Thanks for all the great suggestions everybody! It makes me feel good to know that so many people care enough about Boing Boign to share their thoughtful and useful opinions. We'll let you know what we decide soon! Best regards -- Mark

Thanks to Chris for demonstrating there why I wouldn't pay for discussion forums.

Meanwhile, seriously, install a gzip module on your webserver. HTML bandwidth requirements will probably drop to a 10th. This alone will probably only shave 2% on your bandwidth bill without optimising images and boy do they need optimising. 10 seconds with "Ulead Smartsaver Pro" and the Bush photomosaic went from 99k to 16k, without any visual quality loss. Optimise images and gzip HTML and your bill should drop by at least 80%.

You're going to be hard pushed to make me pay for your bandwidth if you're wasting it this badly.

You know, if you guys just set up a Paypal button somewhere on the front page, for donations, you could probably get a decent amount of money from that. People aren't likely to donate more than a few dollars each, but every bit helps and it is very unintrusive if done correctly.

You could adopt a Slashdot-style subscription method, where subscribers get to see the latest story sooner than everyone else.

Not sure if anyone mentioned those ideas yet, but I'm not going to read thru 200+ posts to verify ;-P

Okay, great, we've established that some people don't like the publicity and so forth. I think we can generally move beyond that.

how about a pledge drive once a year or so... you know, like PBS or that Jerry Lewis-a-thon.

http://caffeineslinger.typepad.com/les/

Edited by author 04-07-2004 05:33 PM
re: /m247 -- yes, it will. Dramatically. Because people click on the link, read the article, and then go back. Because BB doesn't have proper caching instructions in place, more often than not, the browser will download the page again. So reading 10 articles on BB might cause you to download the page 6 or 8 times.

bittorrents are distributed via http. perhaps what you mean to say is: corp's don't allow exchanges over anything other than ports 80 (http) and maybe 21 (ftp).

Corporate networks don't allow the additional software. HTTP is likely limited to ports 80, 8000, and 8080, and only the standard browser can authenticate itself to the application proxy that lets you get to the outside world.

Sorry, but standard browsers on port 80 is pretty much your audience. If you can apply CSS+RSS in that model, then that will be ok.

Uh, have you guys, like, asked your folks?

Edited by author 04-07-2004 03:38 PM
And another thing: BlogAds. I wrote a piece that came out this week for iMedia about blogs and their revenue potential. I mentioned how BlogAds has finally come into its own. By my estimates, DailyKoz is earning about $3,400 per week from BlogAds (or it was, anyway, until its recently political snafus that have cost it some ads).

Erg. Per my comment on micropayments, I meant to link to this essay of mine.

1) Micropayments. The key to charging for content is DON'T charge for everything, just charge for some percentage (10%; 1%, for example) of premium content.

2) "Recommended donation." Like a museum. People can give nothing if they like, but suggest what they should donate. Keep track. Make them register for more than the most basic form of content. Then cookie them and keep a running tally of what they owe. Say, 1 penny per page view. After they've viewed 50 or 100 or 500 pages, remind them politely (e.g., with a page intercept, a flashing notice in the corner, an email) that they are obviously a regular reader and you ask your regular readers for a donation. Sure, many, or perhaps most, will ignore it, but in all likelihood a significant percentage will give something. Some will give what you ask, some will give less, some more. In any event, you'll earn more than you earn now.

How about reducing the graphics and text on the main page? Rather than having full posts and images, have a bare bones front page with only headlines and links. Or display just one day's worth of links on the front page.

Then, charge people a yearly membership fee to look at archival posts.

I've seen two other sites faced with this problem come up with creative solutions:

http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com - during a time when finances were tight, they sold user-created banner ads. The ads were fun and became sort of a virtual wall on which people tagged jokes and opinions. They were so popular, people were sorry to see the ads go away after TWoP secured steady funding from Yahoo.

http://www.geekculture.com - Geek Culture decided to sell "Super Fan" subscriptions to offset increased bandwidth costs. Super Fans get their own private forum, larger icons, and get to be drawn into a Joy of Tech comic. Perhaps allowing BoingBoing sponsors to comment on posts would work?

as it turns out the idea I had of combining bittorrents with files/RSS is the latest craze.

BitTorrent and RSS Create Disruptive Revolution -December 14, 2003
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1413418,00.asp

Speed Meets Feed in Download Tool - 02:00 AM Mar. 15, 2004 PT
http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,62651,00.html

to correct my previous statement: the BT system uses http to download the torrent file. the 'final file' that is delivered is orchestrated via a tracker that usually runs on ports other than 80, using TCP.

while I could be callous and state that if your company prohibits you from downloading material from other than port 80 *http* maybe it's cuz your company thinks you should be working instead of downloading non-work related material? call me crazy...

on the other hand:
http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware...=show&ixPost=121796
deja vu
Tuesday, March 09, 2004

...some trackers do in fact seed on port 80, rare though they may be. You can look for those. Also, most clients (Azureus for one) allow you to specify the incoming port to use.

so hope may be around the corner for you office monkeys, i'll be looking into it.

Effort.
I can't help but think of effort required in all of this. Cory, Mark, Xeni and crew already take valuable time to post notes and help me stay amused and informed through out my day. Subscription models, special content, and merchandise sales all seem result in extra work/management that will take the crew away from what they do best. The following seem to result in the least effort for the needed return:

- The tip jar suggestion seemed non-obtrusive and will probably work better than hoped for.
- I like the idea of delaying the posts 12-24 hrs to promote RSS usage.

I also feel BB represents a refreshing approach to the current state of things. Interesting people don’t always have to charge to share their views, ideas, and things they like. I guess any attempt to limit this, sort of hits against some of the values (real or imagined) that I have associated with BB.

My thoughts on ads seem to be thoroughly covered by others. Suffice it to say, they are negative.

Edited by author 04-07-2004 11:14 AM
Marlon: bOING bOING began as a print 'zine, back in 1988! More on that here...
http://www.zinebook.com/interv/boing.html

-pesco

Deleon: [edit]And a torrent is a bad idea. torrents are fine for downloading linux isos and porn, but not for a website. corporate networks don't allow that stuff, it has to use normal http.

bittorrents are distributed via http. perhaps what you mean to say is: corp's don't allow exchanges over anything other than ports 80 (http) and maybe 21 (ftp).

otherwise, the homepage of this site could have a link to download the torrent file via http. once a bittorrent client is open, it is using http to communicate and download from trackers and users.

the advantages to this system are obvious. the bandwidth is spread out among many users. file distribution of legal product is absolutely safe and has no logical objectionability.

Edited by author 04-07-2004 09:26 AM
Subscription...

http://drhome.digitalriver.com/livehtml/newsite/pr_307.html

Opening links in a new window will not affect bandwidth usage.

Since this thread runs to well over 200+ posts I doubt my idea will be all that unique (or even read!) but I am a casual reader of Boing Boing and feel partially responsible for its current state.

First off I have to say charging for content is not going to work, unless your goal is to reduce the number of readers you have, as people are accustomed to getting high quality content for free.

But sometimes I see two 'ill's and wonder why they can't cancel each other out. I think Boing Boing should go 'print' and fill the vacuum of literate / geeky magazines which is left on the newstands today. Since Wired went corporate there has been nothing to replace the voice of the fringe in print. I really lament the great magazines of the past; High Frontiers, Mondo 2000, Omni, and the early run of Wired.

I think Boing Boing has that cohesive stickiness that other sites lack. if someone sents me a link to a Boing Boing story I already know I am going to read it before I even click the URL.

So I guess I am saying there has to be a publisher out there willing to take on Boing Boing and make it a brand with all the good (server space, really wide readership, really big glossy pictures and articles which you can read on the bus) and bad (corporate influence, crass promotions, loss of creative control and huge new egos for all the Boing Boing contributors ) that that implies.

Sell Blogads. You'll be in a network with some of the most interesting blogs around: DailyKos, Talkingpointsmemo, Atrios... and hundreds more. Good for you, good for them. Some political advertisers crave BoingBoing's audience, and a bunch of tech advertisers are lining up too. Should make $2000-$4000 a month. Give me a call @ 617 395 0176.

I'd simply add google adsense. With your hit levels and if you put them in the right position, I would suggest you could more than cover your costs. I've used this strategy on my sites and found it to be very effective. You won't be able to retire from them, but should be able to cut some costs.

Also as others have said - your front page is pretty massive - perhaps use extended entries more...thumbnails for pictures...whatever it takes to cut down bandwidth from that end.

Good luck and keep up the great work.

Edited by author 04-07-2004 04:17 AM
Freenet and its ilk run over port 80, encrypted, just like SSL (or ssh if config'd thus). Snoop-proof to all but the extremely motivated (Flowers By Irene), and therefore invulnerable to firewalling and other such impediments.

Freenet runs on Java, and IIRC, there's a version of it out there that comes complete with a standalone JVM, so it'll run on lockdown office-drone PC's. (It's how I play Battletech at work... a fan-developed, network aware bootleg computer version of the classic board/miniature game. Runs on my Mac and Ultra2 at home and my nazibox at work.)

I'm sure something dreary like a subscription or epilepsy-inducing flash banner ads will be implemented instead.

Edited by author 04-07-2004 01:45 AM
actually, as I recall, the comments went away when an influx of twits came to see the guy from rotten.com in the guest bar, and near the same time, for some bizarre reason, images were enabled in the discussion forum... so we had goatse left and right til the comments were removed in their entirety.

[edit]And a torrent is a bad idea. torrents are fine for downloading linux isos and porn, but not for a website. corporate networks don't allow that stuff, it has to use normal http.

Mark, David, you've already received a good number of solutions... optimising your code and images and opening links in a new window would probably cut your bandwidth to 1/3 the current amount, and changing to a new host will remove the worries over excessive bandwidth. (and if the host prices listed thus far are too high, you can get 500 megs of bandwidth at 1and1.com's lowest end dedicated server for only 49 a month). The assorted ideas for raising money are good, but cutting cost is much more valuable than raising money (tell that to the government) though of course both can be helpful.

Adding comments back in would be nice, but leave the images off. And keep in mind that comments will greatly *increase* your traffic, especially if you dump quicktopic and host them yourself.

Edited by author 04-07-2004 01:15 AM
simple answer: autogenerate a torrent with the current html/gfx of the site every hour or other predefined time.

forget turning into a paysite. offer one torrent as 'the archive' (needed only to update this once a month or so) and one as the 'news of the day' or 'monthly news'. put it up on suprnova.org/other or have your own tracker site hosting the torrent file. this would work because the content is fresh and would have many seeders/leechers at any given time.

you could take this further and develop an app that runs in your html page that acts as the bittorrent client and once the download is complete, automatically displays the html and graphics.

Why not charge for the latest content... for instance, if you are a paying member (I'm thinking $1/month) you get up-to-date content. Penny pincher's get yesterdays with teasers. Just a thought.

boing, boing, boing...

http://www.filmrot.com

Warren wrote:

"And that there is why the commenting system will very likely stay gone."

One would hope not. That would be a pretty lousy reason for not having a commenting system -- does one or two comments by trolls really negate the other 200+ comments? Before, the comments were a large part of the reason I and others visited the site.

Otherwise it's just Gizmodo for weirdos (in the best possible sence of that term). It's a bit incongruous to see people license their works in a format that would allow someone to do much worse than that comment to Cory's book, but for Boing! Boing! itself to be a one-way street. The comments and suggestions by other visitors were half the fun -- why let the occasional idiot troll hold that hostage?

Although it may have already been mentioned, why not establish mirror sites. It works well for Cryptome.

I haven't read through all 200+ comments, but surely someone must have already suggested that links open in a new window? That alone would cut your bandwidth consumption considerably.

Edited by author 04-06-2004 10:38 PM
Ha! Good one Ramon.

May I add that your blog and novels are quite impressive in their nullity?

I've asked myself that question about Cory's novels and the answer was, "Yes. Yes they would."

But don't let the fact that you didn't understand the novels stop you from reading! There are quite a few great books waiting for you at your level.

Now, I am going to return to Mark's topic and continue to read it with interest.

(Edited to point out that Mark's original post never mentioned a subscription model.)

And that there is why the commenting system will very likely stay gone.

Hey Cory, I wouldn't fuck around with your Boing Boing publicity machine because no one would ever buy another of your shite novels if they had to pay to read your self-promotions and advertisements.

You're a terrible writer with great publicity. The moment people stop reading your blog, your career as a "novelist" will disappear. You only have to ask yourself: "Would anyone read my novels if I weren't constantly flogging them on my blog?" "Can a blog with little original content and nothing value-added survive on a subscription model?" The answer to both questions is no.

Edited by author 04-06-2004 09:44 PM
Mark,
I seldom visit the actual Boing Boing site, I read the excellent RSS feed, and unless you change your feed to force me to visit the site (like, for example BLOGDEX's annoying redirection) I won't see the site, Ads won't "help [you] pay the bills and make enough money to re-invest in Boing Boing."

How about focusing on ways to reduce the cost

One idea that comes to mind is that your site, posts, archives and all (except the graphics) is in Google's cache, once Google has crawled the site, if you change your links to Google's cache, when Google next crawls the site the links will point to the google cache. This is just an off the wall thought which could save tons of bandwidth and only suffer the nuisance of the Google cache header (which one might consider an Ad.)

(umm, don't change your RSS feed though, Bloglines is kind enough to cache it in total for easy low tech searching.)

Mark, I know you're being thrown a lot of stuff, but I think Jonnay's ideas are REALLY GOOD. A blogging workshop, for example ... and the link lottery? I'd throw my hat in that ring! Definitely a possibility ...

Evidently my friends, the pronouncment of the demise of LSD is very premature, I can assure you that vials of liquid LSD 25 are available at the very University that published the report that Mark quoted......HAPPY TRAILS TO YOU

I'd be happy to pay for BoingBoing. I get a lot of brain food out of it. $20/year via PayPal?

My $0.02.

Many bloggers would LOVE to have the same problem boingboing is having. Or at the very least, they think they would love to have the problem.

Let them put their money where their mouth is. Allow 10-15 paid-for links. For extra points, the BoingBoing Crew could go through the links to see which ones were cool enough to pay them the 25/50/500 bucks for their monthly link. (Ohh, a Pro-Bush/Cheney blog, with lots of spelling mistakes, and a horrible sense of design? That'll be the special-friend price of $1,000. Thank you come again!)

Have a 2 Dollar Blog Link Lottery. Your Blog linked on Boingboing, for a month, no "Cool-Qualifications" necessary, if you win. Make them answer a skill testing question to boot.

Blog Workshops. We all know these guys wrock. I betya many people would pay money for some kind of online-workshop to see how the hell they rock so MUCH.

Of corse, all this is AFTER working on the bandwidth issues. Getting some good HTTP headers, and CSS goodness is job 1. (As plenty of other people have mentioned).

What if you did a boingboing re-design contest with an entry fee? Your bandwidth-friendly design featured on boingboing. PLENTY of graphic artists and designers would love to have the ego stroke of being the boingboing designer.

Perhaps http://www.gizmodo.com offers a good model (although I don't know how successful they've been with it) - the ads on that site seem to work pretty well with the flow of the blog.

Was it Yahoo? AOL? that was auctioning off the spammer's car?

Kidnap a spammer (promise to buy the vi@g@r@, but only in person, and charge $25 a pop to shoot it with BBs.

BBs!!! get it?!!!




never mind.

If you do a TotalFark type thing, I suggest you go with the name BoingBoingBoing.

Edited by author 04-06-2004 06:19 PM
i'm going to sound like a broken record, but here's what i suggest....

move to a dedicated box
if i recall correctly, boingboing is hosted with a whole bunch of other sites at your standard, everyday webhost. there are plenty of hosts out there that can offer a colocated box with 30-50gb of transfer for under $100/month.
updata: andy pointed out to me via im that servermatrix has plans that offer 1000 gigs of transfer on a colocated server starting at $89/month. that's freaking cheap!

optimize the code
seriously, i don't know how many times the font tag needs to be used on a given page. i understand that y'all are writers and not web designers but that shit has to go.

text ad supported rss
apparently, mehack has been doing this. i'm not sure what sort of success they've been having with it, but it's a start. i'm sure there are plenty of mt hackers that would be more than happy to help you bang something like this together. it also opens the gateway for...

paid services
described best as "the livejournal model", it shouldn't be too hard to offer other services like discussions and ad free pages/rss to people who pay $5/month or $50/year. have a password protected vhost [paid.boingboing.net] that offers unrestricted access for subscribers. it's as simple as having movabletype output the ad-free files to a seperate directory and working out an .htaccess based authentication system.

- boogah
- http://layerone.info/

Edited by author 04-06-2004 05:34 PM
Jeremy, that's a really fun idea! Not sure it would raise the kind of money we need, but it certaintly wouldn't hurt. My pal Terre just designed one of the shirts for The Wire and really enjoyed the challenge.

(And thanks to everyone who is contributing to this forum. We really appreciate it.)

-pesco

Yea lowbrow.com is an example of how NOT to fundraise.

After some consideration, a decision was made not to subsidize lowbrow any longer. It's not that important to us. If it's important to you, do your duty. For those of you that have contributed, we'll keep it running for the length of time that your contributed funds cover -- at this point we're looking at the mid point of April.

whatever you do, don't be like the assholes at lowbrow.com

i've never seen a more snarky approach to fundraising

I'd suggest you follow the model used by "the agonist", http://agonist.got.net/.

Not sure how they're doing it, but they have managed to grow their site quite successfully as it has become more popular.

Or you could be like that n'er do well over at textism (www.textism.com) and just beg for paypal deposits! :)

good luck boing boing!

Edited by author 04-06-2004 04:19 PM
.

Problem Solved!

Use Thumbnails:

Users can then click on the image to view it in its original resolution.

You can use higher resolution pictures since images will not automatically load.

I am a dial-up user and will love you for faster page loads.

Example: That Bush Cheney image on the front page is 27K. You could bring that down to about 3K with optimized and thumbnail and people can still see the picture.

Bush Cheney Slogan (3K)
http://www.evmo.com/text/frm/getfeed.aspx?feedID=1003

BoingBoing Not Optimized Bush Cheney Slogan (27K) http://craphound.com/images/sloganatorpassover.jpg

Other people have said "merch" and I think this is a good answer. Lots of people with excellent design skills read Boing Boing; do a T-shirt series, like UK music mag The Wire is doing. Offer a "standard" Boing Boing T-shirt but also offer a new limited-edition T-shirt designed from a different hip designer/cartoonist/friend of Boing Boing. Sell a subscription to the T-shirt series for those who want them all. Etc.

All of your html pages are non-cacheable (no last-modified set, no expiration header set (/m58 I believe mentions this)). Every time google or someone else reindexes your site they fetch the entire contents of each page rather than check to see if it's been updated. If you're building the pages dynamically using php or something else, just add the appropriate HTTP headers to the page.

Also might look into gzip-encoding the pages if your server supports it.

Make images links instead of direct images.

Apply for a government grant or an endowment for the arts.

I noticed that the EST book is still 38K. When are you going to optimize it?

Edited by author 04-06-2004 02:26 PM


Mirror:

A few people here recommended mirroring and P2P solutions. It looks like EVMO has mirrored BoinBoing here.
They also appear to be using thumbnails which makes the site use much less bandwidth.


BoingBoing
Mirror:
http://www.evmo.com/text/frm/getfeed.aspx?feedID=1003


Hope
this helps

Edited by author 04-06-2004 02:12 PM
run an annual/semi-anual pledge drive that is all over the site. similar to how PBS stations rely on listener (or in your case viewer/conusumer) supported donations. Don't be greedy, just get enough to cover expenses and donate the rest to charity.

Other ideas:

• optimize code base
• leverage sponsored links
• leverage amazon's web services to contextually place products
• get a business plan!
• pull some weight when signing a contract w/ your web host company (everyone loves a popular site--use your logs to show your value!!)

Good luck!

-jason

Edited by author 04-06-2004 02:11 PM
Seems to me if you started using bittorrent to distribute your webpage, people would immediately hack bittorrent to put goaese images on your front page.

---
hinterlands.cc

/m207 if the RSS-feed directs back to the blog entry, the bandwidth savings of RSS are gone, again.

Or the Mark-cam. I just suspect that wouldn't be as fun. Nothing personal, Mark.

Somebody suggested charging to have Cory dedicate a chapter in your name.

I think we should take that one step further, and we pay to have Cory insert us [product, website, item of choice] into the novel/short-story.

Yeah, I know--artistic integrity and all.


And would I be willing to pay? Am I really that vain?







ooooh, yeah!

Other possibilities include Mark doing caricatures, David doing nano-signatures, and the Xeni-cam.

And, hey! Macki was the one who suggested BB pay-for-play in the first place!!!

Cory should stop giving away books for free and instead use the profit to pay for the bandwidth.

I mainly view your content via your rss feed. The "articles" all have a 'Link' link in them which takes me directly to the site/story being referenced. If you go with content relevant ads (ala AdWords or something) you may want to remove that direct link and instead have users go through the website version of the story to access the actual referenced site. Not as convenient but if it is the difference between continuing to exist and not, I think it is a small price to pay and potentially will increase your revenue. If this doesn't make sense, email me at jonatwork(at)hotmail.com

Edited by author 04-06-2004 01:37 PM
I agree that reducing the size of the page and perhaps finding a cheaper deal on bandwidth are logical starting points.

I don't know how many hits you got from the RSS feed vs. direct page loads, but if it's significant then you could reduce load a bunch by having the RSS links pull up single item pages -- not the entire front page. I realize this would require a change in the site's backend, but I think that's probably inevitable anyway.

I like all the creative ideas below, but given your traffic I think the simple addition of a little advertising would generate significant revenue with almost no work. A Commission Junction ad for NYT subscriptions will net you $25 per (or did when I last used them).

Expanded merchandising! I know plenty of high traffic sites which exist on their merchandise earnings. Oh, yeah, and I want a boingboing T-shirt before any of my kids!

make discussions pay only!!!! you can eliminate (or exacerbate) trolling and get a new revenue stream. People see cool kids talking about cool stuff and want IN . . . make it like twenty bucks a month, too, something ridiculously expensive, that's how "trendy" subcultures are built!

Didn't Camgirls solve this problem a long time ago?


Kidding.

Boing Boing is curated and frequented by lots of web-famous folks so why not use that to your advantage? Perhaps the readers and editors could donate things to auction or sell? While this may not be a long-term solution it could help boost things in the meantime. I know you guys are crazy busy so I offer these ideas merely to get you thinking:

- Auction a consultation with Cory for aspiring writers to get feedback on their work in progress. Or pay to insert yourself as the main character in a short story?

- Auction or sell your portrait as created by Mark Frauenfelder or other original art. Perhaps some time for artists to meet with Mark to get portfolio feedback, design tips etc.

- Auction a photo-adventure/tag-along with Xeni where the winner would shadow her on a busy day and document the adventure with a cam-phone for inclusion on Boing Boing or xeni.net

- David could auction off technology secrets or a mystery bag of gadgets and widgets culled from his secret stash of freebies while at Wired. (if this exists)

Auction off the guest blog sidebar for a while!

I'm sure other readers and users that have skills would contribute a product, prize or money to keep Boing Boing around.

Edited by author 04-06-2004 12:00 PM
Imho Salon's day-pass model is reasonable. As for subscription models, you could designate fresh and archived content as "premium"; i.e., non-subs see only content 3-7 days old. In this specific case I have no problem with paid subscriptions; BoingBoing's well worth a couple $/month. Heavy discounts for annual / lifetime membership, please. :)

"The first thing to do is definitely to just clean up the code, and reduce the number of items shown on the main page. I don't think I've ever seen a blog that shows 30+ entries on the main index! 3-4 would really be plenty, as long as there's an easy-to-find links for 'show more entries', or 'show the entries from the past x days' or something."

At the very least, they could save a lot of bandwidth by only showing the last two days instead of the last three.

I'd pay for QuickTopic access. Just look how much this one link has engendered. I miss the extensions the community brings in.

Cutting code size is an excellent idea. There was an article out recently about how much Google has optimized (shrunk) their homepage code.

Also, how about cutting bandwidth costs? ValueWeb.com is offering dedicated servers with 1 TERABYTE of transit for $59/month. (I have no relation to ValueWeb, nor have I ever used them.) ev1servers.net is offering 700 GB of transit for $99/month (I've used them and they work fine). Even if the current servers are kept and the site is just mirrored a few times an hour, this should cut costs a lot.

cheers,
glenn

I suspect that with BoingBoing's level of demand and brand recognition, syndicating the content to magazines, websites, television news, and book publishers in return for royalties would be lucrative.

A number of suggestions on here are for things like opening links in new windows, having snazzy ads that 'drip down from the top of the screen', and things like that.

DON'T DO THESE. They're annoying, and tend to break in odd ways whenever someone tries to do anything interesting with the page (such as, say, view it in alternative browsers...)

The first thing to do is definitely to just clean up the code, and reduce the number of items shown on the main page. I don't think I've ever seen a blog that shows 30+ entries on the main index! 3-4 would really be plenty, as long as there's an easy-to-find links for 'show more entries', or 'show the entries from the past x days' or something. This is especially important since you've got so many pictures on the entries.

I'd like to see nicer xhtml+css while you're at it.

There's no need for ads or subscriptions. Just put up a PayPal donation link and maybe Amazon Honor System, and the whole thing will pay for itself. Bring it to people's attention maybe once a month.

I would pay $5/month if it meant bringing quicktopic back.

Seriously.

Best options:
• online donations: money via a PayPal link + bandwidth via mirrors
• subscription-donation hybrids

Other options:
• paid subscription
• Google AdSense
• sponsorship links
• trial subscription
• optimise your code
• premium content – pay for archives
• free content +content only for paid subscribers
• affiliate links
• organize focused events
• commissions on sales of reviewed (good or bad) products
• sponsor page
• banner ads
• sell something
• ebay auction
• newsletters: free and paid

The free version - tips and tricks; the paid version adds alerts, updates, downloadable reports, and archives, plus any freeware.

Expert advices:
Publishing: Free or Fee?

http://www.clickz.com/experts/design/freefee/archives.php
http://www.clickz.com/experts/design/freefee/article.php/3088241
http://www.clickz.com/experts/design/freefee/article.php/3088281


The World 2 come
http://divedi.blogspot.com

I like totalfark's model and pay for it every month whether I use it or not - $5 a month is cheap for the amount of time I spend at normal Fark.

I'd do the same for BoingBoing... I can't think of what you could do extra though :).

I just saw a cool idea the the GAIM site started using - auction off Boing Boing stuff on eBay! Things such as signed items from the writers or your old jeans... Of course, there is also the cafe press route as well... Good luck!

If you set your archives to daily or even weekly you would probably save a fortune on costs. If someone follows a permalink they end up downloading a month worth a of entries. I plugged your january archive page into websiteoptimization.com's doohickey and got this:

# TOTAL_OBJECTS - Warning! The total number of objects on this page is 125 - consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Combine, refine, and optimize your external objects. Replace graphic rollovers with CSS rollovers to speed display and minimize HTTP requests.
# TOTAL_IMAGES - Warning! The total number of images on this page is 124, consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Combine, refine, and optimize your graphics. Replace graphic rollovers with CSS rollovers to speed display and minimize HTTP requests.
# TOTAL_SIZE - Warning! The total size of this page is 2497953 bytes, which will load in 522.84 seconds on a 56Kbps modem. Consider reducing total page size to less than 30K to achieve sub eight second response times on 56K connections. Pages over 100K exceed most attention thresholds at 56Kbps, even with feedback. Consider contacting us about our optimization services.
# HTML_SIZE - Warning! The total size of this HTML page is 224181 bytes, which is over 100K! Consider optimizing your HTML and eliminating unnecessary content and features.
# IMAGES_SIZE - Warning! The total size of your images is 2273772 bytes, which is over 30K. Consider optimizing your images for size, combining them, and replacing graphic rollovers with CSS.
# SCRIPT_SIZE - Congratulations, the total size of all your scripts is 363 bytes, which is less than 1160 bytes. This will fit into one higher-speed TCP-IP packet.

How about someone along the lines of salon.com's daypass, though it could last a month. Based on ip address/cookie, and it would only popup after you'd been reading boingboing for a month, so it wouldn't put newbies off.

The rss feed would link to it once a month, and the site could even serve it to people who are visiting much more frequently (as a link with a bit of focus).

One of the most annoying things about the otherwise-superb Boing! Boing! is that the discussion group like this went away. I would gladly pay a premium subscription fee just to bring back the discussion board.

Actually, I'd probably pay a subscription fee regardless -- after all, we were paying for the excellent zine long before it turned in to the excellent blog.

BTW, I'm curious -- just how much bandwidth did you use in March?

Here are the revenue streams that seem (to me) to be least offensive and/or inconvenient for folks:

• Merchandising. We do fairly well selling t-shirts and the like. Allowing preorders can help defray printing costs if you're worried about that sort of thing.
• Premium subscriptions. Allow the majority of your content to be available to most of your readers, and let hardcore fans pay for a few extra bites or early access.
• Google ads. People hate banners, but don't seem to mind targeted text ads.

A combination of these should probably do it for you.

Have you considered using bit torrent to distribute your
rss feed? That would greatly decrease the bandwidth used
for that.

Why not abandon the website entirely and only post an RSS feed. Let other people "publish" your feed to the web on their own bandwidth. Let a thousand BoingBoing's bloom.

Ari

Amen FNR_Thomas - salon.com's ad-viewing for a day pass is genius.

I'm perfectly happy to pay a quid or two a month. One of my other favourite sites (popbitch.com) just asks for donations... And does perfectly well out of it. Mind you, most of London's media industry would collapse if we, like, had to do any work, and couldn't spend all day nattering about what the ****'s in the Beckham text messages were...

Perhaps you could make 'subscriptions' voluntary. Each month send an email 'reminder' to contribute. Also add a Paypal instant option. I would try voluntary subscriptions before any involuntary measures.

I like the way they do it at Salon.com. Pay a fee, or invest 30 seconds of your time clicking through an advertisement.

Edited by author 04-06-2004 09:19 AM
This is pretty much what everyone else said, but I'm adding my brass razoo's worth so you get the point! :)

Absolutely, optimise your code - it'll only take one of your mates an evening to clear out all the evil, evil <font ... > tags, and bang out a set of MT templates and a CSS file. I even saved the BB HTML code a fortnight ago and had a stab at doing this, though in the end I decided I had better things to do. And I know that there are other people who will stick their hand up and do a great job. Keeping the site lean is far more important than keeping its current look, but you can have both! That chunky "girl with the jackhammer" logo will optimise nicely. :)

As for the money aspect, hold a fundraiser week or fortnight. Bug the crap out of everybody for that period to give them your money, like a community radio station - you might have to think of some giveaways that won't defeat the exercise of raising cash - and then for the rest of the year just run the usual merch shop on the sid. Keep the merch cool and plug it like buggery! As long it's in tune with the site, and isn't tacky, people won't mind.

Parties sound like a keen idea too, though I'm not in SF, but it would fit the ethos of your site.

Text ads wouldn't be too bad, either, they'd have to be in a prominent position, but if you were pitching them to punters as a way of paying for BB.

And since you're expecting donations from the community, letting them participate by bringing back comments (perhaps when that Strangelovian TypeKey thing comes into full effect) should be considered. Screw the trolls.

Hi, Dave here, from blather.net. I'm in a similar position - I've spent the last six months kicking some life into the site, and we're now up to 100,000 page views a month. Bandwith isn't an issue, because what I've done is purchase a reseller account from my ISP (hosting365). For €50 a month, I can host a huge wodge of websites, some of them paying customers, others are friends and organisations that I host for free. Basically it means that blather.net's hosting costs nothing, and is actually making a profit.

That said, I'm not bringing in a fortune, and I'd love to be able to pay writers, or at least be able to spoil them a little!

The google ads aren't make tonnes of money, but it is trickling in, as are the t-shirt sales.

My next plan is to move things to a point where there's enough money coming in from some kind of income, where I can definitely afford to put X amount of timer per month into the site.

Not quite on the scale of Boingboing.net, but the post caught my attention, as brought concerns that I'd been having myself...

I think an FAQ about what methods you've considered and discounted would save a lot of the repetition in this thread. Maybe with sub-threads for people to endlessly go over AdSense T&C if they want.

Has anyone mentionned the LWN model? Pay to get stuff on time, wait a week to get it for free.

Cory,

<p>Most importantly your content is rich, is generated by an authentic, has a trusted 'voice', provides real value (tangible and intangible), and 'is' what it claims to be (a directory of 'wonderful' things. It's a compelling site - proven by the number of visitors.

<p>I would suggest a combination of tactics to fund the site. Any one solution will not appeal universally.

<p>Some ideas:

<p>1) Check out what's happening at TidBits www.tidbits.com - they're instituted a voluntary contribution program
http://www.tidbits.com/about/support/contributors.html

<p>2) Work through a broker to take a piece off the top for anything that boingboing posts to a commercial link that leads to sales (you, or the broker, can decide which items - e.g. if it's a link to Amazon, or GM, take the $$$ - if it's to some fledgling business, make it a random act of kindness). Some will say this degrades the quality of the site, but I trust you to keep things 'honest'.

<p>3) Sell the boingboing concept - work it through a third party that YOU trust. All those hits are worth something to someone. If the right buyer, with the right sensitivity/resonances is found, everyone wins. I trust that you're capable of finding the right buyer, if you want to pursue this direction.

<p>4) Leverage the site to partially advertise your current hosting service's offerings. You may already be doing this.

<p>5) Try the Slashdot method. Subs get "ad free". Everyone else gets sees a few ads.

IMHOP a subscription scheme would decrease your readers too much - I personally find Paypal and the likes too unwieldy and not common enough to use as valid payment solution - using a credit card directly might afford too much trust on the readers side.
Try to sell off your guest bar - I'm not a writer, but I think a many of your fans would pay some to be able to add his two bits ...

I'm rather fond of MacInTouch's ad scheme...*

That said, fuck it. Client/Server is so reganesque. Move the blog to a feature-rich, censorship hostile p2p system, like Freenet or Entropy, and make the readers use their own damn bandwidth. Slack!

You'll need to abandon Greenspunian web dogma, tho. Also, don't trust the suit! They may look tame and friendly but they'll gnaw the face off a baby if they smell stock options on its breath.

"3. Distrust authority. Promote decentralization." - Steven Levy

SoupIsGood Food

 (* Which is a simple, plaintext link a line or two long, in a pale green one-element table between blog entries. It's caught my eye and gathered a click more often than the flash blinky-spinny-overdesigned baner and sidebar ads on every other site in the known omniverse ever have. )

I love Boingboing and other sites for their insights into a different world.

I cannot afford to pay for this. That world shuts down, Ok.. I regret it. That world is closed.

By by.

LJ-model: Pay for more privileges. In this case, the obvious one is commenting.

I suggest "donation subscriptions". I had a rather big site in the past, and I've reached the point where you are now as well. So I asked my readers to donate a buck or two, which went okay for a couple of days but then they forgot.

So I've introduced "donation subscriptions". Basically it was like $2 or $3 on a fire-and-forget basis. The money was transferred by PayPal once per month. I was astonished how many people would do that. Turned out they were willing to donate, but they simply forgot about it after a while. So, since they liked the site they were willing to help out, while not being forced to think much about it. Passive donations, so to speak.

It worked extremely well. You might wanna give this a try; PayPal doesn't ask for money for the setup, and it's really worth the try, methinks.

If you need help, drop me a line. My mail address is carlo[at]g-blog[dot]net.

Carlo

Edited by author 04-06-2004 03:47 AM
Here's an idea: Make the <link> element in your RSS feed point to the link that the post discusses. This way, whenever I read a BB entry in my aggregator and click on the entry heading, e.g. on the link with the text "Ganguro girls through a Black artist's eyes", I go directly to that site, bypassing the BB permalink page.

I realize that I could just click on Link to get the same effect, but many people (including me) instinctively click on the entry heading.

Get Cory's publisher to underwrite the site. Then they can write it off as an advertising expense. Use those corporate tax breaks!

Auction off: a special Cory Doctorow chapter in his next novel. Dediciated to YOU the BoingBoing auction winner.

Anotehr thing to auction off - a night on the town with Xeni - enough said.

There are LOADS of people who will pay just to hang out with you. Put that into your virtual pipe and ponder a bit.

In addition - How many page -views- are you getting per month? If you have 20 million or more, you can qualify for Google's premium service. More information available here:

https://www.google.com/adsense/?hl=en_US

If you don't, forget it. Nevertheless, I'd say going Google is the way to go, provided you feel it raises enough revenue. I'd dare say it does.

Have you taken a look at AdSense?

https://adwords.google.com/select/

- At the bottom - In general, I'm a huge fan of Google and their seeming commitment to raise money while giving customers the respect they deserve. You should consider that.

Print edition being an annual, or bi-annual glossy book...

Magazines- nope.

Another idea: host your own; rent a couple T3's and buy some Xserves. Host some other like minded sites, to offset Boing Boing's costs...

Sell cool stuff, Boing Boing mugs, hoodies, maybe look at going to a print edition. Context targeted ads make sense, too.

Yeah, isn't there are way to distribute the bandwidth needs between people who read you guys regularly. Like a BitTorrent for web sites?

ditto the 20 bananas per annum, it's the least i could give back to boing boing helping me fill out my timesheet every week :)

It's a good site. I would send you twenty bucks a year on a voluntary basis. That's where the supply and demand curves intersect for me.

RH

i manage my hosting bills (& rent) mostly through just merchandising what i do and avoiding all 3rd party ads. you guys could make some SWEET t-shirts if you put your minds to it.

mail me at clango at dieselsweeties dot com if you want info on my screen printer and the order processing guy who works for me.

two words... P2P web server. Distributed load and distributed content. Kick those Apache guys firmly in the butt and get them started on this. :)

Yeah, I remember seeing this one movie that advanced the careers of the actors and director, and it really pissed me off. Then there was this one book that I read that made the author really famous. I spit at David Eggers whenever I see him now.

Since I never said the advancement of the bloggers' careers pissed me off, I'm going to have to presume you're just being humorous.

Edited by author 04-05-2004 11:46 PM


looks like BoinBoing is mirrored here for PDAs


http://www.evmo.com/text/frm/getfeed.aspx?feedID=1003 -link



..

I wouldn't pay for a subscription to BB, although I have no problem whatsoever with advertisements - seeing how so many of the posts on BB are already ads of a sort for the Boingers' various projects and appearances. Asking for subscriptions to a site which is used very heavily to advance the careers of the site's contributors strikes me, frankly, as rather disingenuous.

Yeah, I remember seeing this one movie that advanced the careers of the actors and director, and it really pissed me off. Then there was this one book that I read that made the author really famous. I spit at David Eggers whenever I see him now.

If you had five posters to BB, it would only cost $20, and the notoriety/whuffiejoi de vivre might be worth that, I dunno.

I agree. I'd gladly tip you via PayPal, etc. I read your site daily, so it's worth the $ to me.