I wish to add to Catherine Linda Michel's blog regarding the funding of BC/TS
I'm not sure of the number of readers who visit this site. However, I would suggest the number is substantial. I'm not sure the number is 10,000 as some suggest, but it might be half that. Let's say there are 2,000 persons, just for the sake of argument.
Let's suggest that half of those readers are in such financial difficulties that they can contribute nothing.
However, the other half can.
Let's say half, that's 500 can afford $1 per month. = $500
Let's say that 250 can afford $5 per month = $1,500
Let's say that 150 can afford $10 per month = $1,500
Let's say that 70 can afford $25 per month = $1,750
Let's say that 20 can afford $50 per month = $1,000
Let's say that just 1% or 10 persons can afford $100 per month = $1,000
What's the total?
$7,000 per month!!
Hello! $7,000 per month!
Problem solved!
Nobody has been hurt, but we have all contributed to this site, not in proportion to our enjoyment, but in proportion to our ability to support the site we love.
Come on! Even if you can only afford $1 per month, you can make a difference. You can help to secure this site we love, the stories we love, the authors we support and the stories that reflect our interests.
With love
Comments
What is Free?
I remember when newspapers were publishing their papers on the internet for free and puzzling over how they could make enough money to support the growing technological leap. Of course, the physical newspaper was supporting the great internet experiment.
Then, newspapers started to drop by the wayside because 'everyone' (the public who subscribed to read their news) went to the internet to get their news for free.
The existing newspapers found they could not survive on just the online advertising. They had to sell subscriptions. Most use the 'five free articles' per month set-up. So, if you liked your paper, you went back to subscription. We have gone full circle. We are back to subscribing, just that our format is online.
What lesson can we apply here? Can BigCloset reprogram to allow the visitor to read five stories or come by five times without paying a subscription? If we all sign in, the answer would be yes. Could BigCloset change to a tiered system? It already shows some of those details with different levels of access.
The unknown answer is will the revenue be enough to cover the monthly debt? Erin has made us all aware of the monthly cost to run BigCloset. You don't have to be an accountant to know it's not working. Right now, BigCloset is slowly bleeding out.
We all do our share. I'm helping out Doppler Press by letting them publish Wildcats. Others pay for advertising their novels published on Amazon. Still, others already subscribe to the tiered system. Others send money every month. Advertisers pay to run their ads.
But, sadly, the system is not working. And just like the newspaper model, BigCloset has to evolve. I suggest that BC adopt the five visits/five stories model. It's a brave move but would make the casual reader more aware of the limiting boundaries of something for nothing. BigCloset adopts the tiered system of access to a monthly subscription that would provide access to all levels.
One thing I believe, if you give charge people for something they respect it more.
Thank You
Thank you for publishing your novels through Doppler, which I found entertaining, both novels.
However . . . I would be opposed to a program that restricts readers. Readers support authors purely by reading.
Without readers there would be fewer authors, without authors there would be less content, with less content the site slowly dies.
I've supported limited access content, such as Hatbox, but not a plan that puts such limits on participation.
I know that your heart is in the right place and that drastic times call for drastic measures, but there has to be another way.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Re: Thank you...
I couldn't have said it any better, thank you.
Restricting readers to only reading a few stories before being told they MUST pay to read more is asking too much. Not everyone who reads stories here has stable internet. Who knows, some might even be going out to use a public place to get temporary access.
The downside to telling people that they have to pay to continue using a site like this is that they will simply go to other sites.
I pay a little bit here when I can, I don't always have extra cash lying around to be able to afford a monthly expense.
I agree that using limited access options such as Hatbox/Doppler Press is as far as it should go.
I've been thinking a bit about that, I'm actually considering giving a story to Erin for Hatbox or Doppler Press. Which story? No idea, but it would most likely be one of my solos, so that drops the number of possibilities down to about ten pieces for me to consider.
I think how Erin, Piper & co. have been managing it is fine, I have no problem with Erin requesting that people help if they can.
Hell, I'm impressed by the fact that they have the drive to keep this site going, even if it means they don't get paid sometimes.
sure nuf
Okay, I hear what you're saying and appreciate your opinions. I used to believe in giving it away. I have been writing for a long time on these sites, maybe almost twenty years. In that time, I started out writing real sh*t and slowly worked at honing a craft. If it wasn't for the free sites, I wouldn't have read the talented artists who influenced me. I wouldn't be able to express my feelings even today. But, what I'm saying is my opinion, I'm only one voice in the crowd.
Those of you who send money to BigCloset and Erin are saints. You are supporting this wonderful institution and keeping it rolling. But, I am not sure anymore. I think the sponsors should be listed every month so the readers know this place wouldn't be able to turn on the lights without those who dig into their pockets and feel so deeply about BigCloset. I think the people who read for free ought to understand this.
I don't think people who get it for free appreciate it.
Paywall
This subject has been coming up for years. People used to yell at me that I needed to do it back when I started hosting StorySite for Crystal.
The thing to remember is content library and licensing. When content was put on BigCloset (And storysite, and tgfiction.net and stardust) it was put up with the understanding that it would be free, except for for some advertising. What we have done is invented Hatbox and Patreon and Doppler where we ask for subscriptions or sales to help fund BigCloset.
So if you want us to put up a paywall on BC it could only be for "new" content, posted after the paywall, or just the Hatbox library. We would not be able to contact each and every author that has submitted fiction and ask them if we can have their works for our new pay site. This would also exclude the awesome content by those that have passed away with no way for us to reach out to family members and surviving copyright holders, so that content would have to be gone and/or not behind the paywall.
-HuGs-
-Piper
I donate
but won't subscribe. That said, my donations although irregular are not in thre $5-$25 range. My last was $250 and that was simply because I won £500 (tax free) on the UK Premium Bond system[1]. UK Readers will know what I mean. Any future wins will be split in two and one half donated here. The other half was donated to a UK Charity dealing with Blood Cancers.
As you can see, each of us pretty well have our own way of generating funds for this site and TBH, long may that remain.
Samantha
[1] Now if I were to win the top prize of £1M then all the troubles of this site would be over but that is really not likely. sigh.
Users/Visitors
For the record, our stats show that 34,000 unique visitors have made a total of 104,000 visits to BigCloset in the last 7 days. This is not hits but unique users and unique sessions.
Now a VAST overwhelming majority of these users never log in, never do anything but read stories, and generally won't even realize that blogs and other items exist on the site.
Those are huge numbers!
Those are huge numbers!
Since I'm logged in I'm not sure what visitors see. Would it be possible to allow visitors to read for free but subject them to a bit of a hard sell on the need for donations? Enough to be somewhat annoying but not enough to make the site unusable?
A few possibilities:
An entry page for visitors (those without persistent logins) with a plea for donations with boxes to "log in", "donate", "donate and optionally become a member", "read as a free-loader".
Boxes with pleas for donations inserted randomly into stories.
When navigating away from a story page, a popup plea.
I think you get the idea. Visitors can read for free but at the price of frequent, somewhat annoying and intrusive reminders that the site runs on donations and needs their help.
Kris
{I leave a trail of Kudos as I browse the site. Be careful where you step!}
boxes with pleas for money
Would send me reaching for the button to close the tab in an instant.
Perhaps it is just me but that seems worse than advertising (all of which I loathe with a passion)
I sometimes read stories without logging in when I'm on my iPad so your proposal would mean that I see the begging bowl. Please no.
Samantha
I had assumed
That the stories in the hat box were on a subscription basis. If this is not true, then what purpose does it serve to have the hat box stories? I'm still not working not even 80 hours a month, so I can not give anything except possibly in kind. That is proofreading or stories if I can ever complete any... Maybe I'll find work. Maybe I'll feel so defeated that I go the superblue route... I'm pretty much a coward so probably not the superblue route, but I sure feel hopeless right now.
Funding the site
As a regular hatbox donor who often slips in without logging in I consider that the best answer may be not popups that will drive us insane but a very visible header footer banner to the effect that BC is free but relies on donations to exist and reminds people that if they want to have the site in the future donations are needed. Remember for many readers who are deep in the closet this is thier very dark hidey hole and link with sanity.
Is anyone familiar with?
The system that Stories on Line uses? To use SOL one must be a member, you can not read any stories except the very short ones without being a member. Membership is free, but they have a layered membership with a premium content that you can pay for. That pay level lets you set up a library and other things of 'bookmarked' stories and some other benefits beyond the premium content. I know they never have drives, I don't know what their finances look like but they do have a lot of unique stories there and a method for people like myself (the majority of my work is there) to 'earn' a premium account by posting a certain amount of content. That amount of content varies a little as it is judged by a system the operator has set up including a reader scoring system, whereby the readers of stories can 'vote' on how good they think the story is. Anyway, I have around a meg of content over there to 'earn' my premium membership. But that is not what I'm getting at except tangentially. What I do note is that for those who don't write as I do for a few dollars a month (I think it is about $60 a year) a person gets access to all of that, some of which is 'free' here and probably ought not to be.
Sure I could set up bookmarks in my browser, but it is nice to set them in the SOL system. First if I'm following a series, my bookmark shows me that the series has been updated. Again I could do this with my browser, but putting them all in a 'library' on a page when I've logged on to the SOL system means I only need to book mark the main page for SOL because once I'm logged on I can then access all of what is in my premium account, which like I said was not available for a basic 'free' membership. This is why I wondered if the stories in the 'hat box' section were not behind a paywall.