We are back online! Server fundraiser comments.

Thank you all for your thoughts and suggestions. I really appreciate it.

Unfortunately I cannot respond to everything in depth because my relatively new replacement laptop charger is no longer working (planned obsolescence I think), so I have to respond through my phone, which isn't allowing auto correct or the swip keyboard feature to work for some reason. I'd still like to address a few points though, and will address everything else in more detail once I'm able.

Regarding the science fiction contest - I'm still waiting to hear back from two judges. I thought we'd know the finalists by now, but I understand the delay due to the holiday season, as well as the length and number of entries. I expect to know the finalists within the next week, and will make a new announcement as soon as I do.

Regarding the ads, please don't click on them to support the site. While it might make us a few extra dollars, if Google suspects I'm encouraging you to click the ads, we could be banned from the Google Adsense program, which would make matters much worse. They also have a system that would detect unusual click patterns, which would likely invalidate the clicks anyway.

As for the Amazon idea, it's a good one and I'd be utilizing it already if I could. Unfortunately, we can't because Illinois resident are ineligible to be Amazon affiliates because of a tax law in Illinois passed a few years back, causing Amazon to shut down their affiliate program for all Illinois residents. I live in Illinois.

For everyone who's donated or become a supporter since the fundraiser, thank you. If you ordered supporter membership and don't have it yet, I'll get you set up in the next few days and will also address the ideas in this thread I missed. Thanks guys.

 

Hey guys, so I managed to rig up my old laptop with a broken screen to a separate keyboard and monitor. It's no Mac but I can browse the web. There are some great ideas here, I'd love to continue to brainstorm and develop them further.

I'm not sure I know what you mean. Direct donations without supporter benefit, or what exactly?

Something like this could work. This is actually something I already planned on doing, but I'd like to hire a coder to write some customized software creating a form for more detailed reviews and for the ability for anyone to be able to automatically be upgraded to an official reviewer status if they meet certain criteria (X approved reviews in the past X days, etc). I suppose it could still be done without the software though, just with more oversight. I'm not sure we'd see a significant amount of people purchase this though.

Another interesting idea. Is there a large enough market for beta reading? Anyone who knows anything about beta reading wanna chime in on this? This, too, would be best enhanced with software but could still work alright without it.

Do you guys think something like this would work? I think it's a good idea. It would allow us to have more contests with cash prizes while generating money for the server fund.

So rather than promoting one's book through forum signatures, allow members to easily purchase advertisements for banner locations throughout the site? This would actually be pretty easy to set up.

Also, in case you didn't see my earlier post, I'm ineligible to be an Amazon affiliate because I live in Illinois.

A good idea. Are there many publishers who'd be willing to do this though? If we're talking about sponsored resource listings, we can do that very easily and simply mark it sponsored or promoted so people know it's paid. I do think the resource section might need to have more quality resources and more traffic before this option would really work. I might be wrong though.

I like this $1/month idea. Everyone has a dollar to spare.

There will never be a membership fee to use the forums (in general). We might have certain paid sections, but the general forums will always be free.

I like this idea, and it's actually on my roadmap for WF development. I actually tried exactly this for freelance writing. There's a hidden freelance team forum where at one point I even had a small handful of jobs posted and completed, with the majority going to the writer.

I think a WF Services section is doable. Think freelance editing/proofreading, beta reading, writing, book cover design, marketing, web design, and whatever else I missed. I think we have plenty of members who have the skills and would love to do this and make some extra money. The problem is that it's rather difficult to find clients who need these services done unless they happen to be a member already. Plus many of these markets are already over saturated with competition.

One issue with this is that the standards for resources are murky. Anyone can add a publisher, but generally calls for submissions are considered spammy. Maybe allow any publisher to be entered by a member with a general unbiased description, but allow publishers to add or edit a resource themselves and include some promotional material, such as calls for submission. Only issue with this is drawing the line between an unbiased resource and a promoted "resource." The thread discussion for a publisher would of course always be uncensored, but I think this is a real issue and is the only thing really holding this idea back from being a viable option (aside from possible difficulty finding publishers who are interested).

Average monthly is 155.401 gigs.

That was actually for two months. It's $170/month, this bill was for both the current and previous month, I believe. I'm not sure what it was before the recent upgrade, I'd guess slightly less than double.

I appreciate the thought, but I don't really like this idea. Perhaps if downtime from the server was a very common occurrence, but I don't intend for it to be. If we did what something like this I could always redirect the domain name to the temporary site.

I think so too, and I think I'll go ahead and set it up soon. I do like some of these other ideas a lot though, and will probably try to implement some of them in some form or another.

I will take a look at Arvixe, but I'm very skeptical. Unlimited bandwidth and storage for $25 a month? No way. I think they'd be losing money.

The next contest, whenever that might be, will definitely have a lower word limit.

Cutting costs would be a good idea, if possible. However, I don't think it is. When we started out in 2006 we were on a $10/monthly plan. We upgraded through all their plans then had to migrate to our current host and get a VPS. Then we had to upgrade it again. The server costs will only increase over time. The last upgrade server-wise was needed because the site was running to slow - it simply couldn't handle all the traffic. I've only ever upgraded to a better/more expensive server once it was absolutely needed.

That's the $170. The additional $80 is for a mailing server and currently I don't have one. There might be better options out there for this though.

Our server's a VPS, 4gb, 5 tbbandwidth monthly transfer (not entirely sure what this means), and fully supporter (great support). We don't use all the bandwidth but package-wise, when we needed more bandwidth the current package was the lowest we could upgrade to.

This does give me a thought thoguh. If there are people here who need web hosting, I can very easily set up additional hosting accounts and act as a reseller. Could be something like $5/month for a personal site.

 

What's the address? It should be support@writingforums.org

 

Holy crap guys!!! So I knew there had been a couple donations since the fundraiser was finished, but I didn't know on what scale. Logged into PayPal just now with a balance of $325!!! You guys are all incredible. We're covered for the next month, almost the next two without the mailing server. I'm blown away.

Now I guess the question is whether the mail server is worth the investment or not.

I'll make sure I get everyone their supporter status.

Incredible.

 

If you donated in the fundraiser or since the fundraiser I've just added Supporter membership for some period of time, even if you didn't order/claim Supporter membership and just donated. If for some reason you don't want to be displayed as supporter, send me a PM and I'll remove the Supporter status.

There were also four people who donated from email addresses not associated with their accounts here and without mentioning their username, so I can't know for sure who it is. PM if you think this might be you (First names: Shelly, Patricia , Tessa, Jessica).

 

I think you're right, and I think that's what I'll do for now. It's difficult to find the right third party software or widget to track progress and donations though. I might have to end up adjusting the progress manually per donation, but that's okay.

And I'll make due computer-wise. haha.

 

I'd love to hear some thoughts on crowd-funding not just donations for the server, but new features. Obviously keeping the site online is priority number one, this is assuming server costs are covered already through donations or ad revenue. If you guys support this, I'd love to set up some sort of crowd-funding campaign to bring new features, such as:

• A Reviewing System, integrated in the Workshop, allowing more in-depth reviews and automatic promotion/demotion to/from the official Reviewer user group, with a "Critique Queue."
• A Writing Marketplace, allowing multiple categories and payment gateways.
• An ad management system that tracks clicks/impressions, allows members to purchase ads (say, to advertise their book), and simplifies per usergroup ad block (our current ad management system is not so good - I'm still having trouble hiding all ads from Supporters!).
• An advertising/link-building/SEO budget would be incredible (It's a pipe dream though lol).
• Crowd-funded contests.
• An e-zine promotional budget (we could relaunch the e-zine without, I've talked about it, but at this point I think a budget is almost necessary for it to succeed).
• An automated freelance jobs system (hands-off system for freelance writing, editing, beta reading, design), allowing a client to place an order with a description of exactly what they want, and each respective team being able to claim the job, and respond, without step-by-step management.
• A quality mobile application.
• A reputation system independent of "likes."
• A GoodReads clone.
• Submission/Query tracker.
• Perhaps an enhanced Role Play section.
• Writing Showcase section.

Those are just a few new feature ideas I've had on the back-burner for quite a while now, but have been unable to progress further because I'd have to hire a developer. Now, maybe all of these might not be features we want (I know some people would be against the Showcase, for example), but if we tried something like this we could start with something everyone thinks is a good idea. These are just ideas I brainstormed or collected from you guys.

Whadda ya think? Am I getting way ahead of myself? Only bringing this up because I'd love to be able to provide some of these features and I'd never really considered crowdfunding them until our fundraiser a few days ago. Thoughts?

 

It's possible, I suppose. However, the first person who came to mind lives in Missouri and it looks like they shut down their affiliate program for Missouri residents as well, for the same reason they did in Illinois. Maybe a moderator or trusted member here could act as a middle man if people would actually purchase Amazon products (books most likely) through WF.

 

My rare Pokemon card collection was stolen from me at Sunday school when I was eleven.

I think funds management transparency is a fair concern, thanks for brining it up and for being willing to do so. I could see how it could be a concern. I hope this fundraising is only temporary, hopefully only for the next few months. I'm not turning WF into a registered non-profit organization or anything, but do think there's a right to some sort of transparency for funds raised for something specific - like server bills. Non-specific donations, such as Supporter membership, I've always re-invested into WF in some way (though not necessarily server costs). As my time allows, I'll be trying to come up with a new revenue model or better implementation of advertising. Once WF is able to cover it's own costs each month, I'll let you guys know and stop having fundraisers for the server. We'll only have server fundraisers when the ad revenue and myself personally aren't able to pay the server bill. If I can, I'll cover it myself.

If the community wants, I'd be willing discuss this further or set up some sort of system or something for transparency or accountability. I'd rather avoid any concerns altogether if it could be an issue. I'm not sure how we'd do this though, so if you had something in mind let me know. The only thing I can think of is providing invoices for the bills so you know what the costs are. I could do this very easily.

This might be more of an issue if we try to fund new features as well (which I'm a fan of ). I actually just installed some donation management software so we can better manage donations and fundraisers. It shouldn't be active just yet, but it makes it easier to donate and track donations on a goal pages and on the forum sidebar. This should solve any concerns about potential fundraisers with the third-party Fundrazr that required social media to donate and t0ok a fee out of every donation. I'll probably follow-up in this thread or post an announcement about it. Maybe I'll make a FAQ

Anyway, for anyone who wants to know what we've raised (both through Supporter membership and direct donations) so far during the server fundraiser and the follow few days: we raised enough to pay for the server for a total of roughly 3.3-3.5 months, two of which were overdue and paid that day, the current month's hosting and mail server, as well as approximately $100 on top of that.

 

LOL. Errr... um... okay I guess...