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

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

21 minutes ago, SDG said:

I thought the point of donating was to avoid these ads?  

This

Edited October 29, 2018 by Hugo Stiglitz

[Braff Zacklin 13,552]

I would consider this "heavy ad support." Appearing once, fine, but appearing on every single thread/page? Extremely intrusive.

[NoRagrets 1,125]

How much $$$ do I need to send to make these ads go away?????

[Hank Scorpio 17,729]

I will up my donation to $350 a month if we can get those autoplay ads where it's like a person walking across your screen and talking to you and you can't figure out where to click to close it. You put those on every single page and you've got my money. 

[PhillyD 1,257]

53 minutes ago, SDG said:

I thought the point of donating was to avoid these adds?  

Exactly.  Shit is making me Surly.

[Amos Moses 795]

Is it too late to vote "Fuck you, you pandering cunt"?

 

This seems like it sucks.  I would be really pissed if I gave money.

[RPM 26,315]

1 hour ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Yeah, what the fuck is this shit? 

 

1 hour ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Every page load or reload gets me an ad now.  This is on purpose? 

 

1 hour ago, UTCzech III said:

This, uh, this sucks.

 

1 hour ago, SDG said:

I thought the point of donating was to avoid these adds?  

All of the above.

[Patrick Bateman 3,910]

Looks like they took if offline.  Worst thing you can do to a community is put unwanted annoyances on them without announcing first and giving runway.  I can understand having one per log in or per 6 hours or whatever, but for every refresh or page change is terrible implementation.

[RPM 26,315]

[clapclapclap 9,000]

I'm getting 3 or 4 ads per page on my laptop.  Enough ad crap to get "This page has become unresponsive" several times on my phone this afternoon.

"Login or get spammed" seems a bit of a heavy handed approach.

[markstanco 12,570]

I have seen zero ads on my laptop and phone using TT. Dafuq am I doing right?

[Captainant 27,619]

I hope you all learned a valuable lesson about using an ad-blocker. 

[Sbbruin 21,826]

Every time I get a notice of a payment by payapl to RV CXO Consulting LLC, I am certain I hav ebeen hacked.  Sounds sketchy.  Then I remember it's Bob's offshore porn and surly shell corp.

[PatrickMcHorn 376]

Every time I get a notice of a payment by payapl to RV CXO Consulting LLC, I am certain I hav ebeen hacked.  Sounds sketchy.  Then I remember it's Bob's offshore porn and surly shell corp.

I did a one time payment and was looking through my statement and it took me longer than I care to admit to figure it out.

[immamac 42,832]

So the ads thing was a glitch because it was showing to members and non-members I apologize for that if any members are seeing anything other than the pristine adless site let me know and I will fix it for you.

[Sbbruin 21,826]

I'm not getting my treefiddy label despite my contribution.

[immamac 42,832]

weird i see it

[MissingInAction 25,002]

I have been trying to donate for the past several days without success.  I put $20 in the bucket at the tailgate, so I guess that will have to do it. 

[NAVY 6,740]

@immamacSorry for the necro bump.... Need to re-up my tree-fiddy sub but only see monthly options in the store. Did annual plans go away? 

[immamac 42,832]

not that I'm aware - let me check real quick.

[immamac 42,832]

Fixed - strange it went away.

[NAVY 6,740]

4 minutes ago, immamac said:

Fixed - strange it went away.

Many thank yous 

[tantric superman 4,667]

Was disappointed in this thread.  I thought it was going  to be how I could make a few pennies for each of my posts.

[Biff Tannen 45,661]

Tried to subscribe, but got an error. 

[Willfully Horn 7,998]

On 10/18/2020 at 2:25 PM, Biff Tannen said:

Tried to subscribe, but got an error. 

Me, too. 

[immamac 42,832]

post the error?

[Willfully Horn 7,998]

9 hours ago, immamac said:

post the error?

There was an error processing the payment. Please try a different payment method or contact us for assistance.

[SimonBolivar 10,957]

6 hours ago, Willfully Horn said:

There was an error processing the payment. Please try a different payment method or contact us for assistance.

Try a card that isn't maxed out.

[Willfully Horn 7,998]

3 hours ago, SimonBolivar said:

Try a card that isn't maxed out.

I appreciate your help. The card is fine. 

[immamac 42,832]

47 minutes ago, Willfully Horn said:

I appreciate your help. The card is fine. 

Use stripe not paypal or visa versa

[Bullneck 19,070]

Looks legit.  But my office has been getting lots of "click on this link" emails lately.  

Quote

 

Hi Bullneck,
A new invoice has been generated for you.

— Surly Horns
 

Order #3809

 

View Order

 

 

Order Details
	Item		Total
	1 x Renew: Treefiddy club (Expires: 01/10/21)		$3.50
Subtotal			$3.50
Total			$3.50
Paid by PayPal			$3.50
Total to pay			$0.00

 

Edited October 20, 2020 by Bullneck

[immamac 42,832]

is legit

[Guest]

What required donation is larger more:

1) getting released from the new Purgatory

2) sentencing a poster to the 1% Forum and that's all they get to see?

Edited October 20, 2020 by slorch

[immamac 42,832]

On 8/3/2018 at 6:13 PM, immamac said:

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.

 

 

It's time to revisit this as I think we have done a really good job so far of giving everyone a pretty solid experience, even though Covid fucked up our 2020 tailgate plans, 2021 will be fun. So here's what we are working with now from a monetization perspective. 

1164.60 (from various monthly subs) + 227.50 (from annual subs monthly amortized)  = 1392.10 in monthly subscriber revenue.

 

So we've got enough subscriber base now to essentially cover general costs with no fun stuff or profits at all. This is after the efforts by @Sbbruin and a few others to shame people into subscribing instead of just freeloading on the ad free experience that all members get. 

Ad revenue has been largely shit, until very recently when we switched partners and have been doing more direct ad sales (if you haven't logged in you will see this). in 2020 ad revenue averaged less than 1k/mo off of well over 10M pageviews through the whole year. We currently see around 80k monthly active users (includes lurkers who don't sign up) and around 10k unique users per day. 

I want to work on maximizing that, but also creating a different experience for some of our new members that don't contribute much content or subscription revenue to the site with an ad-light experience. You'll see 1 sticky banner and 1 ad at the top and bottom of threads until you become a full member (100 posts and 20 rep). We want to not just have people come visit the site, but we want actively engaged users to contribute to the community that we have already built an incredible foundation for, but want to keep growing. 

In addition to adding this "middle tier" of revenue recovery, we will be fully monetizing non-user traffic, and potentially look into sponsorships that will not be in the form of ads, but things like sponsoring the football board or the recruiting board. Some of you may remember some of the threads and dedicated ads we did on the last site, this will be more like what is on some boards similar in size to ours. Like Pluckers sponsoring the football board and getting a logo next to the football forum type stuff. We want to make sure that if we do receive support and sponsorship that as a community we give back to those sponsors so it needs to make sense for something we actually like instead of something we hate.

With all this, I still feel like our subscription tier is undervalued, I know that we have 300 generous contributors, but I feel like unlimited rep, a badge and being able to upload more pictures than other people isn't exactly value packed. What can we do (locking boards/content behind subscriptions doesn't feel right to me, and honestly seems antithetical to the spirit of our community) to add more value to the subscription. What would entice some of the non-subscribers to subscribe? 

 

 

[Lurch 5,922]

I wouldn’t be surprised if just ASKING drove significant conversion of non-subs to subscribers. Have you tried doing what Wiki does? Perhaps a header one sees when they try to post. I’d also make sure the process to buy a sub is as painless as possible. I recall it was a bit difficult when we first did it and you may have willing subscribers giving up if it’s not super easy (ala a PayPal button)

[immamac 42,832]

We do it once a year it seems. We could probably do it once a month though and it would be better. 

[Handcruser 2,805]

We do it once a year it seems. We could probably do it once a month though and it would be better. 

So here are some thoughts off the top of my head. I will preface my thoughts with this: architecting a more business like operation probably has some merit here. Adding an ad sales group, a press group, a content group, etc. is going to generate some strategy and results while off-loading that work from you.
I don’t mean to imply we need to be Dell, but you and Bob can’t do everything. I’m talking about 2-3 people working to develop and implement a plan to land 5-6 annual sponsors and 10-12 event sponsors etc.

Some may have been done/considered already:

Implement what lurch suggested
Lift the 100 posts/20 rep to 100/50 or 150/75
Figure out a way to get press passes
Ad sales
Press group
Content group
Visual Media Group
Subscription group
Paying members get access to SH content day 1, lurkers day 2
Pimp out the surly gear available / create a better and easier buying exp w/ more gear
Interviews: MM, Sark, Shipleys, VY, CDC, POM, etc (content and VM working together here)
Content: during football season having an intern dev stats that would be used by media / teams nationwide and sourced back to us.

Just some thoughts as I wake up.

More better/different content = + users
+users = more subscribers
+users and more subscribers = better sponsor opps.

Also increases channel opps - better and different content let’s us maximize other channels to drive traffic back to mothership

[immamac 42,832]

36 minutes ago, Handcruser said:

 

So here are some thoughts off the top of my head. I will preface my thoughts with this: architecting a more business like operation probably has some merit here. Adding an ad sales group, a press group, a content group, etc. is going to generate some strategy and results while off-loading that work from you.
I don’t mean to imply we need to be Dell, but you and Bob can’t do everything. I’m talking about 2-3 people working to develop and implement a plan to land 5-6 annual sponsors and 10-12 event sponsors etc.

Some may have been done/considered already:

Implement what lurch suggested
Lift the 100 posts/20 rep to 100/50 or 150/75
Figure out a way to get press passes
Ad sales
Press group
Content group
Visual Media Group
Subscription group
Paying members get access to SH content day 1, lurkers day 2
Pimp out the surly gear available / create a better and easier buying exp w/ more gear
Interviews: MM, Sark, Shipleys, VY, CDC, POM, etc (content and VM working together here)
Content: during football season having an intern dev stats that would be used by media / teams nationwide and sourced back to us.

Just some thoughts as I wake up.

More better/different content = + users
+users = more subscribers
+users and more subscribers = better sponsor opps.

Also increases channel opps - better and different content let’s us maximize other channels to drive traffic back to mothership

 

The bolded 2 will never happen, we will never have people pay for scoop or access. 

 

Right now only ~30% of overall traffic is even monetized and the average CPM for it was ~.55-.65 mainly depressed due to covid, but also programmatic is basically trash right now everywhere. This has tripled (or more) with the direct ad deals I did with Hulu, Beats, UA/Dicks and a few others through our new publisher representation.

Adding in the "lurkers that have accounts" with light monetization would monetize 80% of traffic.

Fully monetizing cloak room traffic would double revenue immediately.  - there is a huge technical hurdle to getting this done, it's something I just don't have time to do and I can't find anyone to pay to do it, I've looked and tried. 

Plans for 2021 that have already been stated on the board:
1) hire a content person - have tried to hire this out for 48k/yr and there were no takers, thinking I need 60k/yr or higher to actually get someone

• If I'm gonna spend this kind of money on someone they need to be full time, year round and this needs to be their job (they can have others idgaf). The only people interested in jobs that pay this are....IDK I haven't met anyone who was willing to take it otherwise we'd already have it.
• If I can't find someone at 60k and need to go in the 100k+ range - this person is going to need to be a lot fucking more than a content person, they would need to be able to run operations and have technical chops. If I need to go into the 150k+ range then that would need to be not just this site, but buying a few other sites and having them admin all of them.

2) hire a photographer (at least part time for Surly owned IP from games etc) - I am assuming this will be a 25-30k investment for the year and needs to break even
3) Get a press pass for the above people (and whoever else on staff) to use. - Working on this, but can't cart before the horse.
4) Gear/swag store is on the way and already complete from the technical implementation, just need shirts/hats/mousepads designed. Have sourced a partner to print/ship.

I've already accomplished the technical groundwork for the content and photograph people, that has it's own thread. What I want from a content person isn't just about writing what they think about things (they will probably be wrong, and just end up being like our own 9.95er who will get abused). I want them to summarize threads like the Urban Meyer or Bust and Sark after dark coaching search threads daily, pulling out the greatest hits and curating the content for a much wider audience consumption. Lots and lots of users these days don't want to join a message board, they just want to slurp content through their straws. There is approximately 10x the user market we can penetrate with some of these summarized content offerings. 

I can't even find someone to run the twitter or theme the website on fiverr,thumbtack,toptal whatever. Either they don't think it's sexy enough or they are just too fucking bad/entry level and don't understand that the site already has 1M+ pageviews a week and it's not some fucking idiot running a wordpress site that can be cohosted with 400 others on a small server.

[TKthunder2 4,985]

On 1/8/2021 at 11:11 AM, immamac said:

With all this, I still feel like our subscription tier is undervalued, I know that we have 300 generous contributors, but I feel like unlimited rep, a badge and being able to upload more pictures than other people isn't exactly value packed. What can we do (locking boards/content behind subscriptions doesn't feel right to me, and honestly seems antithetical to the spirit of our community) to add more value to the subscription. What would entice some of the non-subscribers to subscribe? 

I know you say you don’t want to lock boards, but honestly there is benefit to having a more private place to post with others that are invested enough in this place to subscribe.

I don’t particularly care for the 1%/can’t sit with us board because I see no benefit to cutting people that can view posts out of the conversation, and I think that’s why those boards don’t have a lot of traction.

The former tree dwelling rodent board on TOS was more of a club and had some pretty good threads that didn’t take away from the rest of the board like the shit on blast thread or some personal ones where people felt comfortable enough due to its limited privacy to post about their divorce and/or their wife/gf’s tits.  I think it’s an easy way to increase the value of a subscription without taking away from the rest of the site.

[SDG 3,319]

I wouldn't look for someone to write articles as no-one here is really interested in that.  Just look at the responses when someone writes 1k plus word post.  I'd go the short video/podcast route and let people comment on the topic at hand.  Maybe find one of the smaller Texas YouTube creators and team up?  

[Brisketexan 105,043]

Have you given any thought into creating a whole board where you pretend to be a person with high level govt clearance, and you reveal some sort of insanely complex conspiracy involving pretty much every high profile person in the world, but you have inside info on how it is all going to be ended by a game show host? Oh, and you do it all through a bunch of cryptic and ambiguous symbolism and numerology.

I think that could go far.

But I’m just spitballing here.

[G650 14,229]

On 1/8/2021 at 12:11 PM, immamac said:

With all this, I still feel like our subscription tier is undervalued, I know that we have 300 generous contributors, but I feel like unlimited rep, a badge and being able to upload more pictures than other people isn't exactly value packed. What can we do (locking boards/content behind subscriptions doesn't feel right to me, and honestly seems antithetical to the spirit of our community) to add more value to the subscription. What would entice some of the non-subscribers to subscribe? 

I really am trying to think on this, but as I already contribute obviously I find the value already. Hard to come up with other things.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13,507]

On 11/7/2018 at 1:08 PM, Sbbruin said:

Every time I get a notice of a payment by payapl to RV CXO Consulting LLC, I am certain I hav ebeen hacked.  Sounds sketchy.  Then I remember it's Bob's offshore porn and surly shell corp.

Ha. I was just looking at my Paypal dashboard and saw that I had a future payment set up for RV CXO. No idea what it was so I cancelled it.  Then when I googled that name, I was pointed to Surly and this note.  Not the best payment strategy to cryptically name Surly on autopayments.

[immamac 42,832]

Just now, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Ha. I was just looking at my Paypal dashboard and saw that I had a future payment set up for RV CXO. No idea what it was so I cancelled it.  Then when I googled that name, I was pointed to Surly and this note.  Not the best payment strategy to cryptically name Surly on autopayments.

Paypal should have changed the name to SURLYHORNS can you send me a screenshot in DM?

[UnivTex34 1,763]

2 minutes ago, immamac said:

Paypal should have changed the name to SURLYHORNS can you send me a screenshot in DM?

Cropped, but here is what I see:

 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13,507]

3 minutes ago, immamac said:

Paypal should have changed the name to SURLYHORNS can you send me a screenshot in DM?

It's gone from my billing page now. I can still see that last year's receipt says RV CXO.

I'm sensitive to unknown items in Paypal. I get unsolicited bills on Paypal every month so I'm cautious about what is on there. good to see that it will say Surly when I re-up next time.

Edited February 17, 2023 by Nice Guy Eddie

[immamac 42,832]

7 minutes ago, UnivTex34 said:

Cropped, but here is what I see:

 

do you pay with raw paypal or a card through paypal. 

[UnivTex34 1,763]

10 minutes ago, immamac said:

do you pay with raw paypal or a card through paypal. 

It's a card through PayPal. 

[RGBIII 22,837]

26 minutes ago, immamac said:

Paypal should have changed the name to SURLYHORNS can you send me a screenshot in DM?

Mine shows the same. Also can you make Burnt ends the default instead of it switching with treefiddy. I am tired of people thinking I am poor

[nineliveslost 2,753]

Evidently I am slow. It shows my subscription is expired but it also shows I have an active subscription. Did I give Surly my $42 or if not, how do I give Surly my $42 again? I don't want to change my subscription, just want to renew it. Under my username it says I am "full members" but I have never noticed those before and no clue what it means. YES I AM OLD 

Edited December 10, 2023 by nineliveslost
more detail of confusion