Sharkey wrote:Maybe it's a good time to mention that I've been tinkering with a site and kind of put it on hold when things here started to look shaky. Apparently there are still people who want to read my bullshit, and as a side benefit it might bring some new blood to the forums (if that's even wanted. I've hesitated to link to these things before just on account of not wanting to ruin the coziness.) Now I'm realizing I could probably put together a patreon for it. If nothing else it might help cover the cost of hosting.
Kazz wrote:I have critically important opinions on iPhone games, and nobody out there cares.
Kayma wrote:I also like it here, so if some sort of funding goal manifests itself I'm totally game.
Thad wrote:Kazz wrote:Um, maybe this is late in the discussion to bring it up, but: how about, whatever solution you go with, a front page where everybody submits content (whatever it happens to be) and we shove ads all the fuck over it, on every page, SEO the shit out of it, and see if the site helps pay for itself?
If there's any support for this idea, it's exactly the sort of web development that I actually have experience in. And we're all creative, intelligent people who are not getting younger. I think Thad (for instance) writes well enough that he deserves an audience of more than two dozen people, y'know?
And yes we've done this before and yes it was very sad
I don't know how well ads would pay for anything but something like Patreon might be worth trying (with, as you say, some good SEO to bring people in). The old group blog was a neat idea even if it didn't work out exactly right.
I forget if it was ever rigged up so that my posts to my WP blog got automatically inserted; I remember suggesting that and it seems like it should be possible to scrape RSS feeds from existing blogs.
And I should blog more, too. Both new stuff and just grabbing standalone shit I've already posted here. It's on the to-do list.
We've got interest in doing articles and reviews, and I imagine adding LP's would be cool. Figure thinly-edited hilarious rants would be also be a lark and change, since we're good at those. I personally would definitely be down to write short articles here and there, and I'd be down to help manage getting things properly formatted and posted and all that jazz.
Not really thinking we should go out of our way to keep the dinosaur theme for whatever we called it, though. I still think Skull Club is a good name for a site, but yeah, any suggestions would be appreciated.
All this hinges on whether or not we can come up with a payment plan from month to month, of course, but that's a topic for State of the Brontos. Ads and a donation bar on the front page could possibly help us out on that front.