A difficult choice

Personally, I'd love a shirt or three and I'd be willing to pay up to $20 a piece for them (comprable to Inkwing's shirts, which are awesome). I even made a thing a while back that I was going to turn into a shirt for myself. Stickers, posters, that sort of thing... I'd decorate my room with them, but no idea on the cost. The monkquisitor is easily $20-$30, though I'm not a stuffed animal person.

Ads... ew. But, if they did become necessary, I'd say try to keep them unobtrusive. At the bottom of the page just above the "members reading this" area, or somewhere similar on the non-thread pages seems like a good choice. Premium membership is also in the 'ew' category (in my opinion), simply because I don't know what kind of thing we'd offer at a premium. Ninety percent of our content is theories, cosmere or otherwise, and to pay to have access to something like that seems... wrong.

Kickstarter rewards would depend on the goal amount. I think if any one person pledges more than half the goal, they should be considered for staff - that's some serious dedication. 5% could merit a free 17th Shard shirt, assuming that the donation more than offsets the costs of the shirt. 10% could be a plushy and a shirt, if those get made. But I'm just tossing out random number here.

My thoughts on the matter. Take them as you will.

One thing about shirts and plushies and things along those lines... these are already designed. I've had many for several months to a year now, and every so often I whip up another one when I'm bored. Naturally, not everyone of them could be made and sold, because that might end up costing too much for us, and if we find out that demand for one is almost nonexistent, then, well... yeah.

So, once we have everything arranged (because it looks like a business license will be required for us to sell anything, or get ads) I plan to post the various designs to see which ones people like the most. Some of them will be standard - 17th Shard shirts and the like, with just the logo - while others will be more specialized. And no, I won't tell you what those will be. Not until we're ready to actually start making them.

My vote, thus, is for merchandising and ads. I'm firmly against any kind of paid membership, as it creates a sort of 'class system' between paid members and non-paid members, and the idea of this site is that we're all fans of equal standing. Excluding Admin, of course, who are your overlords and have the right to hemalurgically spike you whenever the whim takes us.

I'd be up for ads and merchandising as well.

Merchandising is always nice, plus it would be neat if we could work out some official merchandising stuff with brandon to do some official stuff.

Ads are kinda par for the course, honestly, which is why i accept them as a necessary evil. Honestly, if you aren't used to ads, then you don't use the internet that much. They're fairly ubiquitous these days, and I can live with them if its for the good of the site.

As I've stated before, i would certainly be against any sort of "premium membership" on the grounds that it does create a sort of rift between free and premium users, which isn't something we want when the whole point of this is the "community" aspect.

I don't know how feasible this would be for this site but Jim Butchers fansite has a store section with his books and other items the he likes. It is just an Amazon/Barnes and Noble referral link. They aren't really selling the items but they get the referral profits from Amazon when people use the links to buy.

Here is what their's looks like: http://www.jim-butcher.com/store(External Link)

For this site you could add links to all of Brandon's works plus the list of books that he has recommended. It seems that that is a question asked at just about every signing. I don't think it would generate enough income to maintain the site but with the other ideas it could help. You might just put a donate button up too. (Is there one of those? If so I have missed it.)

You might just put a donate button up too. (Is there one of those? If so I have missed it.)

The "about" page has one at the bottom.

Chaos is actually in the process of building pages about Brandon's books, and we're working on getting Amazon affiliate links put up. It just takes a lot of time to build all that up.

As for the staff suggestion, promotions have been - and always will be - made based on non-monetary contributions to the site and how well we think new staff members will work with those we already have. Money isn't a factor, period. It's simply not fair to those dedicated members who can't afford to buy their way on, so to speak, and I don't even want to get into the doors that would open for drama and what have you. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

As you already know, Mi'ch, I'm all for merchandising and the like.

Cuaiir, I don't think you need to worry too much about the placement of ads. There's very few places I can even place ads site-wide, and it looks like for the most part, they will be near the bottom. There certainly won't be sidebars of ads.

Thing is, when I tell my local Bozeman friends that 17S gets 1.5 million hits in a month they are flabbergasted that there aren't ads. It's hard to judge how much revenue they would actually give, but it should be good. But really, they will be nice and match with the site design.

discipleofhoid - Books pages are in the works, and we will totally use those.

I also don't like the idea of memberships. Plushies and merchandising, though, sound awesome.

I agree with what has been said so far, I think. Merchandise=good. Ads=okay, especially if there is a way to focus on ads that have content that is somewhat related to the site(like sites that deal with fantasy, books/publishing, etc). Amazon books should work well in this regard (this means everyone who orders books online should start ordering them from here as soon as they can). I am pretty firmly against premium membership, for the reasons that are listed above.

Yeah, I'm against premium membership as well, though I like the idea of giving rewards for people who donate certain amounts, if possible.

ok, 2 things...

#1 if there are adds, there should be premium membership. Premimum membership should consist of.... being able to access 17th shard add free....

#2 how much is needed to run the site (say for a one year period)? can you provide us a itemized list?

ok, 2 things...

#1 if there are adds, there should be premium membership. Premimum membership should consist of.... being able to access 17th shard add free....

That would, for the most part, completely negate the effect of the ads. Second, the issue with premium membership that I have is that it splits the community into two parts, essentially introducing a classist system. I do not care for such things. Secondly, having people pay $20 a year or whatever just to not see ads is pretty lame.

I'm against the idea of premium membership, it just seems like a bad idea for the community as a whole to create such a noticeable divide. Plushies, t-shirts, ads, go for whatever you need, just not that.

Just do ads. They're easy to ignore.

I wouldnt mind ads, if only because I have adblock+...

I like the idea of premium membership, but agree that there's little that you could premiumize. And there's always the elitisim that comes with being in the 'upper echelons' of websociety XD

I'd definitely might buy merchandising, and am always up for donating what I can.

Adblock plus sort of defeats the purpose of the ads, though.

Adblock plus sort of defeats the purpose of the ads, though.

yeah, but not everyone uses them. I dont, i just ignore ads. And obviously ads are profitable since some sites do actually turn a profit from them. The only time i've ever found myself even worrying about ads is when i go to download something from some sites and there's like 5 ads that say "Download now!" and i have no idea which is the right link to actually download.

I agree with what has been said here. Ads would be fine, and although I don't think that there would be much of a market for the insta-book for a monthly cost thing, I don't think it would be too much trouble to order 10ish (?) copies for those people that decide they'd be in for it. The thing about shirts- and I'm not too worried, since I've seen a lot of the work that the graphics design people have done here- I want them to be cool. I like to wear my shirts and have them look pretty fashionable for even those people who don't know who Brandon Sanderson is (What? Those people exist? The blasphemy!). But that's my two cents.

Oh! Idea! Another option (Though we'd have to talk to Brandon/Peter about this one) is to print out nice copies of the Brandonothology (Or Annotations, but I feel more squeamish about that one) and sell those for about $5 more than it costs us to make it and send it. We make it clear when we sell it that you can get it other places for free, but that these copies will look pretty nice. Plus, what's more proving of fandom than to have 300+ pages of behind-the-scene action?

Oh! Idea! Another option (Though we'd have to talk to Brandon/Peter about this one) is to print out nice copies of the Brandonothology (Or Annotations, but I feel more squeamish about that one) and sell those for about $5 more than it costs us to make it and send it. We make it clear when we sell it that you can get it other places for free, but that these copies will look pretty nice. Plus, what's more proving of fandom than to have 300+ pages of behind-the-scene action?

That's actually not a terrible idea. Do something like making a "Brandon Encyclopedia" or something that could be put together (and maybe even bound one day) that could be sold.

Hmm...

I think plushies are an AWESOME idea. And since it was Brandon's idea (he's at least partially involved) it should be easier to know if there are any copyright infringements too.

For the ads.. *holds up crucifix* I'd much rather have them grouped up than spread out on the page (2 on top and another 4 on the bottom). Something like facebook where they're all on the side might work, although how that effects ease of viewing posts might change because right now on this page there's already a side bar.

For premium membership.. I possibly dislike it more than ads. However, I was browsing multiple Wheel of Time forum and theory sites a few years ago and I can't remember which one but I saw that one has some sort of Quote/Source finder helper for premium members. I forget how much the each person paid but those who like to theorize a lot could find it useful to have a similar thing. I'm sure there are other people who know more about it in here. I don't like premium membership stuff, but something like this could work. I remember that site had LOTS of quoting by posters, and something like that might increase that stuff here, as a lot of people (myself included) mostly vaguely mention citings without explicitly writing it out. That site also had citations as a requirement for an official theory (something similar to our espoused theory thing). I'm not sure if it would work here, or if you guys would want it, it could definitely change the atmosphere of the site, but thought I should mention it.

The automatic book release order thing is really interesting, I am very intrigued.

Also, the 17thshard logo is AWESOME, so it MUST be somehow incorporated into all the merchandise; like on the little tab on the plushes.

I think we should just go with ads. We could still sell T-shirts and whatnot for discretionary funds (for giveaways, events, the need to pay someone actual money to fix egregious problems, etc.) while relying upon ads for day-to-day costs.

This way there is a solid stream of revenue coming in and we can still implement cool ideas like a bound Ars Arcananum without worrying about having to sell X-copies just to make ends-meet, or artificially needing to fill a "cool ideas" quota every month.

I would love to have a pewter-symbol pewter stein, but I imagine that's outside the bounds of what's possible here.

I'm not on board with a bound 'Ars Arcanum' or 'Brandonology' type of thing, simply because of the sheer amount of potential copyright and legal issues. We're kinda trying to avoid that.

I'm not on board with a bound 'Ars Arcanum' or 'Brandonology' type of thing, simply because of the sheer amount of potential copyright and legal issues. We're kinda trying to avoid that.

Fair enough.

I'm fine with the merchandise and even the ads. The only thing I really have a problem with is the premium membership, unless it doesn't restrict access to posting and boards.

Back to the ads, maybe you could put them on the sides of the view, there is a lot of blue empty space there.

Don't forget, guys, we also have to worry about copyrights as far as what we're allowed to sell. Our merchandise will have more to do with our site in and of itself; if you want purely Brandon-themed merchandise, you'd have to get it from Brandon's site, Badali, or Inkwing, since they have the licenses to legally sell that stuff.