Pimp My Dope: Brainstorming Revenue Ideas For The SDMB

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This place needs money - so how do we go about getting it, or at least increasing traffic so that the people coming through are generating revenue? I’m just tossing out ideas here, a lot of which I stole from Dead Badger in Ed’s thread {Ed’s thread, baby. Ed’s thread}, but feel free to toss in your own. It seems to me that there’s a lot of talent in the membership which is being unused: basically we just sit here and hope that people will wander in and like it enough to stay, but maybe it’s time to start selling our skills, or at least putting them out there where people will want to come for the info and stay for the snark.

Merchandise - cups, shirts, stickers - has been covered, but probably a good one: I know they’re available, but they’re not really pushed, and the designs are uninspiring. There’s a lot of talent here, I’ve seen it, so why not use it?

Information is what we have more of than anything else: if I want to know what a book’s or a movie is like, I search Cafe Society. The breadth and quality of knowledge and information is far ahead of most of the internet: could we have a guest forum in which we pimp ourselves out to Amazon or the IMDB so that guests can log on and get smart, hip, snarky info about whether to go and see a movie or buy a book? Ditto with games, comics, music…

Ditto GQ: again, there’s so much knowledge here that’s untapped. If you have a question, somebody here can answer it: how can we let people know about this vast and largely untapped resource? Ask The Dope? Settle This Bet? A Friend Told Me? Similar to Staff Reports, I guess, but faster moving, written by regular members and targeted to specific questions

The same would go for travel: there are a lot of people from all over the globe here, who can tell you exactly what you want to know. Want to know what to go and see in Auckland over a weekend, with a side order of cynicism and wit? I’m yer man.

Obviously this would require fundamental changes to the structure of the board - I guess what I’m envisaging is a kind of parallel “shadow board”, with guest fora linked to various other sites and tailored to answering specific questions for guests: a kind of online magazine consisting of letters to the editor and member-written articles. The structure of the board right now is essentially reactive: you either float a question or a topic and hope someone responds, or reply to someone else. Let’s have these shadow fora set up for articles, where I can pontificate about why Shriekback was the greatest band of the 80’s or P. G. Wodehouse was the best prose stylist of the last century. Gonzo Staff Reports, basically. Hell, we’re already writing for free: why not let those who want to do turn ourselves into journalists, and maybe comp membership, privileges and goodies for those who contribute.

It would require an investment by the new owners in hardware and manpower, obviously, but if they’re smart enough to realise it the greatest resource they have is not floating out ads and letting the advertisers hope that a tiny few are dumb enough to click on them, but in the skills, talent and knowledge of the membership.

Oh, and my wild card: Insult Of the Day. With such vast reserves of spite, bile, venom and bitterness in the Pit, surely we can generate abuse to order: sign up to this service and we’ll send you a piece of vile abuse every day. Guranteed unsafe for work! Amaze your friends! Be the life of parties! The teeshirt revenue alone could be massive…

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Hear hear. We label ourselves as the smartest, hippest, whatevers on the net and we are indeed, so if TPTB need some positive flow let’s give 'em something good.

I know that the merch/swag thing isn’t a new idea, but I’d like to hear an offical ruling on it from my thread. Seems a pretty easy and free way to get some extra cash as long as we’re given the green light to design some stuff that may or may not contain coptwritten material.

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I agree. They could take one of the “Ask the …” threads and sell it, publish it, even put it in the Tribune, as Cecil seems to have all but disappeared on these boards. :frowning: And I’m still not clear on the question of not allowing donations to keep the board running. ?
And, of course, where does the profit from the “Cecil” books go? To the Reader? (Unless the different people who make him up split up the money.)
Sorry to be so sarcastic but the lack of Cecil during this “crisis” with this board seems to validate his lack of existence.
I’ll feel better in the morning. :wink:

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A: Affiliate Programs: Amazon and iTunes to start with. thinkgeek and newegg if they have such a thing.

B: Merch! Cafepress is perfect. Sure, Straight Dope and a turkey is one thing… but what would you pay for

A ‘1920s style death ray’ T-Shirt… with a drawing done by Phil Foglio? ( www.girlgeniusonline.com)

An ‘Og’ shirt, by, say Randy Mulholland? ( www.somethingpositive.net )

A Plush Hal Sheep Doll?

A ‘Initiation Goat’ sweatshirt?

A ‘Horror of Blimps’ T-Shirt? (Hm. Either XKCD or Perry Bible Fellowship?)

A Gotcha-Ya shirt with the Buddy Jesus pointing at you and thumbs up kind of hands?

Frankly, I’m not even opposed to banner ads. Just… tasteful ones. Not animated. No noise. No spyware.
I hear Google is starting a banner ad program. Project Wonderful is nice, but is for webcomics. Anyone got any good providers?

Best of the SDMB free PDF e-book to be placed on Amazon or something, to draw people here.

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I like this idea. Just as Cecil had his question-and-answer books for sale, why couldn’t the SDMB collect some of the most interesting GQ threads, with the best answers provided by the members? Or a humour book; something like snappy answers to stupid questions (with apologies to Al Jaffee at Mad Magazine), with such things pulled from all forums. Certainly, we must have enough material after all these years to do some form of “Best Of” collection that could be published and sold through online and through brick-and-mortar stores. Good idea, E-Sabbath!

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I’m dumbfounded by the premise.

The board ‘needs’ money? The board has enough money. The ironic thing is that the Reader keeps looking for ideas to make more money because the board is already making it. And for the idiot who asked why sdmb isn’t accepting donations… it’s because it’s still got an ounce of shame.

And as for ideas about making more money… Cecil’s original material, honestly, is poorly monetized. For started, how about a big “Give someone the gift of the Straight Dope” on the fron page? Huh, never thought of that one? Book sales in the country are doing great, yet the “buy SD books” page is awful and turns shoppers away (another tip: reprint with new covers!). And finally, I really shouldn’t be saying this, but they might want to take offline all the classic columns in the archives. Why buy the cow if you get the milk for free? (But really, put up a Christmas-gift banner up first. Let people buy the cow for their friends.)

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Supporter donation levels like the JREF.

Custom titles.

Custom titles on other people.

SDMB Marketplace: links to the stores of members, with some kind of kickback.

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Hey, good one!

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Yeah, it seems to me that we react to the content of other websites rather than generate our own: sites like The Onion or Superdickery get linked to all the time, yet there’s no reason why we aren’t smart or funny enough to generate our own equally good material that gets linked to by others. We could even do it with existing material: there’s no reason why a thread like Tedious Wankers couldn’t be spun into a witty little snark piece.

As it is, we’ve been groping along hoping to find ways that will mean that the Chicago Reader won’t regard this board as too much of a burden to keep on, while simultaneously not pissing off too many members. We have the talent and the motivation here to ensure that the SDMB is viewed as an asset rather than a liability; they just need to be creatively harnessed. Hell, I already write for free here: comp my membership, gimme a byline and a teeshirt, and I’ll keep on doing it.

And Alex, if you think the board is rolling in money I suggest you read Ed Zotti’s thread in this forum, in which he spells out both our financial situation and the attitude of the new owners more clearly than I’ve seen it done before: CL wants this place to make money, which it currently isn’t, or isn’t much. We generate revenue, they keep us going. That simple.

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Another forum I browse, Candlepowerforums.com, a site for fans of high-performance illumination devices (okay, okay, flashlights) does things this way…

It’s free to read the posts, if you want to post and search, you have to register, which is also free

you could get full 100% access to the forums for free, and many posters do just that, but if you want to donate to CPF, one of the perks you get is a little logo under your screenname that indicates the level of your support, supporter, bronze, silver, gold, and diamond

this basically indicates that the poster has donated to CPF, donations last from one month to six months depending on the amount donated and how long you wish to be a supporter

perhaps SDMB could do something similar, acknowledgement for voluntary donations above and beyond the membership fee

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I know some of the old-timers won’t like some of these suggestions.

  • Extra fee for enhanced features; for example, use of BBcode, a custom title, a text signature, or an avatar. I know people are thinking “I don’t wanna’ see flashing avatars and huge sigs”, but I’m only talking about a small (80X80 max) non-animated avatar, not some massive animated .gif. Besides, users always have the option to turn off the display of avatars,.

  • Reduce the default posts-per-page and threads-per-page view from 50 to 25. This will increase total pageviews, and thus impressions for any ads displayed on the site. users can modify the settings back to 50 or 100 if they want, but many may just leave it alone; especially newer users.

  • Open the SDMB to search engines. Search engine results from the SDMB will increase page impressions, the presence of the SDMB on the Web, and attract new users who would not have otherwise discovered the site. There are privacy issues, I know. It’s impossible to block off a specific subforum using robots.txt; thread IP numbers in vBulletin don’t indicate the subforum. A possible solution: make MPSIMS, the subforum where users tend to make the most personal revelation, viewable by registered members only.

  • Install a content management system that offers integration with vBulletin (Subdreamer, Vivvo, vbDrupal). With a CMS, the SDMB would be much more integrated with the rest of the Straight Dope site.

  • Consider new subforums. The SDMB doesn’t ahve to offer the number of subforums tat a site like SA offers, nor offer the same geeky subforums that so many other general interest boards have (OMG another anime subforum yawn), but it offers more opportunities to post, and more pages to view.

  • Allow members to place inexpensive banner ads, much like Something Awful.

  • The SDMB right now seems … well, stagnant. it sometimes feels like the Internet equivalent of a venerated restaurant that’s been around forever, but is losing regular customers and attracting few new patrons because the decor and menu hasn’t changed since 1955. No new subforums, old software … it seems like to visitors, the site is just being ignored by TPTB. I’m glad to hear that people really care, but it needs to be reflected throughout the site. Really, the attitude of “it works; don’t mess with it” and “let’s wait a few years to upgrade, to see if the new version of vBulletin is really stable” can hurt the site in the long run. vBulletin upgrades are made to make the software even more stable, more secure, more resistant to spammers, and easier to administer by mods and admins. Experiment with new subforums; if an idea doesn’t work, move the posts into one of the established subforums and try something else.

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Those are some good ideas. I don’t like more subforums, tho. I think it’ll tend to narrow people’s view. I like seeing an eclectic mix of topics and threads. That’s what the straight dope is about, after all. In fact, I think one of the big reasons subforums even exist now is different etiquette maintained in each. Perhaps the current setup can be tweaked (e.g., to split GQ into boring fact questions and fun questions, and move some of those out of Humble Opinion and MPSIMS) but I don’t want to see topic-based splitting of GQ or GD.

What are you reasons for subforums? And what divisions were you thinking of?

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Where do I go to pre-order a plush hal sheep?

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Splitting Sports & Games off of the Café would be a good start. MPSIMS mods do not want too many Game threads, so those could also be exiled to the new forum. Here would be debates about sports figures, questions about obscure rules, video game questions, Mafia and Party games, RPG stuff and etc. Things that don’t really fit in Café. Things that Café regulars often complain about. (because American Idol is so much more high brow than Sports :wink: )

Jim

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One of the hallmarks of Web 2.0 is “user-generated content”, which has been the SDMB’s strength since there was barely even a Web 1.0. People here are interested in creating and sharing, so why not harness that? A few ideas:

–An Etsy-like marketplace for Doper-created goods. Plenty of Dopers already make various crafts, have CDs for sale, etc. Others could design t-shirts and mugs and the like. Some could offer services to other local Dopers, like house cleaning or babysitting or whatever, splitting the take with the Dope. You could even host a gourmet dinner or a Scotch tasting or some such and sell tickets.

It wouldn’t even have to be an ongoing thing; they could do a quarterly Pay Up You Cheap Bastards eBay Extravaganza.

–Exclusive content, along the lines of Teemings, but for pay. Put out a quarterly eBook of Doper content–an exclusive Pit rant from Sampiro, original movie and music geekouts from the Cafe Society types, etc. It would cost almost nothing to put together, and I’m sure you could get 200 people to plunk down $5 each for it. That would be four grand a year, right there.

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I am telling you again: Do not resort to name calling and baiting people in this forum. If you have a disagreement with someone you can take it to the Pit or you can take it outside.

I note that you have had many warnings in the past and have already served a 30 day suspension of your membership. It appears all your warnings have involved insulting other posters. I am hereby telling you that any further bad behavior on your part in any fashion will result in your permanent ban from the board.

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Amazon Affiliate.
Now.
We been saying it forever.
5% goes to the Board.
I’ve spent well over $1000 in 2007, on books, mostly on Amazon.

How hard can this be to figure out
?

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I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you, could you speak up please. :wink:

A very sound suggestion, but I had to tease.

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I’m sorry, but…we’re the most literate damn Board on the Web!

No Amazon link is like flushing dollar bills down the john!

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I get a little gassy when I eat peas.

I should step outside, make use of the breeze.