Meanderings
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Things I Am Thinking About
Sorry, going to ramble here, which is fine, since no one reads this part of the site, and it's my site anyway!I'd decided that 2010 is the year I have to break even on jackassletters.com. I'm not so much concerned with making a profit, but that would be nice as well. So to this end I've been thinking about how I could go about this, and came up with a few ideas. Very few, but here they are:
- Plaster the site with ads.
- Offer ad free memberships for a fee.
- Amazon Kindle eBook of all unanswered letters I've sent.
- Apple iPad eBook of all unanswered letters I've sent.
- Apple iPad eBook of all the letters on this site and more (with no commentary).
There are things I like about each of the ideas above and things I hate about each. To do ads well would require a redesign, and there's a few flaws here. 1.) I doubt the ads would make me much cash. 2.) I doubt if enough people would sign up for memberships to make it worth doing all the work of essentially making two sites (logged in without ads, and logged out with), and having to deal with people that now think I am somehow in debt to them. 3.) I don't want to do ads for the primary reason of forcing people to pay me not to see them. This feels sort of like blackmail to me.
I've had ads on the site before. They were distracting and ugly and a lot of times promoted an agenda or product I didn't want to be associated with. They also made me way too little money (a few pennies a day). I know most sites let you manage what ads appear, but again, not worth it for pennies.
I've been thinking about the Kindle book for some time. It seems like a shame to me that I have hundreds of letters that no one but the girlfriend/editor/typist has seen. There's some good stuff in some of those letters. There's also a lot of shit that I am surprised hasn't landed me in jail! This seems like a decent way to promote the site and to allow people to show support.
The idea of putting all the letters on this site into a book came from David Thorne's "The Internet is a Playground." I don't want to do print though, and I'd have never considered this before the idea of the iPad. I am pretty sure the graphics would suck on a Kindle. Maybe it could be designed to not matter, since all the graphic really does is prove I got a reply. I don't want to be jumping on the as-of-yet-invisible iPad bandwagon, but really, this is the first time I have been able to imagine this would work.
I don't like this idea, because I'm making people pay for content that can readily be found here. And if I put in some unpublished letters I am depriving all three of the fans of this site. I do like the idea of omitting the commentary and letting the letters stand on their own. Maybe it would be an entirely different market.
For various reasons I can't think of many other ways for the site to make money. I don't see merchandising working, since even I wouldn't want a Jackass Letters t-shirt, and direct donations haven't even come close to making a difference.
In less than 4 months this site will be 2 years old. It's somewhat like John Edward's latest baby. It's time for it to learn to fly! About the only other choice I have is to shutter the project. Close comments, put the front page on random, turn out the lights and walk away. This site expires: April 28, 2010. I'll for sure be renewing it for a year, but after that...who knows? Maybe I'll be able to move on to the other projects I never seem to have time for.
If you have an idea for revenue feel free to leave a comment. I'm pretty much willing to consider anything at this point.
Posted by cjorgensen on 02/10 at 06:30 AM
Meanderings •
