I HATE PAGEBREAKS.
Re-Post for experience and love.
Re-Post for experience and love.
Selling Through ModRetro
I think the idea of being able to sell items through ModRetro, store-style, would be great.
Portables and other electronic devices.
I DO think, however, that ModRetro needs to make something off of this.
Not a lot.
And to be honest, probably not even from the sale itself.
I'd say that money would have to come from something else that's simple.
Like, let someone Pay to not have ads on their items page.
Or perhaps making people pay a small (Think <$2) sign-up fee to be able to sell on ModRetro, etc.
Something along those lines.
ModRetro Merch
The idea of a ModRetro store, with ModRetro stuff.
I think it's a bloody cool idea.
Sure, the usual, T-Shirts (which I personally wouldn't buy), hats, mugs (which I'd buy in a heartbeat), etc.
That's all simple, and it'd be cool.
But also outright products, stuff that's not necessarily "Merch", but just COOL stuff that Retro Gamers would love.
This is ModRetro after all.
Anything from old games and accessories down to Merchandise related to Retro Gaming.
Ads Outright
Ads, their needed, they're worth a surprising amount, their good for the forums.
The money from Advertising on this site really ought to drive this site as a whole.
Or at least, that's a nice idea, isn't it?
Ad Revenue
Now, what can we do with Ad Revenue?
Let's make a quick differentiation here. Ad Revenue is free money, essentially.
It's support from the user base.
Money from a Shop, etc, is VERY different, and not at all what I'm talking about here.
I'm saying strictly Ad Revenue.
Right now, we already make enough to pay for this site, which is WONDERFUL.
Even a little extra.
As we expand, gain more users, content, etc, our Ad Revenue will go up, that's simple to understand.
If we were to be as extreme as doing something like an Ad-Cow to draw in large numbers of users, we could increase our Ad Revenue TREMENDOUSLY.
As far as I'm concerned, this should ALL go toward supporting the site itself.
Paying for hosting, etc. BUT, of course, there's extra. I don't expect that to change.
As far as I'm concerned this extra should be put toward benefiting the community.
Fun and Games and attracting traffic all at once: Contests.
Contests
They've already been mentioned, thankfully.
I can speak from quite a bit of experience, Ad-Revenue piles up FAST as your traffic increases, and you can quickly afford some pretty sweet prizes.
Doing large contests, ESPECIALLY effortless ones, drive traffic, and are frikkin fun.
Obviously, contests involving modding of some sort (Case-Mods, LED Contest, Portable Making, etc) are great too, and relevant to the community.
But small, fun prizes, issued for effortless enter-and-win type contests are GREAT for traffic.
As well as simple stuff. "Guess the Game", showing a tiny portion of a screenshot from a classic title. Winner is drawn from people with correct answer.
Stuff like that is EASY.
And contests do well, for the community as a whole.
Ad-Share - How & Why it Can Work
I don't know if it was originally Palmer's idea or not, but it's a great idea regardless.
Adshare, being able to earn revenue from your threads alone.
For those who don't know, the idea here is that users can earn a portion of the Ad-Revenue gained from views and clicks within their thread.
Factoring AdShare into my previously discussed topic of Ad-Revenue is actually very simple.
It's simply a matter of calculating how much of the Revenue was gained from a user's thread, and givin' 'em the cash.
But, of course, that wouldn't work as-is.
Everybody would be getting pennies and nickels here and there, and the Index and Forum pages would be all that accounts for ModRetro's Revenue!
So that's not quite how it would be done.
Now, there are two things I can say would honestly work.
The first would be the Minimum Method.
Simply that a single thread must generate a minimum amount of revenue (my preference), OR a minimum percentage of revenue, in order to collect their share.
That way small threads that make up a few cents don't pay out, where as high-traffic threads with many posts that actually make a few bucks, contribute to the Poster's wallet.
The second method, honestly, wouldn't work without the first. It "could", but you'd hit the same problem as straight-up division.
The idea is submission.
People must ASK for their thread to be added to the Ad-Share program, which it's part of for a set or variable amount of time.
So long as the thread is accepted into the Ad-Share program, they will receive their portion of the revenue at the end of the month.
Now, employing these two methods together, I would consider ideal.
Only the first method, and, well, there's not much wrong with that.
But employing both methods, users with proper threads that are driving traffic can collect earnings, while others who aren't generating traffic, OR simply would like to allow ModRetro to keep it's share, don't have to be paid.
Putting these two methods would be ideal for ModRetro as a Community, as far as I'm concerned.
Only the first method, well, we'd see quite a few happy users.
Regardless, what matters is that it's managed in a set way.
Straight-division would run ModRetro into the ground, and land a number of people with $0.05 PayPal Payments that they pay $0.12 fees on.
