Hosting of DSF, a question of funding

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Seems like a good moment to start one important topic which hangs over the future of this forum, and community… :yo-yo:

@dubway and I discussed the issue already during the last several months, and we couldn’t find any attractive solution. Hence, some ideas from the community could be illuminating…

The issue is about the cost of hosting (and domains). The cost for two DSF webs (this forum, and the old one) is around 320 €/yr. Unfortunately for the said cause, we don’t display ads for some time now (as you could notice if you don’t use ad-blocker). Ads were paying for the hosting in the past.

The reason is that the Google Ads program doesn’t work for us. Google complains about the content and blocks displaying ads on our sites mainly due to many download links to music files and videos, and other content on the old forum which some law firms are checking and reporting to Google. It is, of course, impossible to filter and remove thousands and thousands of posts, and makes no sense to do it because it would undermine the context and meaning of the memorable archived discussions which we want to preserve. Besides Google Ads, we had custom ads provides. Yet, they are not sending offers any more, probably due to lower traffic in recent years. Consequently, we tried some other generic ads services, but those that we tried were serving unacceptable ads (malware and so), besides the fact that offered rates were miserable. In this situation, dubway paid by himself for this year (until September), but in the long run, it will not work like this, and we have to find a solution. Maybe finding again some reliable partner for ads that wouldn’t mind the content or fundraising from the members… but these ideas are not simple to do, and even less guaranteed to work.

Luckily, two years ago I moved the web sites to the hosting which is provided by a non-profit organisation (where I from time to time volunteer, maintaining servers) that will certainly not immediately unplug the DSF webs if we don’t pay on time. However, the organisation also have real costs and bills to pay for the computational resources used, so we cannot expect free service. To remove any doubts, the main motive for the migration was to reduce the maintenance work for myself (especially, since I do it in spare time).

Suggestions? Ideas? :slight_smile:

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We are a community of probably about 25 max regulars. Maybe we could pay a subscription or something? I don’t mind chipping in money to keep this place alive, i could also help out with maintenance of the site if required, i do computery stuff for a living.

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If you can agree on some form of fundraising every year, I’m totally for it, since it is the easiest option to choose from. Let’s also wait for others to reply (including @dubway) on this matter. If we decide to follow that road, we should define a few rules and procedures to do the process transparently, and to avoid any possibility of conflicts that could arise when money is involved… Cheers!

1 BigUp
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snitches FTL

:hocho:

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I’d pay a subscription I guess. I made the suggestion of putting sample pack competition songs on streaming services and have the profits go to you. I’m sure there are logistic issues with that (as someone pointed out, possible copyright issues) and I’m sure the profits wouldn’t be much if anything.

I could see subs getting messy though, especially if there is an influx of new people for some reason. And it could also prevent new people from joining. Subscription would basically just mean admitting this is it.

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can this post be pinned @moderators ? It might get burried if not

1 BigUp
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Can’t wait for dsf premium :cool:

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Good advice. I’ve just split the posts to a new topic, and now we can pin it.

EDIT: ups, now I see that @CreamLord was faster.

1 BigUp
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Do a kickstarter or smthing, id pay a tenner a year just for access to the OG_lol emoji tbh

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What if we just make a simple PayPal Donation button which is, for example, connected to @dubway’s PP? Are there any obvious downsides of that expect of the 3% fee to PP? I think that all donations can be manually recorded here if we expect like 20-30 donations a year… We can also put a special badge for those who support DSF in that way, right? “PREMIUM_2020” badge :tophat: (for this year, and _2021 and so on) :rofl:

That shouldn’t require too much preparations compared to kickstarter or similar services which will bring a burden of rules and bureaucracy, I’m afraid.

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i have whitelisted dsf on my adblocker, but haven’t noticed the lack of ads until now.
fucking Google and its snitches. Will gladly chip in a bit

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Yesss lets have premium loool

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Big up dubway and 4ndy for keeping things afloat this long in the first place…

I’m also down for donation/subscription.

Re: the streaming tune thing @Tolsof mentioned - besides the copyright hurdles (think that was me who brought it up) selling music is no longer a viable model for anyone trying to break even or raise a little funding… but it’s true that we have some super talented people here as well.

Wonder if there’s any merit in the idea of selling original sample packs on Bandcamp or sth - a pool of producers come up w some sounds periodically, all sounds coming from sources without copyright.

There’s also merch but not sure how that’d work - 370 divided by 25 is like 14 and change, a reasonable amount for like a tee shirt but no way of guaranteeing buy-in and dun know how overhead would factor into this unless using a 3rd party site who’ll want their cut too…

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:thinking:

Or just charge a subscription for access to SNH lol.

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Yeah tbh idm doing donations tbh

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Yeah the streaming would probably be a few pennies at best in all reality. Merch is a good idea though, and adds the possibility (however slight) of people outside of dsf buying stuff.

I’d rather buy a comfy shirt or a hat or something once a year than pay a subscription tbh

Could just do it all lol

1 BigUp
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I’m in for whatever’s decided on. obviously big up 4ndy and dubway for keeping our small community of freaks alive, I think it’s fair that we start pitching in

Hear me out though, what if we pool a little more money and get our own island

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Wed kill each other trying to decide on a political structure in about a week. Or we could just kick off BoC and butterman

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sad but true

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Bigs up for keeping it alive guys

I’d do either but i reckon donation is better than subscription, theres something about subscriptions that put people off and we’d probably lose all the broke commi’s which make up a large portion of the user base :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

let us know how much you need and ill send you some paypal Ps

also totally up for @Phigure s Epstein island, like all in - i can make a sizable donation as long as it’s hush hush

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