Ways To Improve Going Forward: Your thoughts on the matter.

About This Message Board
121

I think the board has two separate problems on is the dwindling number of members and the relative old age of the remaining members and the second is turning the members into cash flow. I think most of the good ideas have been mentioned to solve each problem.

In order to recruit new members we need advertising and the best advertising for this place is what worked initially quality content. But since this board already provides lots of written content i would suggest that. New members could be attracted through youtube and podcasting. I think youtube would be more expensive due to the higher production values but it would be trivial to monetize the videos and then you’re getting paid to advertise. My business runs a podcast as part of my advertising budget and it costs me about $500 a month for the editing, hosting and software my 2 one hour episodes. I’m my own star and do the writing and directing myself. To do it as cheaply as possible you could just read old columns and add in and intro, closing and a little bit of sound. From their you could follow the other podcast suggestion and do a chat show type episode either discussing the first show or doing more of the educated random banter we do here. That will cost more money because you’ll need writers and on air talent that will need to get paid more than a voice over guy from the first show. The youtube channel, the podcast and the message board then can be advertised on twitter and facebook with catchy clips or interesting conversations.

Both the old members and the new ones we’ll be drawing in will want to buy merchandise so that’s a great idea. I think membership tiers or buying titles are decent ideas but in general i think that bringing in more ad revenue is the way to go basically that would be by bringing in all the people above. I would also show ads to the members and give them something else for their direct support of the board. I know originally it was said that there was no preference from the owners of the board between members and guests because the membership fee just off set them not seeing ads. If that’s still true the revenue from the members could double by showing them ads and giving them a free coffee cup. Since it didn’t matter to the ownership and i don’t mind seeing ads i stopped paying when pay to post ended.

Lastly, keeping people here once we bring them in. I’m probably not the one to ask but I really hate avatars and threads with tons of photos and would come here less often at work if they were allowed simply because right now it doesn’t look too much different from work product. Updating the software and getting cleaner ads would be all I’d change. The board culture will move somewhat from the influx of new members but i wouldn’t force more change then that.

122

Good News!

You can turn them off.

123

Lol. In this day, anyone who doesn’t agree with a board’s majority voice is labeled a troll.

Anyways, without knowing a target dollar amount what’s the point of figuring out revenue streams?

124

Payment methods other than Paypal. Setting it up in Spain takes a minimum of one month, and that’s if you can actually get it right the first time. Plus in my case I wouldn’t even be able to use my normal email, due to having had a Paypal account under that one in the US. Plus, they get crabby about location (yeah, so today I’m in a different country than the one I live in - it’s Europe, we do things like go shopping across the border!).

125

The market will dictate.

All Time is Wasted.

126

The few times that my browser has forgotten its login cookie or I’ve tried logging in from a new computer and seen the website with ads, the experience was immediately atrocious. Unless you’re a pre-existing mega-fan of the site, I can’t see how you would spend enough time here to create a new membership.

There are ways to do ads that are reasonable, and ways to do it that simply aren’t, and this website does the latter. I recognize that the ads, even cranked up to 11, aren’t enough to support the site as it is, but I’d say that you’re guaranteed to fail with them turned all of the way up, while as with them tuned to something reasonable, you can at least work on other things that could, in addition to the ads, maybe make the whole thing profitable.

Patreon may be one path, as others have noted. It’s super-safe to trial. I can’t think of any possible downsides. It just lets those of us who can afford to keep the site going, to do more than just pay a flat subscription. And possibly that would be enough.

Anything beyond that, and you’re probably going to need to take on some amount of risk. You’ll have to dump some amount of money in and hope that there’s a return on investment.

Possibly, the site could have been something like Quora if the Chicago Reader had had the idea and worked towards it back in the day. By failing to advertise appropriately and structure the site in a way to optimize that style of use, that opportunity was lost. It’s probably too late to try and compete with them now and the market probably isn’t large enough to support two offerings.

One option would be to try and rebrand as the official forum of FiveThirtyEight or something like that, if you could do a deal with them. Tell them that it’s several thousand free readers for their site, offers more interaction (so more ad clicks) and better moderation than the regular comments system - and all they have to do for it is support the server and an IT guy (or whatever all infrastructure there is). But, you would probably need some way to like merge the articles they post in as OPs in the forum, and allow that thread to appear like a comment section back on the article. You’d also want to figure out how to support different login systems, rather than forcing people to sign up unique to the SDMB, so they could use their FB account, Google+ account, etc. to post.

If you want to sink some real money in, you could try to rebrand the site as its own news platform for those interested in the facts and looking to discuss them without partisan bias. Maybe integrate RSS feeds of the solid news sources (like POLITICO and Business Insider) and ask some of the people here to do a podcast, write official commentary on the news, etc. We have a lot of knowledgeable and well-written people here, and they might want the exposure that the site could offer them, if you were willing to put in the money to make this a center for prime content.

This is, I believe, roughly how Cracked worked. They offered people who wanted to get their writing career a start a chance to do so, and reaped the reward of good selection. It’s just a matter of having a decent editor and promoting the site.

127

This board also loves to shout down people who are trying to make this board a friendlier place.

Like when MrDibble complains about the amount of racism that is allowed here:

post 82 of this thread:

https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21127355&postcount=82

which is met with this in post 95 of this thread:

When anyone who has been paying attention, and hopefully the mods have, knows that MrDibble and other posters have been complaining about this for many years.

If I have noticed it then certainly others have too. So asking for a cite is just hand waving MrDibble’s concerns.

With the youth of today being more conscious of how we different peoples interact with each other, including our language, this is not a great way to attract younger people who will want to become paying members.

Unless, “we don’t want to attract those people” is the desired outcome, then this means this board will only consist of elderly curmudgeon people who talk to themselves about the same things they have been talking about for 20 years and the same responses, from the same people, which are predictable, will continue, and this board will die.

I work with a lot of younger people in their early to late 20’s.

I would not recommend this board to them as it currently is.

I have had to adjust my language usage to fit in to theirs so that we can have effective communication. There are more of them than me so I can’t make them adjust to my use of language to communicate effectively. I have learned a lot from them and I have tried to be a translator for them for the older generations as I have had to explain what an older person meant when they said something to them.

This board is too set in it’s ways.

If we want it to continue then we need new and younger blood.

128

You may not like avatars and allowing some pictures, but quite frankly, that’s pretty much standard for message boards nowadays. You can turn them off if you don’t want to see them. The vast majority of people coming in are probably going to expect some form of image posting, and keeping this place looking like it’s still 2003 isn’t going to attract anyone. Remember – part of why this place is dying is the whole old-fogey, “we don’t want any change!!!” attitude.

129

I would “plus 1” or “like” this post.

But this place doesn’t currently allow that.

Unlike many other thriving, money making, places that do.

Hopefully TPTB will eventually understand such things.

Unless they would rather it just die, so they can continue to lose more revenue and just let this place die so they make no revenue at all.

130

Speaking for myself, I have posted before that the reason I don’t pay is because some years ago, I was given to understand the board owners thought they could get more money out of the place by way of more people NOT being members, because they would make more on advertising. If someone with any knowledge of the situation would like to tell me that is not now the case, and it would help board finances if I rejoined, I’ll do just that.

131

This.

I’ve managed to never read a post by Mr. Dibble, guess I’ll look around.

132

I get that you believe that making this place dance and sparkle is what is needed to keep new members around but none of the message boards I spend time on do that. I don’t understand the thought that seems to go reddit it popular if we were more like reddit we’d be popular too. I think we would best crushed harder trying to be like reddit because the people who like that already hang out there and unless were doing something better or different they have no need to switch.

There are some current members who will leave with any change and some new members that will join with any change. My suggestion is to spend more money/time recruiting new members in a way that doesn’t drive off any current members at the risk that a smaller percentage of new members stick. That way whatever percentage stick the board still grows. If you make a change and some people leave you just have to recruit and stick at a faster rate or you’ve accomplished nothing. I think my suggestion is the safer way to go.

133

Amazing …

In this thread we’re discussing how to attract more members and on another thread we’re discussing how to keep members from coming here … do you see the problem? …

This board is mono-cultural, anyone who doesn’t hold the party line is outcast and chased away … is it to the point where the domain name is more valuable without the message board? …

It’s against the rules here to say nice things about the current President … that means we have all the members we’ll ever have, and that’s not paying the bills … either break the clique or pass away … intolerance of intolerance is still intolerant … we’ve become our own enemy …

134

Since the question about the cost of the board has been raised in this thread, that’s been asked quite a few times over the years. And that’s just not info that the owners have any reason to share with us. I’d be surprised if that policy suddenly changed now.

135

What thread is talking about keeping others from coming here, and what rules say you can’t say nice things about the President? If you are talking about being challenged if you say things that others disagree with and/or for which there is little to no evidence, well…of course! Would you have it otherwise?

136

uh, I have stayed out of the elections and great debates areas lately, but I’d be really shocked to learn that it’s against the rules to say nice things about the current president. You might run into problems if you say specific nice things that lots of other posters think are false (e.g., “the president is not racist”.)

But to the point, there are tons of places on the internet that work because they appeal to a narrow audience that likes to hang out among like-minded people, where like-minded could refer to politics or to an obscure hobby or other personal detail. There are also popular places on the internet that are more ecumenical.

i think nelliebly is right – to market, or to increase readership in any meaningful way, the management (and I guess that’s you, tuba) has to decide what the target audience is. Maybe “people who care about facts”? I don’t think “people who like the Straight Dope newpaper column” is going to cut it.

137

Oredigger, how exactly do you propose they go about recruiting new members? It’s easy to say they should spend money/time on something, harder to say what they could actually do that may work. I think it’s much more likely that this place is going to be sustained by the current membership who have been around awhile than counting on new members to find the place and like it well enough to stick around while also donating/buying merch/whatever else.

I agree with the suggestions of Patreon or simply having a donate button. Having a YouTube presence is a good idea too. I think we really need a “like” button, too. We don’t have to try to be a clone of reddit. I’ve seen message boards with the ability to “like” posts and it’s really no big deal. That sort of thing is what is likely to make people stick around - it’s often hard for new members to be noticed unless they’re trolling, and if someone spends some time writing a post that gets no acknowledgement, it’s discouraging. Also, sometimes you read a post that you appreciate or agree with, but you don’t really have anything to say in response to it. So your options are either to me too it, or just not say anything. It may sound silly, but people like upvotes/karma/like buttons because we all enjoy validation and knowing that someone out there has read what we have to say and appreciated it. It makes people feel good about themselves. So there’s that.

Allowing avatars and pictures (maybe only in certain forums) would be another good step. Members that don’t care for avatars can turn them off and everyone’s happy. Tuba’s made some great steps so far by reversing the language rule in the Pit and by decreasing the time you have to wait between searches. I hope that continues.

Also, I’m not sure that merch is going to be the way to make money long-term. I’m far from an expert in such matters, so perhaps I’m missing some part of the bigger picture, but after initial buying from long-term members, I can’t imagine it would sell much. I know for me personally I’d be much more likely to donate towards hosting fees or whatever than buy a t-shirt. That’s me though.

138

OK – maybe related but maybe not and I just started reading the thread so someone else may say it but – is there any chance of starting a “war fund” now for if/when that day comes?

My other long-term board participation was one formed by/for protestant churches in general and funded through them. Until, that is, the day the funding ended and everyone went right to panic mode. We basically had a month to figure out what to do. Some threads/meetings went Yahoo, some Facebook, some another place or where-ever and here we are 6 or so years out and only a couple groups continue at all out of a total of more than 100.

Compare this to a third board system I was part of that was linked to a local television show; we all know how stuff like that can go. Some of the regulars started kicking into a “slush fund for a rainy day”, doing a little merchandising for the profit of said group, and when the show folded the funds were there to keep the community together. We/they formed a “Friends” group, set it up legally, with a stipulation that if the group folded whatever funds were in the bank went to a charity (cancer research organization). We are smaller and may die at some point from lack of interest but at least we had the chance to explore the future without any real panic or stress; just a new chapter in a 15 year history.

We got some smart and actually certified experts among us; would something like that be worth considering?

139

The board needs an infusion of many new, younger users to increase revenue regardless of how the revenue is generated. However, younger users like to communicate in chat speak and meme pics which would diminish the appeal of this place for many of us. So it may be best to keep things more or less the same while operating in the black and only make modest adjustments to membership fees and merchandise.

Of course, we need specific numbers of current operating costs and revenue otherwise we can only discuss this in vague generalities.

140

I hope that one of the must-haves going forward is that we keep appealing to the type of people who like to have in-depth, fact-based discussions. Or even in the case of emotional discussions, discussions which are well thought out and with logical basis for each person’s position. There are many topics which do not have a clear-cut answer, but that doesn’t mean that people cannot have intellectual debates about those topics.

This thread has reminded me about many of the cable channels which started out with intellectual programming, but eventually drifted into reality shows of people kicking each other in the groin. There was a time when A&E showed operas, The History Channel had history documentaries, TLC was about learning, etc. No doubt those channels are making more money now with trash programming, but I doubt if many of their original audience is still watching.

As for the the mods, I just want to say that I LOOOOOOOVE the moderation here. I have no problem with the mods telling people to calm down or banning when people won’t knock it off. I think loosening moderation to gain members would be a mistake. There are 1000’s of unmoderated boards out there where people are free to say whatever they want. I don’t have a problem with those, and sometimes go there too (anyone remember the f***company boards?). But I think the quality of this board is better off with strong moderation.