Different business models for social coop blog/blog platform cooperative. 4 simple examples.
1. Minimalist
Social coop hosts a simple platform without ads or membership fees. Donations pays for the maintenance with no other revenue. Bit like Social Coop Wiki.
2. Medium model of voluntary paywall
You can publish articles free or behind a paywall and can read X number of articles behind paywall a week for free.
To read unlimited number of articles behind paywall, pay a membership fee.
3. Crowdfunding.
* Keep-It-All
* All-Or-Nothing
* Patreon/OpenCollective type regular donations.
4. Advertising.
* Membership regulating the ads democratically.
* Showing ads only to non-members.
* Opt in system where the default option is not to show ads, but you can voluntarily turn them on and that way create revenue to the cooperative. Currently its opt-in, with adblocking the to opt-out option.
I would like to add and update a list of relevant ongoing or hopefully future projects members have in a list, in this OP:
* @jeffhardins idea for podcast on credit unions and cooperatives.
* Coop Watercooler blog archives, @matthewcropp is involved.
* @lehighcommunalist has written about social coop blog here and made a blog post about psychology of social media control here.
* I start a thread about social coop blog here and wrote a blogpost about cooperative banking here . The blog post is in a news site that is planning to transform to a co-operative but is not big enough for that to be relevant now, I commented on the project here.
* @robertbenjamin wrote about turning Medium into a platform cooperative.
* @twsh tooted "I'm very interested in the idea of collectively owning social media (among other things).
I'm a philosopher. My professional interests are philosophy of language and metaphysics."
* @erikmoeller5 started "constructive journalism" account in social coop.
I'll edit this original post and the poll as people add different options. Would hope that each different model could be explained in 1-2 sentences in a way that can non-tech people understand. As a non-tech person I'm sure there's lot of good stuff to add.
Posted more detailed personal thoughts on each of these things in a separate comment. Hopefully we can later have more sophisticated polling, making binding decisions which is not the purpose of this thread or poll.
Poll Created Mon 16 Apr 2018 12:45PM
Rate different business models for a social coop blog/blog platform Closed Tue 29 May 2018 6:54PM
It's been up for a month and the results seem very clear.
Details are in the thread. I will add details and options as they are submitted :) .
Results
| Results | Option | % of points | Points | Mean | Voters | ||
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Minimalist | 67.4% | 89 | 5.2 | 17 | ||
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Crowdfunding | 22.0% | 29 | 1.7 | 17 | ||
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Medium model of voluntary pay wall | 6.1% | 8 | 0.5 | 17 | ||
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Advertising | 4.5% | 6 | 0.4 | 17 | ||
| Undecided | 0% | 0 | 0 | 82 |
17 of 99 people have participated (17%)
Matthew Cropp Mon 16 Apr 2018 4:11PM
| 8 - Minimalist | |
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| 1 - Advertising | |
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| 1 - Crowdfunding | |
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| 0 - Medium model of voluntary pay wall | |
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I could see space for a bit of co-op sector ads/sponsorship to promote events, etc.
I'd envision the role for the blog as a somewhat curated outlet for members' longish-form pieces around co-ops and social media stuff.
David Mynors Wed 18 Apr 2018 2:37PM
| 6 - Minimalist | |
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| 2 - Crowdfunding | |
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| 1 - Medium model of voluntary pay wall | |
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| 1 - Advertising | |
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I think a minimalist model makes the most sense (at least to start with) until we get a better idea of how much content is being delivered/viewed. I think the implementation of the other three models depends on how authors/readers are using the blog.
Nathan Schneider Wed 18 Apr 2018 3:17PM
| 1 - Minimalist | |
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| 1 - Medium model of voluntary pay wall | |
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| 1 - Crowdfunding | |
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| 0 - Advertising | |
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I think it'd be great to use this model to experiment and do something different. A non-ad-based patronage model that doesn't prevent accessibility.
Alan (@alanz) Sat 5 May 2018 1:15PM
| 1 - Crowdfunding | |
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| 1 - Minimalist | |
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| 0 - Advertising | |
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| 0 - Medium model of voluntary pay wall | |
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If the cost of supporting users is low enough, then having a group of people who are able/prepared to donate should generate sufficient funds.
Manuela Bosch Wed 9 May 2018 8:51AM
| 1 - Crowdfunding | |
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| 1 - Minimalist | |
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| 0 - Advertising | |
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| 0 - Medium model of voluntary pay wall | |
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Running the platform at minimal costs, carried by the users/community, and at the same time finding a way, to support those, who invest significant time and resources, to make a livelyhood and to protect them from burn-out.
Michele Kipiel Mon 16 Apr 2018 2:19PM
I am willing to contribute as well (I have a few pieces in Italian I'd love to translate to English). I'm a firm believer we should go for option 1 and follow the self-sustained blog path. Also, I believe there's no need for the initial 50$ contribution, as we have close to 4.000$ in our OpenCollective fund. I'd rather create a subdomain (ie. blog.social.coop) and use the funds to compensate the work of those members who will actually install and maintain the blog software.
Leo Sammallahti · Mon 16 Apr 2018 12:45PM
Here's some thoughts:
1. Minimalist
I think starting off like this would be best, I would be able to contribute with a blog post every once in a while and a 50 dollar founding donation for expenses.
We talked about automatically making people follow a "social coop host" account. We could have that account to toot every article published in the blog.
2. Medium model of voluntary paywall
A fellow named Ryan Harrison has written about transforming medium into a platform cooperative here. I would be more than happy to support him in this!
3. Crowdfunding
I remember thinking that small tipboxes in blog articles would take off, but they never did, so don't hesitate to tell if you don't trust my business instincts :D!
Would love to regularly donate to @jeffhardin s podcast but he would have to endure constant spam of credit union question and guest recommendations :D.
4. Advertising
If there's members regulating the advertising, it could be limited only to cooperatives or non-profits approved by the members.
Might be that people are more likely to click ads if they have such way to regulate them democratically inside the platform or if they only see them by voluntarily.
Cooperatives might make web advertising more effective (people trust and click ads more) and ethical (without using unethical manipulation methods, supporting ethical businesses and organizations).