It's not terribly expensive to provide a place for people to share links and conversation on the internet. However, if you provide the service for free, you don't have a sustainable business model.
Social aggregators with few people tend to draw few people. Therefore, asking for people to pay for the service upfront is a sure way to keep your community small (i.e. Metafilter and Something Awful).
Popular aggregators are usually subsidized in one form or another. HackerNews is subsidized by Y-Combinator, and Reddit was subsidized by Y-Combinator, then Conde Nast, and now 50M of VC funding. Less popular and newer aggregators like Hubski are usually subsidized by sweat equity.
If you run a social aggregator as a business venture where the plan is to become very profitable, then at some point you are going to have to change the deal that you initially made with your community. This is primarily due to the following reasons:
1. If you charge users up front to use your service, all things being equal, they are more likely to use one that is free, especially if an up-and-coming one offers something new and compelling.
2. If you charge your users by selling their information and views to advertisers, then your service is beholden to those parties that buy the information and views, and this results in motivations that take priority to the user experience.
For these reasons, starting with VC funding is a poison pill for social aggregators, as the profit pressure runs contrary to the conditions and patience necessary for community building and early growth.
The Hubski team has been talking about revenue for some time now. Hubski does not cost much to run, however we do put in plenty of sweat equity. At our last meeting, I asked the team whether or not Hubski was a business. After some discussion, we realized the question actually is: Are we planning on running Hubski for profit, and if so, how much?
Currently, Hubski is legally a Limited Liability Corporation. I suspect that it is useful for Hubski to exist in a legal sense, however, I am not sure that a LLC is the best definition.
We all would be willing to work on Hubski full time and to draw large salaries from revenue generated by the site. That being said, Hubski does not exist to be a business. Hubski exists to fill a space in this world. We feel that Hubski is worthwhile.
We are going to introduce a means to generate revenue from our users soon. Most likely, this is going to be a simple donation mechanism. We may also be changing the legal structure of Hubski to better reflect our vision for it.
We would love to hear your thoughts on these matters, as they will influence our decision making (as they always do).
/decloaks
Hubski is a de-facto cooperative. The content of Hubski is of, for and by its users such that the commentary and discussion of any external link is usually of greater value than the external link itself. Therefore, the content producers, the artisans, the attraction of Hubski is its community, not its leadership. Leadership, then, can be seen as the officers of a mutual benefit organization rather than as vendors serving customers.
Cooperatives do not function by donations, at least not in the traditional sense. Donations are best deployed in unidirectional situations where no reciprocation is expected or implied - earthquake relief, food drives, etc. For more bidirectional situations, such as church tithing, public broadcasting support, benefaction of the arts, etc, the organization generally reciprocates any donations with an in-kind gift to foster ownership and affinity - logo swag, limited edition merchandise and the like.
Hubski is substantially more interactive than the average NPR station and far more dependent on its users for its offerings than any church. That you're posing the question this way underlines your recognition of this. I believe a donation system will not benefit Hubski in the long run for the simple reason that donation allows one to "wash their hands" of their commitment to the problem when the continued maintenance and success of Hubski is the responsibility of all those who use it. Team Hubski has shown itself to be exquisitely sensitive to the desires of its userbase and offering a token "shut up and take my money" approach is likely to focus attention unduly on money. On the user side, things become "you have my money, do what I want." On the owner side, things become "we don't have enough money to do what they want, we need to panhandle."
If I were Hubski I would investigate cooperative charters. Shareholders are generally permitted votes and steering on a per-share basis, as well as the election of officers. These offices may or may not have the power to govern fundamental business decisions; often they function more as ombudsmen within the community. Fees for membership are determined via open calculation of operating expenses and necessary budget and any dividend at the end of the fiscal year is either divided amongst shareholders or paid forward into the next year's operating expenses. Shareholders often enjoy special privileges such as discounts on goods and services, preferential tech support, etc.
I would also investigate restructuring as a B-Corp or similar. Although largely symbolic, BCorps do provide a useful halo effect as well as encoding "don't be evil" into the DNA of the entity. There may also be tax advantages and municipal incentives depending on the site of incorporation.
/recloaks
I lit up at the mention of cooperative charters. Not because I know what they are, but because I have next to no idea.
I have the time and desire to get involved with something radical and experimental in the dimension of online community. I want to do something weird, in the Austin, Texas sense of the word. But that is just me. I would get involved for reasons of personal growth. I understand that this may be a livelihood-of-the-organization conversation, in which case the issue is that sweat equity isn't unlimited, not what is it that I think is neat. But if this post is a survey of how users would like to see the site grow, count me in the crowd of those who want a community ownership driven site.
I like you and your mindset.
"I don't know a lot about this, thus I must learn about this! How do I learn about it? By doing it! But what if its radical and weird? All the better! I've got nothing but time and motivation!"
I agree with everything you said. I want to get involved with something revolutionary and forward thinking... it just feels so hard with the current state of things in the world. We have this amazing tool in the internet, yet we haven't realized its full potential yet. And every time we seem to be getting close to realizing that potential, financial problems or greed seems to drag us all back to reality.
Having a completely untainted community sounds amazing; and community ownership seems like the way to do it.
Count me in as well!
I also think I want this but I don't know what it is. Count me in unless it's a terrible idea!
edit: upon research my only concern about this plan is to have a strategy for getting out of the coop if necessary.
Thank you for resurfacing for this.
I belong to a food coop, but I know almost nothing about coops in general. As such, I can't really give an opinion on it, but I can say that I am open to something as radical. I will look into cooperatives and BCorps.
If need be, I am open to creating a structure that doesn't yet exist, maybe a hybrid of something that does exist with a unique ownership/governing structure.
What we have here isn't optimally served by the most common model.
Okay so a lot of this is over my head and things that I don't fully understand or have experience with, but I'm glad you're still at least reading some of the things posted on Hubski. Hope all is well kb.
This is the idea I'm most comfortable with. I have no issue with a modest subscription fee or the like to keep the site independent and focused on its original goals. I really like the philosophy of this place, but whether it can maintain it through growth is an important test. This seems to me like the most sensible approach, and will encourage members with a stake in the community and values.
Everyone should probably "get" this but I'll enumerate.
Social aggregators become, whether you want it to be or not, an advertising platform.
Now, I'm not saying, you will have some flash ads or have paid content or anything. What I mean is, when your user base gets to a size where it has some ability to drive traffic to another site, and make them advertising revenue, then sites will come to hubski and make posts to drive traffic to their site. This happened to digg, and reddit, but not so much to slashdot in the early days, because the curator model of slashdot meant they tried to be a bit fair about how many times they linked to any given site.
So anyway, you're driving page views on someone else's site, they're getting advertising revenue, it's costing you to handle all those page views and clicks and comments, and you get nothing, they get all the benefit.
So that sucks. Yeah, I don't have a solution either. What can you do? I mean, you need to allow links off site otherwise whats the point.
I read Kelinbl00's post about corporate structure. What did you guys decide? Did you look at becoming a BCorp? I like your intentions, both mk and thenewgreen, you both appear to want to build a lasting community that values quality over quantity, but if you cultivate the quality, quantity WILL come. Quality attracts quantity. :-)
Ultimately, I don't think Reddit or Digg or whatever failed just because of their size, I think they failed to lack of transparency. When you get to a certain size, you start to think that you must have some insight on the best way to run things, so you go off and have a "deep think" about how you're gonna handle a situation, make a decision, and then you might as well have just flipped a damn coin because half the time the community is going to think that decision is wrong.
Transparency of and participation in the decision making processes, will obviously make things longer to decide, but I think you'll be better for it in the long run. Being a BCorp and codifying that process into the charter of the organisation might be worth doing.
BTW, for a site that would replace my daily fix of news and opinions, I'd happily pay a few dollars a month. I'm not a huge fan of micropayments of indivudual features etc, but you know, it would be very easy to calculate to within a reasonable margin of error, how much compute a given user "consumes". Just having a dollar figure on the profile page saying "In the past 30 days, you used $1.50 of hubski's resources wasting time on this site" might guilt me into sending you some money every month to cover the costs. "Links you have posted used $5.60 worth of resources" ... you could keep track of the stats and figure out which users are driving the most traffic and if they're driving them off site to their own blog, then send them a bill. Hahah, just kidding...
Add some certain percentage to cover administrative costs, etc. I mean, I think if the site got big enough and the discussions were getting to the point where they were insightful as shit, and you guys wanted to make it a full time gig, then it's not unreasonable to add enough "administrative overhead" to support that.
Meh I dunno. It's a DARPA hard problem. Otherwise someone else would have nailed it by now. But it doesn't mean it's not worth solving.
Well said. This site would not exist without us, and it won't exist without you. That's the key truth here.
Of course, anyone can say that, and even someone that views the userbase as cows for milking would say it. They would need to. Hell, it's easy enough for someone to fool themselves into thinking that they believe it.
For better or for worse, I'm deeply interested in Hubski in a philosophical sense. What that means for me, is that its potential is what keeps me pouring myself into it. Here we are, people all over the world, and we can say, "Let's discuss this". I have access to perspectives that all of human history lived without. What does that mean for me as a person? What does that mean for all of us? steve might remember our first online chat experience on the BBS Woody's Nest. It made a deep impression on me.
The internet is great for light fare. It's an unbelievable entertainment device. But that isn't what I want Hubski to be fine tuned for.
One easy thing about Hubski, is that we know why it exists. We know why we are doing it. The 'how' isn't so clear, but like you said, it's worth solving. And you are right about transparency. Stumbles are easily forgiven when it is clear why they happened.
- What does that mean for all of us? steve might remember our first online chat experience on the BBS Woody's Nest.
I don't think I've slept that little since then. It was crazy times. I remember my parents asking me what I was doing up so late. I remember how hard it was to describe... even now I'm not sure I could describe it well. And as cool as it was - I could tell that it wasn't the end, or the "right" solution, but it was the start of something massive.
Insightful point about how big sites are advertising whether the site is doing it or not - I hadn't thought of it that way. Makes me a little more forgiving of the existence of ads.
I wonder what percentage of users browse anonymously? I know the whole idea of Hubski is to personalize your experience, but Reddit focused a bit on that as well, and I know quite a few people who browse all the time on the default subs or specific subs without making accounts. That would make it even harder to track site costs on an individual level.
I post a link, an anonymous person browses the site and clicks the link, or reads the discussion, it's a "cost" I "incurred" ... :-)
I dunno, my first multi user system was a mainframe, I kind of like that traditional approach where every cpu cycle is counted and accounted for.
Hmm. It is a pretty elegant idea to have everything divvied up like that. What would you do in the case of someone who just heard about it from a RL friend, googled 'Hubski' and clicked the link?
Good points. Sending a bill to sites that profit from the discussion happening here could work. I mean it wouldn't be a binding debt they'd have to pay, but they might send something if they want the continued ad revenue they are getting from us. You could send them a message saying something like this
- Hey we noticed that our community has been giving you a lot of ad views recently. Our cost in doing so was $X.xx. Any help you can provide so that we can continue would be greatly appreciated.
You could also put up some plain text ads that are not intrusive. Or even allow advertisers to make posts, as long as they are always clearly marked as ad posts.
And if those methods don't pay enough then I'd would think doing what wikipedia does would be the best option. Become a non-profit and run a donation drive every year.
First off, I'm very grateful that the Hubski team is willing to cover the costs so far. I've seen a couple of great sites / projects evaporate because of financial issues. Thanks everyone.
My opinion is that having a donation button would be nice and I think there are enough users who'd want to donate (myself included). I don't think it's a good long-term option, though. Donations are sporadic and it's not something that alleviates the financial worry / stress. Merch is in the same category - it's nice to have, but not something stable to build a site on. That's why I think a monthly donation option would be better, name-your-price style.
Just don't make it visible publically, or only make it visible to the user who's donating as a reminder. It shouldn't be a badge of honor. The only reason people should support the site is because they want to support the site.
I thought that Patreon was paying per creation, something that doesn't make sense for supporting a site. But after checking their site, it turns out that they have a monthly support option. mk, what do you think about setting up a Patreon page for hubski? Without perks, that is.
While I still like kleinbl00's suggestion of a bounty on features, I think there are more than enough people who either a) don't really have feature requests or b) just want to support hubski any way they can. And it's far easier to set up.
I've just come running from the fires over at reddit and I have to say this transparency is very refreshing. Thank you for actually consulting your community in these decisions, and thank you for creating website to fulfill a passion and not to fill your wallet.
I've said this before, and I'll say it again. I would be willing to donate on a monthly basis like I do for NPR. And I don't need to get anything for it. Seriously. I want my badges and my followers to come from the content I provide, and links that I share. I imagine that if the "active users" donated $1 per month, you'd have more than enough to pay for servers and some more stickers and stuff. I know that model will never pay the team a salary - but it would ease/remove some of your OPEX.
I like hubski a lot. I come here for FREE? it's crazy and almost unthinkable. I would gladly pay for what I feel like is a service. And some day when I no longer find it useful, I would stop paying and stop logging in... but I don't see that any time soon.
As a side note - for the love of all that is decent and holy, please don't use paypal. I love me some Elon Musk - but I seriously hate me some paypal fees. There must be a better way.
I really like the NPR analogy. They manage to support themselves (in some places) entirely on donations and provide extremely high quality programming without denying any kind of "premium content" to non-paying listeners (no, WVYA, two CDs of classical music isn't "premium content," I'm donating because I like your station, but thanks.)
What if the aggregator is the generator itself?
Many businesses have different divisions, why don't the non-profit aggregators have divisions that make money to support the overall organization? Why not a funding site where a percentage is taken from successful fundings? A streaming service. A booking service. A hosting service. Distributed computing. In browser activity.
Social aggregation might be an inescapable loss-leader.
That's a good idea! There could even be separate subscriptions for separate topics.
What about a physical aggregator? You have a digital space where people can share ideas and interests, maybe a physical space would be just as interesting.
This is a really good point! I've got some network hardware, and other computer gear, which I'm too busy to actively use, and I'd like to share, but still kinda want to reserve for myself. I've thought, periodically, about how a community rental system could work to facilitate that. Low monthly fee, rentals are free, charge fees for overdue stuff. I'm not sure if it would end up being more like a library or a hackerspace.
>Distributed computing.
hang on a second, that's it! require that users run BOINC as a part of your distributed computing system for access (perhaps by requiring 10 "credits" per month, first month free, with credits earned through computing power) and sell the computing power for money. if you include a javascript-based BOINC client anyone can do it. it also doesn't directly cost people money.
There's a third option you didn't mention. Offer the core of the website for free, and charge for premium extras. I think this model can work well, but it has to be implemented properly. The site must be fully usable and enjoyable for free. Additionally, charging for anything that users already get for free is a sure way to piss people off.
One example is offering premium users early access to new features. After some time, the rest of the community gets the feature. This ensures that free users don't feel cheated, since they're still getting everything premium users are. In general, you want users to feel like they're getting more for paying, not less for not paying.
Ah, the freemium model. Many sites tried it, among them Reddit. It seems to be very hard to finance a social aggregation website that way - it not impossible to earn some money that way, like Reddit does with it's 'gold' buying / giving, but it does not bring in enough money to subsidize an entire server farm.
Content is key. If reddit had a zynga, where would they be now?
- n general, you want users to feel like they're getting more for paying, not less for not paying.
This week's events has led me to believe there's only one way to successfully run a community site: it must be owned by its users.
As you already know, it's not easy to "monetize", especially without making the users mad. Reddit tried, with moderate success - the ads are unintrusive, and gold is OK, but this is still not enough. The community itself would be better off without these things. In addition, users of a community site will start to feel like it belongs to them, they are creating all the content, after all - so in a way it already is theirs.
I don't have an answer for exactly how this would work out, but it would most likely look like a cooperative, as kleinbl00 writes. The more I think about it, the more I'm sure it's the future.
I realize it would be difficult for you to give up something you own, and it could fail completely, but if it worked, then Hubski would grow to be something a lot larger and more important than it is now. It would take on a life on its own.
We must seize the Memes of Production! Rise up and unite against the bourgeoise scum!
But really, I'm not sure what an internet forum being owned by its users would entail. If the site isn't a for-profit startup that the admins want to cash in at some point, then wouldn't a run-of-the-mill combination of ads, donation drives, and "freemium" perks be sufficient to keep the servers running in perpetuity, and perhaps help the admins make a living as a bonus?
Run it as a business owned by a few people will probably work for a while - but what happens if the owners change their minds? Or get bored? Or hit by a bus?
Imagine a community site owned by it's users, run in the cloud. It could continue to exist as long as it had users, and grow beyond its original founders - become something far greater.
I've seen this happen with small communities. The Clock Crew, particularly, has had a number of sites for the same community since 2001. At this point it's pretty much just a bunch of old regulars hanging out on the last site that was left up and a couple of chat rooms, but when things were moving along you might even have two or more significantly active sites at a time. Sometimes you've got to change sites and the guy who owns the old domain disappeared for a few years so you register under something else. There was a while, though, where we had one site on one server and it changed hands several times.
We never really had a system for it, though. A site would go down or people would get banned or get sick of the current staff and branch off or whatever. Eventually we got democracy and things honestly kind of stagnated, but that was a bit of a different situation and I think it'd work better for something like Hubski.
Whether that's what the Hubski admins want to do with this or not is a different question.
Awesome! That's good to hear!
I'd definitely make sure to set some controls in your charter that limit the changes able to be made by future admins down the road. You don't want some future iteration of your staff to up and decide to take over and monetize or give some advertisers special treatment in exchange for some money on the side.
What you've already done with sharing and filtering basically puts users into a system where they're encouraged to act in a certain way. If you can find a way to extend something like that to future administrators, you could have your hands on something that it's really hard to corrupt.
I guess the first thing you've got to do in that case is ask yourself what admins are capable of or might be capable of in the future and what they should be capable of to keep the site healthy, the users content, and the ball rolling. Then you've got to cement that philosophy into place in your charter and make it either impossible or incredibly difficult to change.
Is it possible to make a charter for a non-profit that's legally binding? Barring that, maybe some oversight can be put into place that has the authority to remove admins who disregard the charter? Say you get tired of administrating hubski a few years from now and pass the torch on to someone else. Well, instead of actually completely passing the torch you can give over the every-day functioning of the site and what not but retain control passively simply in case of an emergency situation where the charter has been ignored and you need to change things back to normal.
This situation, of course, assumes that you won't sell the site a few years down the road for a huge sum of money. I'm not really sure of a contingency for that.
A legally binding charter, if that's even possible, would be the ideal solution I'd think.
Interesting thoughts. I would think with a talented lawyer, we could create something in the form of what we are looking for.
Currently, our goal is to meet these technical scaling challenges. Also, we still have a long way to go before Hubski is what we envision it to be. One of the drawbacks of this kind of governance will be that although likely be good for stability, it will not very effective at executing vision that deviates much from the status quo. Speaking for myself, I am no where near burn out, and I plan to carry this ball quite a bit further.
Well, you can always set up the governance in a way that separates the meat of continuing to add to the site in order to advance what it should become and dealing with users and policy. In any event, this is long-term. Obviously with your vision for the site you want to run with that and do everything you can. I can tell from the way you've set things up that you want to make something that's got some real integrity and I don't see you deviating from that path, I'm more talking about way down the road. The one thing you might want to do to protect your project from yourself is make something that protects it from being sold to some huge company that doesn't care about your ideals, unless you can somehow legally hold them to the charter.
But we've had situations before where we had coders and what not who had very little to do with the every-day running of the site in terms of user related stuff. It was really best when they were kept above the internal politics of the staff and of the site at large. Again, though, this is basically several 'generations' of staff members after the first site, we're talking years later. The members of the original staff that we did still have on board were exactly those guys I described. They'd sit back, work on their project, let the young guns handle the users and argue about policy with one another, and work on cool additions to the site or occasionally swoop in to set things right when the staff is a shit show. We actually had a guy who was still around in that later capacity years after he stopped coding stuff for the site. It's not a bad contingency.
Of course this is all from a site that had about 1000 active users at its peak. If Hubski ends up scaling up to something much larger than that, it's a pretty different ballpark. I would think the same principles should still apply to the staff though.
But yeah, that's all a long way off. The best way to have things is to keep the founders in there, active, and giving a shit as long as humanly possible. You're going to have a better idea of your vision for the site than someone who just wanders in thinking "oh, cool, huge internet community" after things take off. Even then, you should watch out for admins who don't understand your vision of the site. You don't want to allow them to undermine it. Even when you're around I'd imagine you'll eventually need some help if the site gets huge.
Although honestly, I've never seen a site with this sort of design before. The worst a new admin could do is, what, overzealously delete posts? That'd be pretty easy to review if it's at least just a soft delete. Are you guys having to delete a lot of spam as it is or do you mostly just let the filtering handle it?
Obviously, I think there is truth in what you are saying. Personally, I have a hunch that cryptocurrency (that is, programmatic money) will enable solutions that do not currently exist. Fortunately we have some time to figure it out. I'm not set on any outcome, but I also don't want to sacrifice what is for what might be. We will find a good place, and move there.
- I also don't want to sacrifice what is for what might be
Yes, that is of course a big risk - how do you ensure that the site doesn't go down the train once handed over to the community? To be honest; I don't know. Perhaps there should be some kind of trusted inner circle.
I'm a member of a co-op. The co-op is one of the largest owners of convenience stores in the country I live in, I pay membership, and I get discounts on groceries and such. Even though the co-op is owned by normal people, it is run by people who actually know what they're doing. In this case they get paid by proceeds from the convenience stores, of course, something a community site won't necessarily have. But perhaps a co-op would be along the lines of something that could work - so although it would be owned by the community, it wouldn't be run into the ground by them - they would only have influence through elected representatives.
I am also a member of a co-op. I think it's a very compelling scenario for a site like this. Of course, it is messy as can be, but how easy is it for a site to become captured by outside interests when the folks that made the deals can be replaced in the next elections?
- [...] how easy is it for a site to become captured by outside interests when the folks that made the deals can be replaced in the next elections?
Since they are elected by the community, it should hopefully not be a problem, since they represent the wishes of the community. Some sort of safeguards need to be in place, perhaps.
I recommend checking this out, Reddit was on its way to become decentralized, but it was stopped by a new round of funding and Yishan leaving:
I would pay hubski a monthly fee to negotiate all the online news paywalls for us as an audience.
Hubski could try to work with NY Times/WAPO/NOLA/Denver Post/LA Times/Cleveland/Austin/DallasMornNews/Chicago newspapers to offer a "well demographied"* audience... and let us view their content through hubski.
They charge you some. You charge us some plus a fee. We get to have access to their websites to talk about them here. Which is free marketing for the papers.
HOW ABOUT THEM APPLES?
I think it's an interesting idea, but they won't be interested in a site this size. thenewgreen and I had some casual chats with media companies a couple of years ago. It was pretty clear that big numbers are what they are interested in.
Big numbers aside I wouldn't necessarily need there to be a discount on the newspaper/publication subscriptions that hubski would negotiate for me.
I need a tool to deal with the login/pwd, email connect, spam, user preferences, and privacy and change pwd after six months etc etc bologna that comes with trying to pay and consume current event these days.
An "a la carte" menu that let me choose which newspaper/publication I would be willing to pay full price for ... and I would pay hubski a small fee to negotiate the identity of the reader/user on that newspaper's website. Any additions or subtractions would require a fee paid to a patreon-like account somewhere to hubski (edit: clarification).
I could then pay hubski again if I wanted to assume the full roll identity of the user hubski created for me.
Just a thought.
* Verbogeny is one of the pleasurettes of a creatific thinkerizer.
- Most likely, this is going to be a simple donation mechanism.
Do you have any more information on this? Where on the site would it be located, how "simple" is it, will there be any recognition for people who donate (I'm hoping the answer to this is no), will there be anything else associated with it (for example, why people should donate)?
We don't have any set in stone answers to your questions. You can rest assured that we are approaching this first and foremost as users of Hubski ourselves. We need your help on this one, hence the post. Therefore, let me pose these questions to you :
1. Where on the site do you think it should be?
2. How simple should it be? Should it be a monthly donation? A one time lump donation? An option for either or?
3. What if there was a small identifier in someone's profile showing they had donated? Is that something people would like? Not like? Should we have an option to have that on or off?
4. Should there be an incentive to donate? Stickers? At a certain level a T-shirt? Should there be advanced functions that currently don't exist?
I'd love to hear from you guys regarding your own questions and more.
Also, I think the Hubski post from today ties in nicely.
Hubski will NEVER treat you or your data like a product. The other night on our call mk referred to Hubski as an "art project" -we all agreed, this is how we as a team think of Hubski.
1. I would put it somewhere on the bottom of the page along with all the other parts of the site, as BrainBurner has already suggested. That's not very invasive, without hiding it entirely.
2. If it was done where there's an option to a lump sum and/or a monthly donation then that would be great, I don't know exactly how that works though. Basing it off of NPRs donation system would be good, as steve already said. My thoughts are very similar to BB's and steve's thoughts on this whole donation thing.
3. I think the only recognition somebody should get should be a thank you email to whatever email is connected to their account. I don't like the idea of donating money to be associated with getting "extras" or anything like that.
4. I'm fine with most things that aren't additional site functions. If somebody donates enough that a t-shirt or other item is warranted then good for them, but I'm really not a fan of having site features that aren't available to everybody.
How about a PayPal button with the other links (faq, tmi, etc) at the bottom of the page? I think tying in a page or window with a suggested (and justified) donation amount would be helpful. I know I would personally be more likely to donate if it was a simple button and there was a suggested amount with some reasoning behind it. If this amount is on the larger side it may help to split it into more modest monthly donations for those who would prefer that option. As for incentives, I personally wouldn't care for any, but it may help sweeten the deal for some folks.
Not paypal. They'll fuck you over as soon as you start generating revenue. Generate enough money and they'll claim you're "not a non-profit," disable your account, and take the money without a way to appeal the decision. They've done it before.
As thenewgreen said, this is all part of our ongoing discussion.
Personally speaking, I would like to have no recognition, and nothing else associated with it. That's because I can see some non-donating users contributing to the site more than donating users, and although the non-donating also can get recognition via badges, shares, etc., it is earned on an even playing field that everyone has access to. Money is a good proxy for money.
I'd like best if people donated (or didn't) based on their own reasons and means.
I realize that this might be too idealistic, but that is my personal preference.
What about an indicator that is only visible to you? I like the idea brought up already, about showing how much you've cost the site, and how much you've paid for it. It might be interesting to show some stats like BitTorrent seeding next to your name, probably your "balance" and your ratio. But maybe only turn those on after the first time you donate, and definitely only visible to you.
Oh, and the alt text could say "Thank you for donating!", and possibly provide extra stats.
It's good to see this conversation happening right out the gate. One of the issues over at reddit is the disconnect between how many of the users interpret the site and how the owners do. Social aggregators are businesses, not benevolent platforms for conversation. Reddit is 10 years old, and I would be shocked if it has turned a dime of profit, as its expenses likely far exceed its revenues. That means investors have only ever realized returns through M&A, and a company can only be sold and acquired so many times before the money loses faith. Just look at the crumbling valuation of Digg over the past 5 years.
Maybe social aggregators should focus on driving revenues directly, then. Maybe they ought to be loss-leaders in larger media asset portfolios. They create value somewhere, but it's mostly through shooting pageviews over to other sites - sites backed by different shareholders. So perhaps sites like reddit and hubski are destined to be parts of larger media portfolios that provide a bump to the other assets without focusing on cumbersome direct revenue features. Of course, the risk there is that the portfolio owner will likely be tempted to promote the content of affiliated media assets - a move that would surely erode the confidence of the community.
- Maybe they ought to be loss-leaders in larger media asset portfolios.
We have discussed some very specific ideas how they might be.
- Of course, the risk there is that the portfolio owner will likely be tempted to promote the content of affiliated media assets - a move that would surely erode the confidence of the community.
Yes, it might be structurally resistant to that kind of corruption, but in then end, if the value isn't clear, somewhere along the line, it will be tried.
aggregator offer something unique: A filter to worldwide news/entertainment/opinions
The more user the better the filter. Better in the sense that most of the population will consider said topic/news/etc important/entertaining. The more user means also, the more hidden News/URL someone may put in front of the most people. More users means also more people to share opinion, advice, etc. That's how Reddit became the juggernaut.
Hubski SEEMS to be build with another paradigm: a few people having a more informed/interesting/worthwhile opinion than most of us. It sound pretentious, but it's a solid paradigm: Billions of flies eat shit, that's not a good reason to taste poo. So lets follow the better of us.
Revenue part.
In case 1 (Reddit): the content is users made. the more users, the more link, comment, content, adequacy. In case 2 (Hubski): the content depend on a few "better" users
What you address is the case 1: Getting donation and Selling user info to advertiser. With your only concern being having the most users possible. The day you become second in users base (Google+ Vs Facebook), the site is as good as dead.
I guess in Hubski case you should consider totally new solution. I have no fucking clue. But your concern SEEMS to be about keeping your 'better" users. If (names totally invented:) Klein, NewGreen, mkay, Insomnia, refuge, 8bitsam, etc disappear from the site, you'd better get some good people to replace them. That look more like a Twitter model (if Celebrities all leave Twitter, the site is as good as dead)
So I have no opinions on the subject. That's just how as a user I came to see the aggregator system. Bottom line, in any aggregator (just a most streamlined forum), the users are the only value (some forum present info more easily, have better readability than other, that's the only intrinsic value.) But the best ever built forum is worthless if empty. And it hearth wrenching to watch aggregators site shamelessly feed of its users. But hey, I get it, the more users, the more value, the more servers to pay for.
What I wish for is a non-profit Reddit. Sell users info, take donation, put ads as much as you want, as long it's just to pay for employees, servers, bandwidth cost, and not to pay shareholders.- What I wish for is a non-profit Reddit. Sell users info, take donation, put ads as much as you want, as long it's just to pay for employees, servers, bandwidth cost, and not to pay shareholders.
You may try [Voat](voat.co). Right now, they are trying to find their own solution to the funding problem.
First post here! I think that in general, you can estimate the revenue you would be getting for each business model. There are several options here.
1. Donation. As far as I know, most users will not donate. Unless you make a donation banner as intrusive as Wikipedia, 99.9% of the user will never donate a single penny. I am new here, but if end up using Hubski on daily basis. I would not mind an annual donation of something like $5 (which is what wikipedia asks for). You can try to put up a donation banner like that periodically. Wikipedia publishes their numbers, so it's possible to get an estimate.
2. Ads. Most users will hate it. You can start by making them unintrusive with good intentions. For example, 1000 views per day for YouTube videos makes (very) roughly $100 a month. I don't think the numbers will be that high for Hubski since ads have to compete with contents that are always more interesting. Most users won't click on ads. Until you have a hell lot of users to cover your salary, this model will just kill users experience.
3. Subscription based. This is can potentially to provide a continuous stream of income without slowing down the growth or killing users experience with ads. If you give all users basic features and give paying users extra features and bragging rights (thus making the price worthwhile), this could work really well. It will be similar to Reddit Gold. The revenue really depends on what features/bragging right you give to paying users.
I think the best solution is to avoid ads as much as possible. As you said yourself, ads could potentially turn hubski into something that "is beholden to those parties that buy the information and views". When your priority shifts away from the users, you end up with the shitstorm that is happening on Reddit right now.
This is not the answer to the question profit or non profit, but to get some money in for hostig cost etc. Start with some ads (try not making them to intrusive), one or two sponsored post on top of the front page and donations.
Keep the balance books open for members to see costs etc.
If the balance allows it start taking out salary (for the owners/main staff). But democratize this process by letting the users decide that salary.
To make this work you (the owners) propose 2-4 levels for your salary with the lowest (ideally) being that of recommended minimum salary in the country you recide. Then the community vote what they think is fair (out of the suggested salarys) for you to get. After all, even if you work your ass off to create this platform, the community fills it with content that allows you to make money.
Now some years this site might struggle with a deficit and other years it could run with a surplus. How the owners handle this might very well decide if the community is happy or not and thus affect the salarys.
Of course in this case there needs to be a way to stop election rigging (founders creating 20000 dummy accounts just for the voting) but thats a different problem.
Since this is my 2nd post on this site (I'm not from Reddit) you can always ignore what i wrote ;o) but I at least tried to contribute with an idea :o)
I think Reddit had a good model in regards to revenue generation (nonintrusive adspace on the page and donations via gilding, although I don't like the idea of locking out site features for non-gilded members. The biggest issue they've run into so far is taking the profiteering a tad too far and now they're running into issues of trying to monetize celebrity interviews and the like.
I dunno, I like the idea of running a site entirely on donations, and if this site turns out to be something I revisit regularly, I would agree with Steve and definitely be on board for an optional regular monthly donation. I just wouldn't necessarily want "premium features" for paying members, the content itself should be enough to sell people on the donations, NPR and PBS have existed for a long while on that same business model. In PA, for instance, we have no subsidies for public broadcasting and the NPR stations here are still very successful and my and a lot of people's favorite stations.
- I just wouldn't necessarily want "premium features" for paying members, the content itself should be enough to sell people on the donations, NPR and PBS have existed for a long while on that same business model.
I agree. I am not a fan of money buying features. As I said elsewhere in this post: money is a good proxy for money. Our best user might have very little.
This has a ton of legal implication. Google the fine Ripple just received for creating and issuing their own currency/monetary instrument. Bitcoin works because it's decentralized. I am a huge crypto supporter, my brother is the founder of the exchanges, and I have been involved since 2012 but this is a really bad idea for reasons I could go further into detail on.
- I am a huge crypto supporter, my brother is the founder of the exchanges
The issue is that I am anonymous w/ this company (albeit people can look me up if they try hard enough). If you email me I'd let you know. If you've been in bitcoin for the past couple years you'd probably know of it.
"Of the exchanges" = of an exchange. Whoops..
I'm aware of the general concept behind ethereum but I would be really interested in learning how you see it working in this specific circumstance. Really, really interested. Can you elaborate?
I also think the best way would be to integrate a donation mechanism as a first step, and a store with some T-shirts/Stickers. I see Hubski as a content aggregator with a better social dimension than most websites because the community is small and we get to know and relate to each other.
As for the integration, to answer your question thenewgreen :
1) It should be on the top. I know it's more invasive this way, but I don't see a lot of people donating anything if it's at the bottom. I didn't even knew there was a bottom bar until recently and the introduction to the random link (which is great, btw).
2) It should be an easy integration with Paypal or Stripe. We should have the choice to do a monthly donation or a one time donation.
3) As for the incentives to donate, I don't think you need any. The community seems close enough to understand the goal here : maintaining a great place to share things and to talk about a lot of various subjects. But I think opening a store with some T-shirts and Stickers could add a source of revenue.
You can inspire you from these great blogs : http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/donate/ ; http://waitbutwhy.com/support-wait ; http://www.brainpickings.org/
I've bounced around a lot of different forums and online communities in my time and have seen a lot of different ways those sites have monetized themselves. The best method that I've seen so far is giving out a cosmetic badge for donations. It's like users are paying to help support the site and to have a few pixels to feel ever so slightly superior to the other users. The most effective way I've seen this implemented is by offering different badges for different donations amount (e.g. $5, $20, $50). A lot of users will donate simply to get the $5 badge, benefits to the site aside. Once they make a smaller donation and have a badge next to their username to remind them of that, they are far more likely to make a larger donation, if only to get another badge. I'm willing to admit that I've bumped up my donation to a site solely to get a badge, and I'm sure many other users would too.
I don't know. Attaching money to a voting system incentives posting easily consumed material. Just look at reddit's front page; can you imagine what it'd look like if one could make real money instead of worthless "karma"?
How would such a system handle downvotes? Would users pay out for badly voted content? If not, where does the original money come from? As mentioned above, the social aggregator business model is terrible and unsustainable.
I'm working on a Badge-to-BTC converter package.
No, no I'm not. Actually, that sounds way too much like tiddeR gold.
I'd be fine for donations - however, there's another venue I could see we could use (of course it has flaws, what system doesn't).
Buying "premium badges". Either allow people to gift a normal badge (as in, instead of the post being marked as badged, the user itself gets a new badge to put to a post) to people they particularly resonate with (in a show like "I can't buy you a drink so have this badge instead"). Or have another premium (platinum?) badge that shows beside normal badges. But the point stays: you could offer to us to buy other people badges. There's plenty of disadvantages (mostly it monetizes part of an important aspect of Hubski, admittedly, and it may help people fortify their echo chambers by idolizing members but anyway), but personally I see two advantages: it may help people who generally give thought-provoking posts, or read and share powerful conversation starters, to get more visibility and stimulate interaction and discussion, all while not hiding any feature from the free user (at best, the result is pretty much invisible to the user, at worst people can see it but still have access to every single thing - and except in close-minded communities, a platinum badge will not be seen as a symbol of status since you should be unable to buy them for yourself and gain absolutely nothing from having them).
Just my two cents. Similar to Reddit Gold but with less importance to the user.
- However, if you provide the service for free, you don't have a sustainable business model.
I dunno. As much as I hate the freemium model for games, it doesn't seem as bad for the web, if you can keep costs low and have a fraction of 'premium' users mitigate the costs enough, it could be sustainable.
I think that just putting up banner ads might be a working solution. it keeps the service free. you would still be dependent on your advertisers, but if you want to run an aggregator as a non-profit, just ignoring advertiser's wishes (to the point you can without them pulling the plug) will keep the server bill paid.
Hey Hubski team,
I started my website, shirtwascash, with a mix of 4chan and reddit involvement. We have done pretty well since launch and I truly believe user-submitted apparel (especially using our printing method) is an untapped revenue stream for a platform like this. I've been on Hubski a few times while looking for reddit-alternatives and know this community is a little outside of our current niche but I do think various apparel and products, especially user-submitted, is a very viable way for you to consider financing things better.
I am not particularly offering anything here besides giving you a serious and tell-all type discussion on my thoughts. I would like to help if I can since you guys/gals are obviously putting your all into things. If you'd like to chat, reach out to me at anon@shirtwascash.com. I'd love to be candid and give you an inside scoop on my thoughts and potential things you could do.