SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
So, COVID-19 (coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, whatever you call it) sucks a bit for your health but it turns out it sucks a lot for the economy. So we're extending any subscriptions that were going to expire before then out to June first (this may be extended a time or two depending on how well our savings hold up). Yeah, we know we're an extremely small cap entity and that's not going to make a whole lot of difference but it's something we felt we should do anyway for a couple reasons.
First, we as a corporation do not have paid employees. The only people we give money to are our hosts, our registrar, our CPA, and the revenooers. Which we're going to have to continue doing regardless and which we can currently afford to do for a month or two without dire risk of having to make infrastructure cutbacks. Putting money into us during this nonsense doesn't help much in directly putting food on someone's table or keeping jobs from going poof, so we'd prefer you guys put anything you were going to send us to work where it will help at least a tiny bit in keeping the businesses that your neighbors work at afloat. Which is to say, spend it locally.
Second, we're quite fond of the folks who've chosen to financially support the site and we don't want them to get dinged because of something that wasn't remotely their fault.
Now we're not shutting down the site's subscription functionality. If you feel a desire to contribute anyway, we're happy to oblige and we're not going to tell you that you can't. We're not the bosses of your wallets and it would mean extra work for me when I don't really have time to do much of anything code/admin-wise.
Also, we're only doing this automatically for current and new subscribers; we don't want to hit people who weren't interested with an unsolicited email about subscription expiration when we have to shut the extensions down. They may have quit subscribing or even frequenting the site and it's annoying as all get out to keep getting emails from sites you stopped doing business with on purpose. We're happy to handle it manually, though, if your subscription ended any time since the first of the year. Just drop a comment to this journal entry (NOT to THIS story!) and I'll take care of it as often as I have time (at least once a day).
That's all. We now return you to your regularly scheduled mix of discussion, debate, yelling at each other, and trolling.
(Oh, and you can still submit stories, too! Hint hint! --martyb)
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday April 19 2020, @11:48PM (10 children)
What if opt-in advertising was offered? Not a lot of people would take you up on it, but any advertising/sponsorship would add at least *something* to the kitty. You could offer survey space too.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday April 19 2020, @11:54PM (3 children)
I think we pondered it a few years back but decided a few bucks wasn't worth the loss of good will. Or my fishing time.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2020, @12:01AM (2 children)
You are right, you know, slippery slope and all that. GP is a dumbass.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday April 20 2020, @10:50AM (1 child)
Nah, not a dumbass. Not considering an idea would be the dumbass move. It's always better to think about something than to not think about it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday April 23 2020, @09:32PM
And often better to have thought about something than to have done it. As any writer of horror fiction knows.
But sometimes the reverse.
(Score: 4, Informative) by martyb on Monday April 20 2020, @05:13PM (5 children)
This was discussed at length early on in the site's history. It was ultimately rejected.
Revenue from such sources could lay us open to questions of independence in our reporting. "He who pays the piper calls the tunes." No matter how much the editorial staff attempted to distance itself from any such pressure — even if none were exerted — there would be a question of independence. Having no outside funding removes that as a question. Also, we have a technically-oriented audience, so the thinking was the majority of our community already ran ad-blockers. Any advertising we accepted would likely not even be displayed. As I understand it, ad rates are based on clicks per thousand (or million?). We would have such a low click-through that any income would be vanishingly small. Further, to support any ad network would likely require enabling Javascript ads. We have heard a large and vocal "don't do that" from the community in the past. Well, what about self-hosting static ad content? That raises issues of who will do the marketing, billing, implementation, and support of said advertising/sponsorship? Given the minuscule potential revenue, those extra efforts could be better spent on coding and implementing improvements to the site as well as on processing story submissions.
still further, we cannot ignore the reality that there is currently a pandemic upon us. Many companies have closed down, reduced staffing, and generally speaking there are far fewer ads available. Those that remain are being aimed at those sites which provide user analytics and much larger audiences than anything that SoylentNews could offer. Why deal with a small site for a few thousand ads when one could deal with, say, Google or Facebook or the like and handle millions of ads with just a few contacts? How would we even make contact with those wanting to sell ads and make the case for advertising on our site? Especially in light of the competition posed by long-standing relationships many advertisers have with other sites. We would not be worth the bother. Besides, analytics has been roundly dismissed as a possibility by members of staff and of the community.
FWIW, I personally strongly dislike advertising. If I want to now about some product, I can do a search, find out what companies have what I am looking for, and read the reviews to help make a decision. The one exception is I do like to watch the Super Bowl(TM) for the ads (some are quite humorous and are occasionally the source of memes that linger for years "Nothing but net", "Like herding cats", and others along those lines. That said, I cannot bring to mind a single ad I saw from last year's game.).
Because so little potential income is at stake at the moment and the fact that the majority of our community have expressed a strong dislike of advertising, I do not see it worthy of further investigation for the foreseeable future.
I appreciate your thinking of trying to find an additional source of funding, but ads and/or sponsorship are not a good match for our site.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday April 20 2020, @08:31PM (1 child)
Thanks a lot for the detailed information. This is a great whole-topic summary of many considerations for any other small site (and their subscribers) to consider, whichever route they choose to go.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Tuesday April 21 2020, @07:07PM
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Monday April 20 2020, @09:35PM
Even those that don't have to are reducing spend.
I suppose if everyone reduces advertising, the amount you need to do for the same result goes down as well. Be awfully nice if that was to become a trend.
What's really needed is someone artistic to come up with a great funny SN meme we can put on shirts and other on-demand stuffs that we all want to buy at a ridiculous markup.
I dunno.....Maybe riff off the conveyor belt [imdb.com]....'crackers' have news headline bubbles coming off them. A soylentil on the conveyor belt is reading one bubble that is fully opened into a story.
Course movie studios aren't known for being friendly if you use their IP.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 21 2020, @01:53PM (1 child)
I'm more or less the same but occasionally I kind of miss a little bit of the useful sort of advertising. I mean, how am I supposed to know if there's a monster truck rally coming to town sunday, Sunday, SUNDAY? Or, you know, other things I might actually like to know of but am not likely to hear about in IRC with you knuckleheads.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2020, @10:29PM
Too bad with the way advertising seems to work, you'd only hear about a monster truck rally after you bought tickets to it.