What's the best way to sponsor Drigg?
Posted April 12th, 2008 by admin
Hi,
Drigg is a lot of work. Kevin was a godsend, literally. However, the problem remain: what's the best way to sponsor Drigg?
We have a few ideas in the pipeline. Mind you, we don't _need_ sponsorship to develop Drigg. The current codebase is solid and easy to understand, and there are already two more people familiar with its code. So, if I quit tomorrow, the project would slow down - especially initially - but eventually it will pick up again.
However, knowing that I am paid at least a little bit for the work I put in would be nice.
Bounties are a good idea -- in theory. In practice, it's messy. People tend to request absurd bounties for $200 or $300 dollars. Small or minuscule startups don't have money to pay. I charge $60/hour for custom Drupal customisation work (and that's _cheap_). A small feature takes about 4 hours to develop and 6 hours to test (yes, that's right. That's why Drigg is not buggy, I suppose...). When you tell anybody that a small bounty will cost $600, they will say "no thank you, I'll just wait".
And that's not it. I have recently spent around 30 hours re-organising and re-writing Drigg's code. That didn't achieve anything. In fact, at best it will give people a few headaches (it's such a major job... and it shows). But that's not even bounty-able.
I think a possible path is a "retainer". If you sue Drigg for your site, then pay (by paypal) $20, $50 or $100 dollars per month (depending on what you can afford). FSDaily, a popular Drigg site (and in fact one of the most popular Digg-like sites out there) will certainly enter the arrangement.
So, if you use Drigg, why woud you want to pay $20/month? (Especially when there would be so many other people who use Drigg and don't pay a dime!). I obviously need to offer something in exchange.
What I can do, is this:
* $100/month: gold sponsors. If you are one, Drigg will publish your site's name, link and short blurb in Drigg's home page.
* $50 and $20/month: silver sponsors. If you are one, Drigg will publish your site's name, link and short blurb in a "sponsor" page.
I will also reroute a portion of the money to other fellows Drigg developers who join or have joined me.
It's important that all the donations are basically recurring Paypal charges; otherwise, the time it takes to _manage_ this will become more expensive than its benefits! (Unless you want to wire 1 year in advance, which would be fine too ...!)
Now... you are part of the Drigg community. What do you think? Do you think such an arrangement would work? Would you pay to get into it? If not, do you have an alternative arrangement in mind?
The Drigg community is growing every day. Maybe Drigg has now reached the critical mass to make something like this possible...
Yours,
Merc.
Chip - in
Hi I am glad that we have Marc that is serious about developing module into full-blown product.
I want to use drigg in my future site. Hopefully I can manage some resources to pay to some level (depending on the sucess of the site), even regullarly.
What I would suggest is some sort of chip-in system, where monthly goal amount will be displayed and every payment with contributors.
That way we can see wheter this product is stable from the moneybacking point.
I think that everyone with live site will be able to contribute to some level.
As for new features, I would recommend voting threads about features which will show what priority is requested.
If anyone will feel he needs to rush his feature he should have an option to set-up new chip-in and offer some money to prioritize his needs (as we can see with External Voting Button).
Chip-in will assure all contributors that the product and its developement is alive and has future.
I would be pretty disappointed to pay regularly and come to the point where development will be stopped without users and contributors in mind.
Drigg looks very promising
Drigg looks very promising and I'm sorry that you're having difficulty finding time and funding, but as you noted some users can't afford to pay you during development and that includes me. Any contributions I make to your project would have to follow a successful application unfortunately. I imagine this module will have pretty good success with donations after it's release.
Anyway, keep up the good work and don't get discouraged/burn out.
EDIT: oops, I see 5.x is already out, but I'll be waiting on the 6.x release.
Paypal Donations? Google
Paypal Donations? Google Adsense? You choose :)
Adsense?
What if we something along the lines of inserting Adsense code with your info on a set number of page views so that you increase chances of picking up a little here and there from across many sites running Drigg code? Example, an Adsense unit is placed on the site and every 10th time the ad is shown it uses your Adsense number so that if a person clicks Drigg gets the money. This is along the lines of the revenue sharing lines of other packages but specific to the developers. There are, of course, all sorts of caveats and details to iron out to stay within Google's TOS... But maybe it could work or at least be in addition to other sources of income/donations.
Possible but...
Hi,
This is possible. However, if I Haven't been able to have more than a handful of people joining this discussion, I doubt I could manage to get more than 1 person to actually do some work and change their theme so that it shows an adsense ad with my publisher id...
Merc.
Make it a default feature
Merc,
If you add adsense integration as a default feature, you could set up revenue share with three basic roles: Merc, Site Admin, Site User with the following logic:
If admin hasn't set up adsense and hasn't disabled adsense {100% adviews to Merc - give them a link to sign up and give you a bounty from google too}
if admin sets up adsense {let admin decide % to Merc, % to Admin, % to users with default 10%, 40%, 50% or something like that}
No tying anyone's hands, they can uninstall, set up a different rev share module, etc.
IF IT WAS EASY and set up by default, I would gladly leave 10% of the adviews to you as thanks for writing the software.
T
Charter membership?
You could also use the 'Charter Member' concept like they do for Simple Machine Forum. Where you pay like $50 a year and get access to early beta builds and a special forum for the charter members. It seems to work well for them.
Nice idea...
Hi,
It's probably a good idea. However, I can see two problems:
1) We can't really give access to early betas, because the bleeding edge is available from drupal.org and... well, it should be.
2) I can see the benefits of a specialised forum. However, the risk is that somebody pays $50 and recides that it's his/her right to have every single question answered, instantly. And that will include (note that I am using the future tense, not the conditional) weird site-specific issues (caused by the user), CSS templating, and so on. All specialised work that should be billed $100/hour.
I guess the point that I am making is: I am already developing Drigg to capacity. There is nothing extra I am able to offer, because I wouldn't have time to organise it or satisfy it.
I also don't want people who can't afford to pay to be... well, second class Drigg citizens.
So, my idea of sponsorship is something that anybody with a Drigg site should pay (even $10/month)... IF they can afford it, for the good of the community.
Merc.
Lets get this started
Merc,
I really appreciate the way you are handling this. Can we get this all started by starting a Paypal (or some alternative) method for donations and such to you? I'm still testing, but I'd love to at least begin to support with what I can. I'm hoping others will as well and figure this will continue as the Drigg community grows.
OK!
Hi,
OK, no worries at all.
I have a paypal account ready, no worries there.
For now, I wanted to see the response of the community about this issue and see what you guys thought about it.
Bye,
Merc.
agreed
I think for a starter you should for sure have a "help support drigg" paypal button on the site. I was also thinking you could add a "powered by drigg" tag with a link that you could turn on to display at the bottom of your drigg site. I don't know if that is even possible though ,but it would help get the word out about this wonderful software. Also, as a value add for a donation you could have a sponsors link page.
Good idea...
I think this is a good idea.. Though, personally speaking, I am still just playing/testing Drigg before launching a site. Once a site is launched I can see going into this arrangement. As a hobby, I can't afford $100 a month... $50 is even a little steep. Can you have some one-time donations option available too? I'd love to support with what I can but am reluctant to "commit" to recurring donations so early.
I think...
Hi,
I think the important point for me is to know that I will have money to pay the bills next month. So, even $10/month is better than a $50 donation.
Thing is, if you don't have a functional Drigg site, that's fine as well--you don't *have to* donate! But, it's a bit of a gamble. The more people donate, the more hours I can spend on it. The pace will be the main difference. However, I won't force anybody to donate, directly or indirectly.
Bye!
Merc.
Some thoughts on support
I love the idea of a retainer, especially since I'm looking to launch a serious site. But if you "Merc" or the other developers can't guarantee a certain amount of time for module development & improvements it might not be a good idea. What would make sense for me would be something on the side, outside the community and with some sort of light contract.
The other idea is a shareware type of deal where someone downloads the software and pays a donation fee. In my eyes this is a very valuable build. To pay $10, $25 or $50 or more to "give back" to the developers is not a lot to ask. However if someone just downloads to try out, they shouldn't feel obliged to "give back."
Hope this helps.
Yes buy...
Hi,
The idea of a retainer is to get people to pay less. It's strange, but most don't seem to realise this.
To do any development, I charge $90/hour - and that's if you guarantee me a number of hours per week. And, by the way, that's extremely cheap.
Wanting a number of hours "guaranteed" for $50/month is not how to go about it. From a value-for-money perspective, that's even too little to justify urgent security bug fixes fixed in a timely fashion. Wanting to see the project as a whole going forward, with a small retainer, is how to "see" this. Unless you're happy to pay $90/hour with a minimum of 8 hours/week.
The problem with the "one off" payment is the same: this is not Windows, where people just keep buying it. The real cost of Drigg, for us the developers, is the constant updating and extending. That's what I am trying to pass on to the users -- or, the ones who can afford it anyway.
Bye,
Merc.
I think its a good idea to
I think its a good idea to offer either a flat donation or the monthly sponsorship in general. I know Im pretty poor now but if I could pull any kind of funds from the drigg site im creating id like to help out.
Team retainers?
Now I see your point, I think. Since 8hrs min at your rate would be expensive, several users contributing to a retainer would be great.
The way it could work would be a group of Drigg users chip in a certain amount so the "retainer" gives the Drigg team enough $ to develop much needed features. The only problem is, who gets to decide what features get worked on first? What if someone contributes and the feature they wanted most is last, or never gets worked on at all?
I'm all ears if someone has an affordable solution.