In my last post, I mentioned ideas to monetize a social platform. Today I'm going to highlight some of those, and ask for feedback, but first an update on whats been happening.
Since my last post, a lot has happened. More planning, more work. My partner in crime Michael finally got out of the hospital (yay!) and he's started working on a landing page. I've been working on the back end of things for the last 2ish weeks. Writing tests, building backend stuff out. In case anyone is wondering we are using Ruby on Rails for backend and (most likely) some sort of framework for the front end, but we aren't quite there yet.
I've wanted to talk about some ideas for business structure/ monetization and get some feedback on them, so here goes.
Structure
I've thought long and hard about this, and I've come to the conclusion that we will most likely set up a non-profit(501C). Any money after salaries/operating costs that we make(assuming we make any of course) we will donate to various charities. I can't think of any other social platform that does this (at least none I've heard of).
Monetization
So how will we make any money at all? My initial thoughts in no particular order, and remember these are just ideas, not set in stone.
-1. Patreon. We could have several different tiers that includes various rewards, both physical and digital.
-2.Micro-transactions. A store for things such as digital items, stickers/emotes, backgrounds, and physical items such as mugs/shirts/etc.
-3. Charging a small subscription.(something like a couple bucks.) When I first started brainstorming ideas, this was one of the first things I thought of, although I'm not sure I'd do it now. I like the "subscribe if you want to support us" option, or if you don't want to sub you can buy backgrounds/stickers/etc.
I really tend to think a micro transaction economy would work here, as long as it doesn't detract ANYTHING from the main user experience, i.e. making customers pay for features that should already be in the service.
Nothing is set in stone yet, feel free to give me any thoughts or comments of your own. Anything would be helpful at this point.
If you'd like to follow our progress, we are social:
twitter @andevrs, @sig_five, @mikemaitoza
we also have a facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/signalv
Thanks!
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