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I’m afraid any monthly fee will break the spirit and idea of Symbiostock. We already see a stagnation of new members sign ups, introducing a membership fee will push project Symbiostock off the cliff.
Paying a commission might be a viable way to go but will still bear the risk of dividing the Symbiostock community. And it won’t be much different from joining an agency anymore, which isn’t really what most of us wanted.One easy step to take would be creating revenue from new member sign ups. If I remember correctly the Bluehost affiliate program paid $65 for a new web space customer. Maybe there are other hosts that pay a similar amount. I would give new members a choice to either pay $65 for the Symbiostock theme OR get it for free when using the Bluehost affiliate link.
That might not be enough to refinance the maintenance and it still doesn’t solve the problem that not enough new members sign up at this time but at least it’s a way to create some kind of revenue while still keeping Symbiostock free.
while growth in sites has slowed, total images continue to increase
http://cascoly.com/symbio/symbiostock-network-growth.asp
I had 2 new co-op signups yesterday, and 3 who’ve said they’d be joining shortly
the co-op sites share the domain symbiostock-network.com in the global search listings
Steve, did you develop a sales tracking/stats plugin for your co-op sites. If so I would be interested in purchasing that plugin from you. FWIW this is about 1 of five plugins that I could use. It looks like I might need to start paying someone myself to make these plugins for me.
Hey guys, just jumping in.
I appreciate the concern for the project, by the way.
Actually my old-but-still-practical idea is to simply charge for the cloud version, which will take all the responsabilities of site setup OFF the user, plus integegrate a symbiostock-specific social network among customers and users.
The downside? I don’t have the time I used to to develop.
So – people like you remain FREE. People who are on the cloud who don’t have to do anything but simple uploading and publishing pay a monthly fee.
@chromaco wrote:
Symbiostock is doing just fine and clipping along at a slow but steady pace but I think it is primed for something great and it may not reach maturity in time. In other words I think Symbio may miss its window of opportunity. The problem is that Symbiostock cannot continue to be developed for free. It just doesn’t work for the developers. Leo has rightfully changed his focus to actual paying jobs with Symbio as something he works on when he is not trying to feed his family and pay his bills. Obviously Leo would be our first choice but if he is to busy working on things that actually make him money I have contacts that would be capable of making changes to the theme. But they won’t work for free. So I am going to ask this question at the risk of getting tarred and feathered.
Who is willing to pay?
Lets say a $10 per month subscription to continue getting free upgrades and 1 new plugin – or $30 for 2 upgrades per year.
$1500 to $2000 per month would add a lot of rocket fuel to this project and would probably give everyone what they want in less than 12 months. $120 for a spotless theme that does exactly what it should seems very reasonable to me.
We could create a committee to manage the money and make it so that at least two people have to sign off on spending. This wouldn’t be that hard to manage.Ok let the flogging begin.
I think like most things that start out open source. The free version of Symbiostock should probably remain free. Especially as people have already molded it to fit their needs. One thing that I’ve always wondered is why Symbiostock isn’t available on the wordpress.org site? Every single person that works with wordpress stops there at least a few times while developing. I’d imagine that’d give a boost to our publicity. generally , with most free applications, GPL, open source or whatever, a great amount of the technical support and help come from the community.
And then, like what has already been done … The paid version would have great benefits for the site owner (extra features, continued support, things like that)
@leo wrote:Hey guys, just jumping in.
I appreciate the concern for the project, by the way.
Actually my old-but-still-practical idea is to simply charge for the cloud version, which will take all the responsabilities of site setup OFF the user, plus integegrate a symbiostock-specific social network among customers and users.
The downside? I don’t have the time I used to to develop.
So – people like you remain FREE. People who are on the cloud who don’t have to do anything but simple uploading and publishing pay a monthly fee.
I think global customer accounts would be a huge step for the usability of Symbiostock … I guess there’s quite a bit of things that could be offered with the cloud that would be a nightmare with the current system.
I wouldn’t be opposed to paying a small fee or percentage of sales if it meant we were moving the project forward.
Leo how about: we collect money for you so that you can spend more time to develop the cloud version? I like this cloud-idea very much!
What do others think of this?I certainly appreciate the thought! But right now I’m working on an income solution that will be running here on the islands, and that is what I hoped to have fund Symbiostock’s growth.
There is much I could say, but I’ll save it for another time.
@leo wrote:
I certainly appreciate the thought! But right now I’m working on an income solution that will be running here on the islands, and that is what I hoped to have fund Symbiostock’s growth.
There is much I could say, but I’ll save it for another time.
+1
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