Revenue

Things We Can Do To Make Money For Dreamwidth. Not possible paid-user features, but one-time features or services that we can charge additional money for, or one-time features that we can offer as part of the paid user package but also let free users pay for on a one-time basis. (Ongoing paid user features such as extra userpics, or moving to an a-la-carte style paid account system, is outside the scope of this list -- I'll write up a FAQ answer for "why no a-la-carte pricing" soon.)

Also includes programs, ideas, etc, that will indirectly encourage revenue (such as improving gift certificates/turning them into "points") even if not directly adding to the revenue stream. Basically, this is anything that encourages active revenue (your userbase giving you money) as opposed to passive revenue (someone else giving you money for access to your users/your users' content). Dreamwidth.org will rely only on active revenue, so let's come up with some innovative methods!

This is just brainstorming -- we likely won't adopt all of these ideas, but best to have them on record.

• Virtual gifts/vgifts: Okay, they're silly, but they're popular, and they're easy money.

I agree they're silly, but I would find them less silly if they were charitable. --John.

• Rename tokens: I think we should drop the price of rename tokens ($10 instead of $15), but keep the charge for them.
• User-to-user marketplace: area where users can pay a small amount to run a classified ad/banner ad for a month, and people can browse the area to find things they're interested in. Different sections -- community advertisements, products, services, goods, etc, or maybe just good wishes. Like the classified ads in your local newspaper. Also should have a feed that will send new messages to your Watch page daily, either overall or by category.
• Journal PDF -- this should (maybe?) be included in the paid account function, but others can pay a small amount and access it anyway. Pay a small amount, get a .pdf of your journal + comments for download. (Maybe also partner with some external site that will bind the resulting file nicely and ship it to you?)
• Buy more invite codes in bulk? (Would that be lame? Would people be better off encouraged to buy paid accounts for their friends?)

I don't think that's lame, at least not to start with when the demand curve for invite codes and the corresponding requirement for site startup fund will match nicely. --John.

• Sponsor a Random Active User: some kind of system where people can give DW the cost of a paid account (one year, six months, two months) and it will be applied to a random active free user. Donating user specifies at time of purchase whether it's anonymous or not; free user when claiming it specifies if it's okay to tell donating user where it went; make new friends via philanthropy!
• Some kind of way to indicate which of your friends needs paid time, divided into "friends who are free users" and "friends who are expiring within the next month"
• PBS-style donation drives: the ability to donate above and beyond the cost of a paid account and have it applied to DW's operating costs, not to additional paid time (ie, the "spare change" jar). Tiers of donations -- if you give us $5 over-and-above, you might get $2 worth of points; $10 gets you $2 of points and a DW button; $20 gets you points, button, and sticker; $50 gets you points, button, sticker, and a t-shirt; etc.
• Merchandise: tshirts, stickers, buttons, spiral notebooks, pens [...] -- not a huge profit margin, but something, and it's also free marketing.
• Micropayments: make it easy for people to clean out the $3.89 they have sitting in their PayPal account from that refund for that thing they never received. Yeah, fees will bite, but I'm not going to be using that $3.89 anyway, and I'd get the fees taken out anyway if I tried to move it back to my bank account. So I don't mind that DW takes 50¢ out of that, if I can turn it into DW points and redeem it for 2 weeks of time for my friend who's skint until payday/a vgift for my favorite writer/whatever. --John.