be the safest way to go.  Or maybe someone could donate some background checks?

Edited August 4, 2018 by clapclapclap
Speaking totally hypothetically, of course.

[GlenFromTheMailRoom 1603]

Will you accept gold jackets and old rep?

[Guest]

If we start paying, CR needs to be fixed, or it should be pay only to go in CR.

 

 

 

For the overall board, I'd gladly subscribe.

Edited August 4, 2018 by slorch

[GlenFromTheMailRoom 1603]

And I will give $200 if you make damn sure Future man never posts again.

[pyrohornIII 4814]

I prefer to go non ad.  The ads on TOS used to really slow down things in my browser. 

I also think that it would be good to delineate those who are financial contributors and those who aren't.  I would think it would help to recognize trolls and socks. 

[clapclapclap 9000]

Can we get socks if we donate?

[David Dennison 18837]

5 minutes ago, slorch said:

If we start paying, CR needs to be fixed, or it should be pay only to go in CR.

 

Too many pussies can't handle opposing views.  It's a fucking beating.

 

For the overall board, I'd gladly subscribe.

Don't beat yourself up, brah.

[Bevo 13557]

Does it cost extra for scat pics? Disclaimer: asking for Kevin.

[midtown 3345]

I prefer you not bill based on time spent or assholenss.  Id be broke 

[Deej 76748]

I will gladly pay you in Derka Dogs on Tuesday for content today.

[Okie State 3804]

I could probably scrape up $2/month.

[South Austin 52431]

Rent out your mom.

 

 

 

 

 

And I’m happy to donate.

[Not a Sock 2311]

I will easily pay tree fiddy a month.

[Oakbrook 67]

In for donations with PayPal

-ob 🤘

[PatSolitanojr 518]

I don’t like ads 

 

You could pull a Wikipedia and beg us for cash every now and then. I need to be coddled first. 

[ousux 5595]

I've never paid for an online forum, and I won't start now, (was active on something awful until they went and got greedy) but I have donated in the past and will in the future. I just don't like monthly bills no matter how small..

 

 

[Tired of Lurking 637]

14 minutes ago, pyrohornIII said:

I prefer to go non ad.  The ads on TOS used to really slow down things in my browser. 

I also think that it would be good to delineate those who are financial contributors and those who aren't.  I would think it would help to recognize trolls and socks. 

Agreed. Happy to donate but would like at least a little exclusivity for it.

[immamac 42832]

Donators will never have ads unless we go full blown sellout. I don't know if that was clear above. 

[DaysOff 7943]

Don't beat yourself up, brah.

Fuck off. You and your socks are the ones ruining this site before it even had a chance.

[dad 557]

Set up a private go fund me post so we can watch the needle rise live.

[Bevo14 8303]

Do you accept bitcoin