yup, my point exactly... f-this and f-that are mild to some of what goes on over there
Posted on 04/19/2012 5:38:57 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
RimJob Cries Uncle!
Last edited Thu Apr 19, 2012, 04:44 PM USA/ET - Edit history (1)
For fifteen years, the Wizard of the cesspool FreeRepublic has been beyond adamant that his little sewer would never -never- adopt an advertising, pay, or membership model. Well, what have we here?
... the beginning of the end? One can but hope.
"Alternatives to donor based, ie, freepathon business model" April 19, 2012 | Jim Robinson
Posted on Thursday, April 19, 2012 16:22:35 by Jim Robinson
I've checked with an ad agency. We can probably raise the funds we need to operate FR at our current level and at the current market price for online advertising if we run a banner ad at the top of every page and at least one rectangular ad in the above the fold body of the page and a couple rectangular ads in the sidebar. If that doesn't generate enough revenue, we can also run pop ups or pop unders and we can even run audio and video ads if need be. But of course, if we go full bore commercial, we'd have to insure strict copyright compliance with very brief excerpting of all articles to avoid lawsuits. And the agency would require that we install a filter to censor out any bad or unacceptable words in our posts.
Or, of course, there's always the membership model. We could setup a members only system where paying members get full access and non-paying members get throttled back, etc.
I don't like either of the above models and think we'd soon lose a lot of our readers and participants. Of course that may happen anyway if we can't fund it and if we cannot get our equipment problem under control, or if my refusal to vote for or support an abortionist/homosexualist/statist who has plans to install ObamaCare, er, I mean RomneyCare into all 50 states runs everyone off.
The donation model has served us very well since 1997 when we first started using it. It's very clean, uncomplicated and we attract participants who perhaps can't afford membership dues but do want to join the discussion and join our rallies, protests, prayer sessions, etc. And the advertising model would probably bring in the revenue, but it comes with strings attached.
I'm sure there are other ways and ways to combine features of various models, sell books, cds, gear, etc, offer no ads for paid subscribers, etc, even ISP services, but all of these also complicate matters.
I'm an old dog and I like to avoid new tricks, new complications, additional overhead, additional accounting, additional rules and regulations, etc, wherever possible. I like to stick to simplicity and with what works.
Thank you all very much for your continuing participation and support.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2874129/posts
I just got back from jogging and had a silly idea while I was stomping up and down the neighborhood streets.
Freeper avatars.
You buy an avatar for your home page. You buy custom clothes for your homepage. hair styles, etc. You make it look like yourself or like you wish you looked like. Kinda like xbox does for their xbox live accounts.
I’m not a computer programmer so I have no idea how difficult it would be to do something like this. It might be more work than its worth.
Just more typical drivel from DU (DemonicUpchuck).
For a Gay State Conservative, you're not up on the local dialect.
"Rim job" is defined on urbandictionary.com.
I was just going by Romney’s own record, he appointed liberal Democrats to the bench.
What else should I judge a politician by?
They really are. One can not find a deeper pool of ignorant, confused and wrong as one sees in the DUmp.
I’ve tried to follow the DU website a few times and can’t figure out how to follow a conversation thread.
Redesign the main site as a FAQ page and move the system to a large group of trusted freepers that have high-speed connections.
This would be a modified P2P system where the main web site would hold a list of ip addresses to the multiple servers in freepers homes and businesses. This group of servers would ensure the system would never go down. They would not handle all the traffic, the users would be both serving and using the system at the same time...much like the torrent system.
The whole thing would consist of three parts..part one would be the Freerepublic.com FAQ site.
The second part would be the circle of freepers running 24/7 servers from their homes or businesses. The ip’s of these servers would be in a text file on the FAQ site. This file could also be placed on the yahoo backup site. It’s quite possible that these servers could be hosted on the new Raspberry Pi 35 dollar Linux computers. They only use a max of 7 watts power...just plug it into a jack on your router or cable modem, run the software and you are a FR server on the cheap.
The third part would be the registered users. They would be serving data to other users to take the load off of the main circle of servers... the higher you set your outgoing data to other freepers the faster your access.
This is just an idea, perhaps a good one. In addition to a dramatic lowering of costs it would ensure that FR was always up and running. It might also increase the systems safe-harbor protection.
Any wise Latinas?
Dear Jim -
Here’s my suggestion:
Run the ads for 6 mos or a year, at the same time you are doing your usual Freep-A-Thons. Take all that money, set it aside for a nest egg for Free Republic, and take some of it to take a nice vacation, or buy a new car, or do some nice things for yourself...
I have a feeling you are too stingy when rewarding yourself for all that FR accomplishes. Since the last great capitulation of conservative media types, it’s even more evident what a rarity you and this place are...
Godspeed.
Um... Why? Do we really care what those simpering dirtbags feel about us?
Your site has gotten so popular that it needs to shift its means of funding. That’s a bad thing?
Be proud of being a Capitalist.
yup, my point exactly... f-this and f-that are mild to some of what goes on over there
Democratic Underground is like walking through a feed lot.
You don’t want to breathe, you watch where you step and wonder if your tetanus shots are up to date.
Trolls and orcs, and dumb as hammers. No redeeming value.
Jim, it's obviously your call what you do with your own site, but as I said over on the other thread, I do encourage you to consider a mixed model of advertising along with a “premium member” plan. I have believed for many years that, as someone else said last year on a now-deleted thread, you are “leaving money on the table” by not taking ads. Free Republic could be much stronger, financially speaking, if it had a good advertising agency selling ads to people who value the readership Free Republic attracts.
But it's your site and your rules.
My vote is for whatever makes it easiest for you to run FR. I’m thankful for FR. It’s my major source of news.
How about avatars and an ignore button?
Now that's a definition that is both true and descriptive...
............install some new equipment, make improvements................
JimRob:
As the cost of maintaining this active website on your servers has escalated geometrically, have you and John looked at keeping only active threads on in-house equipment, and offloading the millions of inactive threads off to some cloud servers?
We can all wait for the few seconds delay in accessing cloud backup, and I would believe that the capital costs of storage could be dramatically reduced.
Just a thought - I guess I need to send another check!
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