Yeah, I've been thinking about those. It would be good to have a range from "Hey, here's a dollar!" to "I want to give you thousands of dollars for some reason!"
Something like:
$1 - You get a medal for your account.
$5 - You get a slightly cooler medal for your account.
$10 - You get your name listed on an OGA supporters page. Also a medal.
$20 - A mousepad or something, perhaps.
$30 - A mug?
$50 - Kind of drawing a blank here. I'll have to check other kickstarters.
$75 - A t-shirt, perhaps
$100 - An interview with BartK, if you have a website.
$200 - Six months of advertising for your game project on the OGA front page.
$500 - You get to pick a pixel art commission, within reason.
$1000 - You get to pick a music commission, within reason.
$3000 - You get to pick a 3D art commission, within reason.
$10000 - BartK will fly out to you and buy you the beverage of your choice.
Each level would come with its own medal. Obviously these need some work, and I need to know how much each of them would actually cost. I'm guesstimating about 20% or so for each one would go to the donation reward.
Update: Had a couple thoughts on advertising, with respect to what MrBeast said.
I could tie advertising in to account pages. If an artist wants to advertise one or more of their sites, they can upload a banner directly on their user account page and pay through paypal to run an ad on the front page.
Also, since people have suggested setting up pages for their games, I could conceivably do the same thing for game pages.
First off, it should be noted that OGA is visited by about 100,000 unique people every month now. Even assuming that a) a lot of these people may be bots, and b) some fraction of people visit from multiple IP addresses, that's most likely still tens of thousands of unique users. Obviously, only a tiny fraction of these people will be willing to spend money, but depending on the size of that fraction, it may be all we need. Also, unique hits have roughly doubled every year since the site was first made several years ago. I don't know how long this pattern will hold. It could end tomorrow, it could continue for a few more years. So even if we're not quite there right now, we may be in a year or two.
Secondly, I don't expect one single source of revenue to be enough. Kickstarter may get us by for a while, but ultimately I need to use some of those funds to bring OGA to a point where it can generate a sustainable income, and that means taking time to create other sources of revenue. Here are the definite ones:
A better (and more obvious) system for allowing people to donate (and, in particular, subscribe), and something that connects those donations directly and immediately to the donor's account, so that they can be recognized as a supporter (if they want to be).
Advertising. I've started this, but once again, this is something I need to automate. I need to a) advertise that we're selling ad space in a prominent way, and b) automate the process of purchasing that ad space (subject to review before the ad actually runs).
Swag. Mainly the ususal suspects -- t-shirts, hoodies, hats, mugs, mouse pads, etc. Any more ideas would be appreciated.
Unless traffic becomes a serious (expensive) enough problem that I'm not longer able to run the site otherwise, I have no plans to charge subscription fees for unlimited downloads, etc. I've said in the past that I would never do this, and the only way I would go back on that is if the continued existence of the site depended on it. Even then, I would inform people of the situation and ask for donations first. Note that we are not currently anywhere near this point, so it's nothing to worry about at the moment. :)
I would also be interested in other ways people can think of that we might be able to generate revenue. There are siome other suggestions that would be somewhat complicated to implement, but would be worth considering:
Set OGA up as a hub for game projects to manage their art. Follow GitHub's example and make this free for open source projects, and charge a fee for closed-source projects (their art would be private and never be visible in the archive).
Act as a trusted escrow service so that developers can commission works from artists.
Allow artists to sell art through OGA on a less restrictive license than the one posted. That is, if someone posts art under the GPL or CC-BY-SA, allow the artist to charge a fee to closed source developers for use of that art in their game that wouldn't be covered under the normal license.
More ideas are always appreciated. Also, I could use some advice on what sites are good for medium websites wanting to sell swag.
@Danimal: You're making some pretty big assumptions there. For the record, this isn't something I would jump into if it were putting me (and my baby) at any sort of financial risk, and the whole thing with doing this on Kickstarter is that I'll known in advance how much work will be funded. Also, I'm not one for taking silly risks without a lot of thought, and I'm aware that I need a contingency plan should the funding venture fail.
I understand that this isn't a sure bet, but I'd appreciate it if people gave me a little credit. :)
1st off i think Kickstarter only offers campaigns for Americans and UK
Does that measn that people outside the US and UK can't even send money, or that you just can't run a campaign from outside those countries?
2ndly you can have a flexible founded campaign where you keep money even if you don't reach the end goal
I don't actually want that. Either I need to make enough money to live off of, or I don't want the obligation of having taken money from people.
On the other hand, Kickstarter appears to have more popularity for now.
Ultimately the deciding factor will have to be what will generate the most revenue. I'll take a look at similar things on both sites (if there are any) before I decide. I suspect Kickstarter probably offers a better chance at real revenue.
Thanks! :)
So, back to the kickstarter thing. I looked into the costs for various things, and here's a (somewhat) final list of gifts:
Thoughts?
Yeah, I've been thinking about those. It would be good to have a range from "Hey, here's a dollar!" to "I want to give you thousands of dollars for some reason!"
Something like:
Each level would come with its own medal. Obviously these need some work, and I need to know how much each of them would actually cost. I'm guesstimating about 20% or so for each one would go to the donation reward.
Comments?
One other thing with respect to income:
It's notable that the Ardour project sells a GPLed work using a pay-what-you-want model and does just fine:
https://community.ardour.org/s/buy_anon
Ardour is also available for free with many linux distros.
Update: Had a couple thoughts on advertising, with respect to what MrBeast said.
I could tie advertising in to account pages. If an artist wants to advertise one or more of their sites, they can upload a banner directly on their user account page and pay through paypal to run an ad on the front page.
Also, since people have suggested setting up pages for their games, I could conceivably do the same thing for game pages.
A valid question.
First off, it should be noted that OGA is visited by about 100,000 unique people every month now. Even assuming that a) a lot of these people may be bots, and b) some fraction of people visit from multiple IP addresses, that's most likely still tens of thousands of unique users. Obviously, only a tiny fraction of these people will be willing to spend money, but depending on the size of that fraction, it may be all we need. Also, unique hits have roughly doubled every year since the site was first made several years ago. I don't know how long this pattern will hold. It could end tomorrow, it could continue for a few more years. So even if we're not quite there right now, we may be in a year or two.
Secondly, I don't expect one single source of revenue to be enough. Kickstarter may get us by for a while, but ultimately I need to use some of those funds to bring OGA to a point where it can generate a sustainable income, and that means taking time to create other sources of revenue. Here are the definite ones:
Unless traffic becomes a serious (expensive) enough problem that I'm not longer able to run the site otherwise, I have no plans to charge subscription fees for unlimited downloads, etc. I've said in the past that I would never do this, and the only way I would go back on that is if the continued existence of the site depended on it. Even then, I would inform people of the situation and ask for donations first. Note that we are not currently anywhere near this point, so it's nothing to worry about at the moment. :)
I would also be interested in other ways people can think of that we might be able to generate revenue. There are siome other suggestions that would be somewhat complicated to implement, but would be worth considering:
More ideas are always appreciated. Also, I could use some advice on what sites are good for medium websites wanting to sell swag.
@Danimal: You're making some pretty big assumptions there. For the record, this isn't something I would jump into if it were putting me (and my baby) at any sort of financial risk, and the whole thing with doing this on Kickstarter is that I'll known in advance how much work will be funded. Also, I'm not one for taking silly risks without a lot of thought, and I'm aware that I need a contingency plan should the funding venture fail.
I understand that this isn't a sure bet, but I'd appreciate it if people gave me a little credit. :)
@Julius:
Thanks for the vote of confidence. ;)
1st off i think Kickstarter only offers campaigns for Americans and UK
Does that measn that people outside the US and UK can't even send money, or that you just can't run a campaign from outside those countries?
2ndly you can have a flexible founded campaign where you keep money even if you don't reach the end goal
I don't actually want that. Either I need to make enough money to live off of, or I don't want the obligation of having taken money from people.
On the other hand, Kickstarter appears to have more popularity for now.
Ultimately the deciding factor will have to be what will generate the most revenue. I'll take a look at similar things on both sites (if there are any) before I decide. I suspect Kickstarter probably offers a better chance at real revenue.
@InanZen: Why?
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