As we grow we will need to accommodate more traffic to the site which will require more money. Nobody likes ads and relying solely on donations might cause problems down the road if we ever fall short.
So here's my idea: We create a subverse where users are voluntarily and intentionally advertised to in order to raise money for the site. Maybe v/buy4voat or something similar, and we can link to product pages and purchase things that we were going to buy anyway except Voat gets revenue from the companies for the link. Something like Amazon affilliated links or Google "sponsored" links except we put the funds toward Voats things. Like upgrading the server. Or whatever, we decide! But seriously the server is gonna be important.
We can have a stickied post of all the companies that participate and as participation grows add a sidebar with shopping categories like v/buy4voatGAMES or v/buy4voatCLOTHES. The mods can solicit companies at first so that we have some good options and hopefully companies will start coming to us in the future. We all buy things online anyway, so why not have a portion of the purchase go towards funding Voat? Maybe we can get more money by allowing companies to advertise in ONLY those subs as long as the ads aren't terrible (like autoplaying loud noises).
The neat thing about this is that as our user base grows there will be more people to buy things online through Voat, so this will scale up as we do. More users, more purchases, more money to keep Voat operational, more advertisers...and back to more users as the sub grows and has more to offer.
How can we make this work?
Edit: Okay, so far the concerns seem to be (1) Security and (2) Possibility of Manipulation
With regard to #2 we can make all the mod mail for those subs completely public after X days, that way everything is discussed out in the open but not in such a was that it interferes with the mod team's ability to get things done or speak to potential participants without brigading. Thoughts?
As far as the security concerns, what (if anything) can be done to mitigate these? Will these concerns be a problem with any and all advertising so does that mean no advertising ever? Donations only?
If that's the case I'd love to get an Admin's take on the future of this site cost-wise if they don't mind sharing that info. Where are we now and where would we be if we were to have another influx of say 10,000 new users? With all the drama and censorship being exposed on reddit I think it's a real possibility that this site will act as a new community for people who are just done with it all. I think we should be proactive and discuss becoming self-sufficient as soon as possible. Or we find a rich person to help Vote through the first year of substantial growth.
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[–] something_went_wrong 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago (edited ago)
You mentioned "Amazon Associates etc" in your comment I replied to, and I gave you links which might argue against that very idea. That's all.
I don't personally have any ideas just yet how voat.co owners can make money off this site. But I don't think that is even necessary or even a good idea at all. I think as soon as profit becomes a factor here, then we have another digg/reddit situation dumped on all us users forcing us to seek a better experience elsewhere.
Surely they could have a legal source of income from elsewhere, and within legal means, funnel that money from that outside source into the operation of this website. Making voat.co a legal tax-exempt non-profit entity relying on donations for example. I'm not a lawyer or business owner and am not at all familiar with business law where this site is hosted, but I'm sure there are plenty of ways to fund this website even without spamming ads everywhere or selling out content at the expense of user experience. PBS comes to mind as one good example... which actually might validate an idea for fundraisers.
Edit: some words and expanding on my thoughts
[–] alphabeta [S] ago
Ah, gotcha. Yeah well it's definitely a concern.
My intention with the post wasn't so much to figure a way to make a ton of money off the site as a way to keep the site operational while we expand rapidly. There was a statistics post on the sudden influx of users that said they are looking for investors to help get the site through its first year of rapid expansion without ads. I was just trying to suggest a voluntary way for users to help keep the site operational without going the ads route. The post makes it seem like the admins will have difficulty doing it on their own and just in case an investor doesn't appear...
[–] something_went_wrong 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago (edited ago)
Can you please provide a link to an official call for investors? I wasn't aware of that.