Rosetta Code:Village Pump/Income

I know it's not a pleasant subject, but Rosetta Code's income something that I keep thinking about.

While it's not yet an immediate issue, it's something that's going to need to be taken care of for RC to remain operational. I don't want to be incredibly annoying about it, and I want any supporting income to provide immediate material value to the person providing the income. Clicking a "donate" button helps RC, but it doesn't provide the donater anything but the hopeful promise that RC will continue to exist for a while. Clicking an advertisement might possibly help the person clicking the advertisement, but those same advertisements will be irritating and annoying to 95% of the rest of the folks who visit the site. (That is, of those folks who don't have AdBlock or an equivalent installed. And judging by the technical level of the vast majority of visitors, I'd wager that perhaps 5% of visitors don't have ad-blocking software installed.) --Short Circuit 00:31, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Situation and history

Currently, RC doesn't pay for its technical costs, and doesn't have any income associated with it. In the past, it has always depended on someone's charity. Initially, it was on a segment of a DreamHost account provided by BetaLAN, a local lan party organization. When DreamHost booted us due to our initial Slashdotting, Geekalize allowed us to reside on their server for several months. When Geekalize could no longer afford to provide us hosting, Rosetta Code moved to my shared hosting account on Bluehost. Qrush later came forward and allowed us to run on his Slicehost slice, and at the end of that arrangement, I started paying for the Slicehost slice that RC now runs on. --Short Circuit 00:31, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Purpose

I won't be paying myself wages out of the money or anything like that; I strictly want the money to go towards technical expenses, forseeably relating to server services via Slicehost. (Which is now technically part of Rackspace)

Organization

Which brings me to another related issue. One of the reasons I haven't moved forward on this yet are taxes, which are something I know little more than what EZ-File asks me. I don't know whether RC should try to become a 401.3c-type organization, an LLC, or what. If someone could point me towards useful information on that. --Short Circuit 00:31, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Sources

Do NOT

Things In the DO NOT category:

• Banner ads, image ads, text ads, etc. -- Ads are annoying, and get progressively less effective at higher technical levels, anyway. --Short Circuit 00:31, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
• "Donate!" button -- If I rely on donations, I fear I might start relying on donation drives. Nobody needs a giant banner across the top of the site saying "A personal appeal from Mike Mol". --Short Circuit 00:31, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Possibilities

Things that I currently deem as a possibility:

Hardcopies

• Selling hardcopies of much of Rosetta Code by way of converting wikitext to LaTex code, and using a self-publishing service. As long as certain rules are followed, RC's license, the GNU FDL, allows this. But while everyone who's made contributions to this site has given their implicit authorization for such an activity, I want to make sure folks aren't terribly uncomfortable with the idea. --Short Circuit 00:31, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

This is a really neat idea, but it might take a lot of effort to advertise it. A lot of the registered users might buy, but I don't think we would end up with a reliable annual hardcopy income. --Mwn3d 14:11, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

If you'll do that, I'll give my authorization, if needed. --ShinTakezou 15:13, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Book sale referrals

• Using "Recommended books on this subject" links on various pages to Amazon and bn.com with referral commissions. This would not be to the detriment of online references. --Short Circuit 00:31, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

This is probably the best idea going by effort and time per income. I think it would also stay pretty reliable which I think is what we need more than a big short burst of income. --Mwn3d 14:11, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Swag

• Branded stuff by way of CafePress and the like. (Look for the other guys wearing RC T-shirts and hats at BarCamp. :-))--Short Circuit 00:31, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

This kind of has the same problem of hardcopies, but with less effort so it's better. Maybe we could save this until the site gets a little more popular? --Mwn3d 14:11, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Other ideas

If you've got suggestions, make them here. But keep them separateble so that this page can remain somewhat organized while people discuss things.

Dear Google

... Could you host our site for us ... --Paddy3118 15:22, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

RC has benefited from the Google Summer of Code program before. Not directly, but RC became a primary target for one group that was teaching high-schoolers Python, and that program was part of the GSoC. I wonder how RC could benefit directly. --Short Circuit 17:12, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Dear Wikimedia Foundation

... Could you give us a sub? --Paddy3118 21:18, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

They have a direct competitor. Or at least they used to. Darned if I can find it now. --Short Circuit 23:19, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Objections and other concerns

Everything ought to be free, and I'm trying to keep it that way. Nevertheless, don't hesitate to sound off... --Short Circuit 00:31, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I assume this won't be for profit, but how much do you think you need to make to cover the costs? --Mwn3d 15:21, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Right now, in static costs, Rosetta Code costs $25/mo. That only covers what I pay to Slicehost. The domain is paid for for the next ten years, so there's no extra cost there. I would like to get an additional slice, either as a doubling of the existing slice's capabilities, or as a separate server to provide a degree of redundancy or service separation. (It would be nice, for example, for me to be able to put Squid and memcached on one vps box while having php and mysql on another, or even to have a third vps slice dedicated to MySQL. But each vps slice adds roughly $20/mo to the cost.) Rosetta Code is not running me into a pit; I've got other costs I can cut if I discover I'm habitually in the red. But it's not something I can afford to dedicate more to, until either I make something more than $8/hr, or it starts paying for itself. I seriously dislike the idea of panhandling, which is why I'm looking for ways of getting Rosetta Code to pay for itself. My top idea right now is to sell user-defined books through a POD publisher, but I haven't found anyone who allows for programmatic submission of materials for print. --Short Circuit 21:00, 7 July 2009 (UTC)