Possibility of Chicago Reader outsourcing this board

About This Message Board
21

I’m not disagreeing with you Tuba about anything except maybe the potential and/or possible revenue that a small percentage of SDMB members could provide if motivated.

There are supposedly 40K dopers. I figure at least half of those are no longer with us. Maybe half of those are regulars. That gives us about 10K members that participate.

WAG here but let’s say half of these “regulars” are dedicated diehard members.

If these diehards could/would purchase $10 (one item) at the “buy stuff” site on the SD Homepage…

That’s $50K right there. We’re not talking chump change anymore.
You said the SDMB is $100K indebted to The Reader? That’s cool, I know WE owe them our existence.

I thank them in ALL sincerity :slight_smile:

I think that perhaps WE should return the favor. Every member should buy one item every year at the store. No dues, no requirements, no obligations…etc. All voluntary by the Dopers who really enjoy the SDMB and appreciate the opportunity to be a part of this community.

You may already know about my wife and daughter…they both have MD. My son is working on his Eagle project for Scouts, plays sports etc. etc.

My point is that as a result my family and I are involved in a LOT of charitable events. NOT that this is one BUT I have found that people are generous if given a means and method, but it has to be readily available.

KINDA like the $1 donation to the presidential election that is on your tax form. I don’t recall the figure BUT I was amazed at how much money is donated each year. Sure a drop in the ocean, but it was several millions of dollars each year. Which does add up after four years.

That does not include people who donate large sums of money to the cause…

I CAN buy more than one item, right?

I WILL be buying a $10 coffee cup at the very least!

I just wish there was more stuff to choose from :frowning:

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At this juncture, we could hardly ask for more. :slight_smile:

And we are appreciative. Thanks for all you do to make this community exist and grow, all of you. Couldn’t do it without you, you know.

your humble TubaDiva
Administrator

23

t-keela, I hate to say this, but your numbers are far too optimistic. Over a third of those 40,000 members have a grand total of zero posts. As in, they registered here, and then never posted at all. Nearly another third have but a single post. And there are a great many more posters who stuck around for the course of a single thread before leaving, and even some who did stick around for a while, then left. The last time I saw an informed estimate of the number of active posters, it was a thousand, tops. That already brings us to $20 per person per year to support the board. Now, suppose that half of the active members don’t want to contribute. That brings us to $40 a year. And if we mean to support the board by buying stuff, that dilutes our dollars yet further. Suppose optimistically that the total cost to the Reader for each piece of merchandise is half the price listed on the page. Now ask yourself how many dopers would be willing to buy $80 worth of Straight Dope merchandise, each and every year.

I don’t know why the Chicago Reader spends so much money on us, for so little return. But I won’t complain.

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TubaDiva wrote

I’m sorry, but that’s strong indication that my original suggestion makes good financial sense. An outsourcer will be able to easily beat that number and give much better service.

And of course, if you’re correct, the cost is currently much higher than 25k/year, as labor alone should easily double that. Throw in appropriate servers and bandwidth, and it’s crystal clear that this should be done by someone else.

t-keela wrote

Well, as pointed out, it’s far fewer than one quarter that would cough up. But equally importantly, the $10 is not even close to all profit. It’s likely the Reader makes 25 points top on that, more likely half that.

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Yeah Chronos You’re probably right…why waste anyone’s time? If we couldn’t come up with but $20-25K then screw it huh.

That’s the kinda spirit I like to see. :wink:

BUT you are right about a few things. I am optimistic, perhaps overly so…hmmm IIRC there once was a guy who made his fortune selling rocks as PETS.

and you are correct in the fact that I don’t have any actual figures on active members and their post counts verses lurker who might be willing to help. OR the profit margin on merchandise…etc. etc.

I also don’t know whether there may even be a wealthy Doper or two that would cough up some real bucks to keep the board alive and healthy.

I can’t prove that there are people that actually USE the SDMB in their daily lives as a source of entertainment, education and inspiration. But if, say for example some entertainer, comedian, writer etc. gets bits and pieces here every now and then and includes it in their work. Then who knows what value these boards hold? (for all I know B. Gates could be a DOPER, kinda doubtful but then again I seem to recall a couple of latenight talk show hosts/writers involved somehow)

Would you spend $10 at the “buy stuff” site by New Year’s
to find out?

I can’t imagine the Reader telling us to keep our cash. :rolleyes: We really don’t need or appreciate it.
I helped do a fundraiser awhile back…got an anonymous donation for $100K :eek:

I’ve seen this occur on a smaller scale many times. A local lady w/ three kids had a house fire. Lost everything. By the end of the month she had a new house a car all new furniture etc. toys for the kids, gift certificates and several thousand $$ in hand.

It’s all in the approach… ya see Christmas is coming up and I think what I’m gonna do is this.

I’m going to buy a coffee mug and have it sent to my favorite Doper. Wouldn’t it be great if the store had regular “gifts, cards and stuff” that you purchase via the SDMB. We could add our mailing address and either click to participate or not…

Anyway, twas just off the top o’ me noggin, but don’t be surprised if you’ve got a Secret SantaDoper lurking. :smiley:
BTW I’m just waiting for some advice from the powers that be before I really get up on my soapbox with this.

Maybe Uncle Cecil will come down from the mountain on this one. Oh wisest of sages…keeper of the stick…what sayist thou? Care to smite a bit?

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$10 bucks for a coffee cup plus shipping…

What do you think a cup actually costs? or a T-Shirt.

A buck, maybe two…

I’m not in publishing but from what I’ve heard it’s really not too expensive to print once the initial costs are paid for. Doesn’t the Reader have printing capabilities. I think the profit margin on “stuff” is probably pretty good.

I was thinking maybe adding some NEW stuff. Oh well, there are always going to be some folks with defeatist attitudes. Claiming to be a realist doesn’t wash either, unless someone here has the actual figures and CURRENT polls regarding various means available.

Otherwise it’s merely speculation. Not to say that you are wrong or that I am right. I may very well be incorrect in my belief and that the members here if given a choice would rather see the SDMB die.

So, there are actually only about a thousand of us left?

Maybe…we are a dying breed I guess. How many posts a day are the teeming thousand responsible for? Anybody keep up with that?

27

t-keela wrote

Uh, no. Have you ever designed, bought, or been involved in any way with promotional items? Where did you come up with a dollar for t-shirt with two color printing, front and back? That’s just not reality, not even close. Further, such printing requires a volume commitment to get a reasonable rate, requiring committed capital and storage. Further, the typical order is likely 1 or 2 items, meaning the labor component is very high. Labor-wise, shipping 1 t-shirt is far more expensive (per t-shirt) than shipping 30.

In fact, I’m a bit surprised at the low prices on the site. I would think they could raise them by 50% and not dramatically reduce volume. The only rational for the low prices must be cheap Dopers.

28

Look…I know my above posts were very argumentative and I really didn’t mean it that way. I just don’t see any logic in what I have read…

If what I just quoted is true then this board is being severely mismanaged.

I am very appreciative of the board in the first place…I didn’t start the thread, I just see some inconsistincies in the things being said here…

A conservative 20-25k…i’m sorry but its just ridiculous.

29

Thanks for thinking we’re a bunch of incompetents.

I gave you those figures so you could get some scope of what’s going on here. Commercial site, commercial prices. No one gives the Reader a discount because the board is so great.

Stuff takes what it takes. Just because it’s free to you doesn’t mean it’s free to the Reader.

your humble TubaDiva
Administrator

30

OK. She lied. They only spent $1.98.

Are you applying?

31

TubaDiva wrote

Well, I for one don’t think anybody here is incompetent. Quite the opposite in fact.

But Tuba, you’re really reinforcing my original point that started this thread: if the Chicago Reader outsources this board, they can save money, and we users can enjoy better performance. Everybody wins.

The Chicago Reader is currently overpaying (alot), and receiving a substandard service in return. Their image is lessened and likeso their wallet.

I’m starting to realize though: the person who makes the decision about this sort of thing probably has never even seen the board. The people closest to the decision maker are Jerry (the tech god) and Ed (the editing wiz and source of all that is dopily straight), but neither of them are the decision maker. And the mods and admins are nowhere near that person in fact literally don’t even know who s/he is. It’s the typical sales situation. This isn’t intended to be insulting. Just a realization of the situation.

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Based on my experience (25 years in IT) there is no way one could outsource this board for less than $25,000 a year.

Based on numerous threads, when asked, the majority of active posters said they’d rather not be a member of the SDMB than spend a single dime.

Based on a lot of creative “research” (admittedly done quite a while ago), I believe the estimate was that about 10 percent of the registered members were active posters. It seems to me that this percentage has actually dropped over time and while I think the esteemed Chronos might be pessimistic by naming only a thousand posters, I don’t think he’s very far off the mark.

33

Please note that outsourcing means everything becomes a hard cash cost. By doing it in-house, there’s a lot of soft costs – like Jerry’s salary, which TubaDiva excluded from the hard cost estimate. If the service were outsourced, those soft costs would convert to hard costs.

My personal experience: outsourcing is rarely cheaper. The outsourcer may be more efficient, but is going to want to make a tidy profit and cover overhead. There’s this strange notion that outsourcing is cheaper than doing it yourself. Once, making an outsourcing pitch, I told the company outright that we wouldn’t be cheaper than the way they were doing things in-house. The answer was, “Yeah, but the costs would be on someone else’s budget, and we’d reduce headcount.”

34

C K Dexter Haven wrote

With all due respect, sir, there’s a good reason that such an enormous amount of outsourcing happens in so many areas of business. And there’s a good reason that the vast (and I do mean vast) majority of websites are outsourced. Your personal experience is in direct conflict with the experiences of pretty much every business in the world who finds good reason to outsource billions of dollars of things that aren’t their core competency. They enjoy cost savings and quality improvements. There’s a reason farmers don’t do their own paintings and artists don’t grow their own food.

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Bill H. said…

**"Uh, no. Have you ever designed, bought, or been involved in any way with promotional items? Where did you come up with a dollar for t-shirt with two color printing, front and back? **
Actually, Bill I have been involved in promotional t-shirts. But the “a buck or two” comment was in reference to coffee mugs.

I added the t-shirt afterwards. I see where it may be confusing. Which BTW are still relatively inexpensive when purchased in bulk. About four years ago I designed the graphic for local team. I ordered 100 baseball jerseys direct, white w/blue sleeves, all cotton, made in USA. Notice this is not a simple T-shirt, but it’s not a twenty dollar jersey either.

A local print shop and I worked out the deal w/ my design (quantity 100 or more) They silk screened the front and monogrammed the back of the jerseys. When all was said and done, the shirts cost $6 each. Which is IMO a small order. I’ve done this for other groups as well. It is fairly profitable if done right.

For example, a good baseball cap (solid color, blank) run about a buck apiece by the gross. Another dollar will get damn near anything you want put on them. When’s the last time you bought a cap at a stadium?

IIRC StraightDope shirts are $10 ea. plus shipping AND handling.
Surely you don’t think they have these things (mugs and shirts) made as individual orders?

AND FYI I have my father’s business logo/ad glazed onto 100 ceramic cups every year or two for promotion. $1.25/each which includes the cup.

Granted the first few would be incredibly expensive…in both examples, if you only wanted a few.

So far Bill I’m not impressed. You have disagreed with practically everyone here. Implying the rest of us are ignorant and you have the answers. Fine…show me.

You want to charge for a membership? How much? Since we only have a thousand members according to an earlier post. At least half of those will bail as soon as YOU require dues. Forget new members, that killed it. After the first year most of the rest will go. So, you’ll have a couple hundred members, MAYBE. They will have to cough up at least $25K/yr. or lose the board.

What was the answer to the question I posed? How many post/day…

or average what? 4 million posts/1000posters dunno :confused:

:wink:

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<< There’s a reason farmers don’t do their own paintings and artists don’t grow their own food. >>

Efficiency, yes. Quality, probably. Focusing on “core competencies” can do those things. But cheaper? Sorry, but that’s often delusional. You can’t tell me it’s cheaper for the farmer to buy paintings from an artist than to make her own.

However, this was by way of an aside, since I have not analyzed the READER’s situation for outsourcing. I just wanted to comment that outsourcing is not necessarily always cheaper.

37

Well, I know I’m beating a dead horse here (as are perhaps we all), but as long as we’ve got another thread going about board finances, I may as well post my brilliant raffle idea from this thread:

I have no dreams of it becoming a reality, but can someone confirm Esprix’s claim that raffle’s would count as donation money? It wouldn’t seem so if you were actually buying something (be it merchandise, or simply the raffle ticket itself. If someone wants to spend $10 or $15 on a piece of paper that should be their business).

I coulda sworn someone else responded to my post from that thread with a claim that the raffle would be considered gambling and thus the powers would need a gambling license (sp?) which would be way too expensive. Either I’m imagining this, or the post was deleted, or something, but is this true? Even though the payout has no monetary value?

I mean people buy merchandise here. People send in questions for Cecil to answer. Simply combine the 2: people buy merchandise and send in a question, and Cecil chooses what to answer from that pool of merchandise buyers (chosen at random of course).

Anyway, I’m really sorry to bring it up again. I just think it’s such a cool idea, and to be honest I’m not very full of cool ideas. In fact, this may very well be the last one I ever have. (who knows?).

38

You can’t have it both ways. If the payout has monetary value, that’s gambling. If it doesn’t, then it’s a donation.

But I think that we’re all making too big a deal out of this. It’s undisputed that the Reader is taking a loss on this board. But it’s also true that the Reader is willing to take a loss on this board. As I said before, I have no idea why this is the case. But given that it is the case, we of all people have no cause to complain.

39

What exactly is the current situation, and where are the major sources of expense? Is the server sitting in the Chicago Reader office, and the above expenses are mostly for equipment lease and connection (bandwidth)? I’m just curious, I’m not questioning your setup or anything.

40

t-keela wrote

No problem.

That’s a little cheaper than what I’d expect was paid for the Reader shirts, but it’s much more in line than one dollar. Now, how much were you paid to do the design? How much was the storage, the person who pulled the orders, the stock room guy, etc.? How much was the guy paid who organized the whole effort? I assume it was all free in your example. In this case, it isn’t, and guess what? It’s probably not hard to rack up $400 in those costs for 100 shirts in the Reader’s case. And $600 ($6/shirt x 100 shirts) + $400 overhead = $0 profit (as the price charged is $10 apiece).

Of course not. Which is why I didn’t say that. Surely you don’t think sodomizing goats is appropriate behavior in a church do you?

Yes, that’s in line with my experience as well. Of course, there are still the other costs above the materials which will dwarf that $1.25 apiece. But I will grant you that the margin on coffee cups is much better. Unfortunately, not many people buy coffee cups compared to shirts, but still it’s a reasonable margin when they do.

Sorry Mom, but I didn’t come here to impress you.