Hey everyone, been kicking around some ideas for a revenue model for Bevry, and this one seems like it has some momentum behind it.
Currently we are earning all of our financial support from consulting work, not that there is anything wrong with that, but we'd love to be able to work on our open-source projects and initiatives full time. Our consulting work varies from anywhere between 50% to 0% open-source work, and sometimes more often than not, to the lower end of that scale.
The worst thing I can imagine is where Bevry can no longer offer you support unless it is paid for, we actually experimented with this for a month last year, and it turned out to be a total failure, as more people started experiencing the known issues, and until someone was able to raise enough money, it would go unfixed increasing the time and the impact of the issue. Luckily we realised this was a huge mistake, and ever since, our community has been blessed with great free support :)
I'd love to continue that momentum.
We then thought about, okay what if we setup kickstarter/bountrysource campaigns for tasks, where people can back them if they want them sooner. It seems like a great idea, though the overhead of it becomes immense, constantly we are having to know what the latest campaigns are, we have to create them, and then finance them, and also the management of what to work on all increases tenfold making it way more expensive than not doing it in the first place!
Recently, I've discovered that we are getting some micro donations from Flattr 15 people donate $1.50/month in total. The interesting thing here, is that there is no overhead for anyone, and we are still able to focus on what is important for the entire community. Now $1.50 a month is a tremendous start, and it's amazing that we can round up event that amount of funding - at the same time, reaching a goal of $4000/month allows us to work on the Bevry projects full time, which involves some extra effort.
That being said, here's the latest idea. It's not perfect, and needs a lot of work, but it seems it may have some legs.
We currently have 180 returning users that use DocPad each week. That is amazing, and truly humbling, thank you to all!!! It also means that with a little bit of math, if we were able to collect $22/month from each then we could work on open-source full time! Okay, that seems plausible - however, we are not entitled to any of that money, and most people using DocPad are within companies, where DocPad is just a tool in the tool chain and won't be contributing their own hard earned cash to support DocPad.
That being said, we will have to be clear about this:
- Everyone will continue to always recieve great free support regardless of donation
- We will continue to always support our projects regardless of donation
- Donating is entirely optional, and will help us contribute more time to our projects, and once $4000/month is met, we will be able to tackle bigger problems, hire top contributors, and grow our company and its ambitions - the growth factor
That being said, lets think of some rewards for taking the plunge for financial backing, there needs to be some benefits right:
- if you donate any amont, you'll get your name in the BACKERS.md file forever
- more than $10/month you get your name in the readme
- more than $25/month you also get your name and url in the readme
- more than $150/month you also get guaranteed same day support for 1 person
- more than $500/month you also get an hour with the team member of your choice over skype
- more than $1000/month you also get an additional 2 hours with the team member of your choice, and your logo in the readme
- more than $5000/month you also get free admittance for 1 person member to the startup hostel where they can become a DocPad pro
Something like that. There are benefits for individuals who can donate a small amount, as well as benefits for companies who can donate larger amounts.
But what about those who contribute code instead of money??!?! We'll also add a "Contributors" section into the readme where everyone who has ever got code into the repo will go with their name and URL. We love our contributors!
So what are everyone's thoughts?!?!?! I'm so keen to hear them :) This idea is very very beta, so let us all keep this in mind:
Momentum is considering all the reasons why something can work. Inertia is considering the reasons why something can’t.
i think the bounty model can work too: develop x module when it reaches certain amount of money (something like kickstarter)