Subscription can either be bought, or gifted to anyone. From the feedback we got, $20 USD per year (approximately $1.66 USD per month) would roughly be the right "sweet spot" for people.
Compared to the Other Site, the primary difference in subscriptions between us and them, is ours are time-based vs. usage based, and we're not offering early access to stories, or the +1 subscription pseudo-moderation. I thought fairly hard about this, and given the community feedback, simply because you do (or don't) pay for subscription does not make you a better or worse user. I also saw many people concerned that we were going to implement a "pay to post"-like system. Let me lay this down; we are NOT going to do this; this site exists for the community, and the principles I laid out in the manifesto clearly state "We will be the best site for independent, not-for-profit journalism on the internet, where ideas can be presented and free discussion can take place without external needs overshadowing the community." To require a user to go through a paywall, or have to financially contribute to this site to be an active proponent would fly in the face of that.How about for $10 you'll post an article of my choice clearly brightly identified as being sponsored by me and linked to my profile and comments are completely uncensored although any/all editors have full veto approval. $10 isn't high enough to push your moral/ethical boundaries (I hope) yet its high enough that "one" per day does add up to a couple grand per year, or the equivalent of thousands of subs. Would not want to see "ten" per day. "two" on a slow news day, eh maybe OK.
Sponsored content is something that has come up a few times in the past in discussing various revenue models. I'm not inherently against such a thing, but the other site fiddled with trying this, and essentially created a new form of slashverisment. Now, obviously with editorial and veto authority, we could limit such things, but I'm struggling to see what may get posted that we wouldn't already run. We could perhaps change the QA/Ask Soylent topic into "paid questions", and run those on occasion. I think the question to the broader community is, what forms of sponsored content would you like to be able to 1. purchase for yourself 2. be willing to tolerate.
My 2/100 of $1.00 USD by martyb
Separately, I like swag (especially coffee mugs). Make it limited edition by including the year or something in/on it. Maybe combine the two ideas? Pick your choice of swag and offer whatever donation you think it's worth.
Even better, offer a swag item that is unique to SN: a DVD or USB-stick which would boot up with a copy of the site as it now stands. For an extra 20%, it could even be autographed by the NCommander, himself. Soon to be a collector's item!
Swag is another good way we can raise money. I'd definitely be willing to create some sort of SN-on-a-stick w/ sanitized database which someone could purchase, stick in their computer, and pull up a local copy of SoylentNews in all its glory, as well as perhaps create some unique items (i.e., coffee cups, etc) available for sale. If its someone reasonable, I think we could look at selling it; ideas welcome below.
What About a Custom Slash Instance? by prospectacle
Who better to offer custom-slash-instance hosting?
While all users get a journal, paid users could get a virtualised slash instance, to run their own complete forum (a "super journal")
Bottom tier could have your own slash forum at username.soylentnews.com. A control panel could offer various simple customisations, such as colours, fonts, sidebar links, logos, etc.
More advanced (expensive) tiers could have more customisation options (use your own domain, control karma and mod-point settings, etc)
The most expensive tier would give the user a complete virtual machine with a full slash install, the ability to modify the slash source code (as well as use the simpler control-panel configurations), maybe a domain name is thrown in (chosen by the user, but organised and maintained by SN) or you can bring your own. Plus your own email/irc/wiki servers. Your "subscriber site" or whatever you would call it, could be linked to next to your name or sig, when posting to SN proper.
We've actually looked at doing something like this; there is partial support for this kind of functionality in slashcode already (the nexus feature, which is live on dev, and is pending a wildcard SSL cert before going live here. The intent is that once the feature was built out more, we could have a "sub-slash" system (conceptually similar to sub-reddits), in which users could follow various nexuses on any topic, and users could create their own (possibly paying a one-time cost to do so), either existing as nexus.soylentnews.org, or perhaps with their own custom domain name.
Functionality wise, we're still quite a ways out from implementing this (most of the admin code would require re-factoring to make it fly), but it would allow users to create their own communities within SN, i.e., a community dedicated to DIY, or one dedicated to minecraft or gaming), each with its own staff overseeing it, and the ability to submit any article to the main page.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by skullz on Thursday June 26 2014, @04:46PM
* some full time/part time authors who research topics, and post articles here based on findings *
Oh, yes, absolutely, PLEASE. The tech news scene really REALLY needs some decent journalists. The gap between an online tip jar and your CPA / legal is an excellent example of what I like to read about because it is related but very far out of my usual orbit.
My suggestion at this point would be to press on with the yearly support fee and start off the journalism efforts as a Kickstarter or something. Backers could get access to the messy daily blog of the journalist as they slog through whatever subject they are researching. And then you could sell the finished article shortly after it appears on SN (SN, you heard it here first!).
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday June 26 2014, @05:33PM
Whatever gets us down the road to this. Absolutely. Real journalism (with correct grammar and spelling) that has integrity. Soylent will literally be one of the few oases in the desert of journalism.
I'll gladly pay $20 to see that future. Probably more.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:16PM
On the other side of that coin....
SoylentNews is People.
It seems to me that researching stories, is OUR job, both for the stories we submit, and the replies we make.
Not sure how I feel about someone with a different political perspective deciding to *cough* research a recent topic and post a rebuttal that, by mere "Power of Place" becomes the last word.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Thursday June 26 2014, @06:21PM
Nothing is stopping you from doing this right now, if you write up something interesting as a series, we'll run it. This is though to allow people to dedicate actual time and effort to it (when I say anyone, I do mean it, come to us with an idea, we'll figure it out, then get something worked out).
Still always moving
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tathra on Thursday June 26 2014, @09:39PM
if the 'paid journalist' route becomes a thing here, maybe we could have community members being something like freelance journalists - researching and writing up good stories to submit to the site and getting paid for the story. obviously this wouldnt apply to simple links and a quick summary, and people would have the option to simply do the work pro bono; or maybe the 'freelancer' status could be attained after doing a couple of quality stories for the site, to check if they have the ability* to do it. we could have a "Journalist" or "Freelancer" badge to go along with the "Subscriber" badge, to help promote people writing and submitting quality stories (again, not just links to other stories and a quick summary, but actual proper stories).
if we're going to pay journalists, and we're a community site, a community of freelance journalists is the logical conclusion.
* biases would need to stay as far away as possible from the selection process, so even if say EtOH-Fueled or a microsoft/political shill is writing and submitting stories, as long as the stories themselves are quality and fact-based, thats all that should matter
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Thursday June 26 2014, @10:03PM
Ding ding ding.
This is almost exactly what I was planning to go down this road. Right now, we're still trying to duct tape everything together (RL is a bitch), but I'm hoping/praying that we'll have incorporation done next week (we hit a hangup w/ it this week), but hopefully mid-July at the latest, we can start getting subscriptions in, then build towards this.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday June 27 2014, @04:08AM
Hell, pay the amateurs (that's us) in swag, at least to start.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday June 27 2014, @02:53PM
I was thinking similarly -- pay with a subscription! Every article gets you a one month subscription or something. Not a HUGE payoff, sure, but still enough to let people know their work is appreciated. Good enough until/unless some real money starts rolling in!
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday June 27 2014, @03:26PM
Yep, that was exactly what I was thinking -- a little appreciation goes a long way.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by TK on Friday June 27 2014, @08:27PM
Interesting. If I could offer an addendum. In addition to freelance journalists, add one or two full or part time fact checkers to the payroll. That way, they're always on hand as the freelance stories come in.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday June 29 2014, @02:23PM
"start off the journalism efforts as a Kickstarter or something"
I realize I'm posting this super late, but I have an interesting app where kickstarter would be way too slow, when there is an interesting legal ruling in tech, I'd throw a little (emphasis little) money into a kitty fund for a real genuine lawyer to answer some questions. So I want soylent interview section with real lawyer answering questions (we might get a journalist / PR / not for profit discount, but a real lawyer with expertise in the specific topic isn't going to work for free, probably). So the responses to the questions begin with "IAAL I am a lawyer ..."
I could probably be motivated to throw in some money to hire a PE professional engineer to handle the "I don't understand thermodynamics" and "I don't understand strength of materials" and "eulers law, its not just for quikie lube places anymore" class of questions.
You probably can't beat the existing infotainment world on pure speed. Beating them on accuracy and insight and detail level seems realistic?