Low Overhead Guild Funding - Your thoughts?

[RPMiller]

I have always said, and stand by the Donation button. It is easy to implement and for people to use. It removes a lot of the "elitism" that can spawn from "member only" privileges as well. I think with the number of folks that are getting paying gigs from the site they would be more inclined to toss a few bucks of their profit our way if it wasn't mandatory, at least I would hope that was the case.

Just thinking outside the box here - perhaps one of the privileges of a membership could actually be access to a "Paid Requests Forum" so if you really wanted to earn some additional money you would have access to the requests that are paying. Of course that could alienate our Industry Pros, and personally I think they are some of our greatest assets so perhaps that's not such a great idea...

Honestly, I'm really hard pressed to think of something that I would want to charge a membership fee for unless it was some sort of materials or something that is outside the scope of the forums.

Hm... here's another "outside the box thought". What about Cafe Press merchandise? Arcana you already have some really awesome artwork that is both Cartographic and RPG related. What about setting up a store and selling CG merchandise and/or your artwork stuff? I think if people knew that it was for the site and was giving them a value added something in return for their money that might generate more revenue than a donation button or membership.

[Gamerprinter]

Just thinking outside the box here - perhaps one of the privileges of a membership could actually be access to a "Paid Requests Forum" so if you really wanted to earn some additional money you would have access to the requests that are paying. Of course that could alienate our Industry Pros, and personally I think they are some of our greatest assets so perhaps that's not such a great idea...

One problem with this is that many of the Map Requests placed in that forum are (unpaid requests), so unless a separate forum for unpaid maps is made available, paying for access to unpaid jobs, is not so enticing.

Perhaps Industry Pros could be exempt from paying so as not to exclude them, but I think the Industry Pros would be more willing to pay a nominal fee than other members here.

Just thoughts on your idea, RP.

GP

[Redrobes]

As a person who creates and charges for an RPG product I think I can say, with some considerable conviction, that putting a price on something will significantly diminish the number of people wanting it. And yet at the same time when there are costs involved its hard to keep going when its costing. Ideally there would be no charge and no costs. But the realms of fantasy are limited to our maps however and the real world does annoyingly get in the way.

Basically on this site there is a spread of people who contribute to those who take everything and it would be good for those who contribute to get something and for those who net take to have to give something. Its very hard to implement tho unless some big corp like google is doing the giving. Younger people are unable to make payments of any sort even if its small change. The best you might be able to do is with mobile phone texts & premium rate call lines but that's very hard or voluntary. Also, credit card and paypal payments are hard to administer too in small volume but is probably the best option for a direct source.

In order to persuade people to give over hard cash I think they do expect hard copies and that a print of a map is definitely the best way forward. most games shops that I have chatted to still say that lead and paint are the main source of RPG revenue not books and modules. A guild shop with print options would be cool. We could have a challenge to make a miniature / wargaming tabletop poster and see if people would buy them for play. What about selling Tee / Polo / Rugby / Football / shirts or Caps or similar logo infested gear for showing off at conventions. If possible you could restrict certain items to people who have submitted a number of maps, have enough rep or have won challenges / awards etc.

I can donate my latest challenge entry which is at poster res. Some of my challenge entries were fairly high res too - enough for printing. Or I can do some poster sized campaign terrain maps or something like that and we split the proceeds between creator, printer costs and hosting subs.

I think you should have a poll which I would hope a lot of cloaked and new members would vote on for what type of physical stuff they want the most assuming it was fair priced. Or even what they currently spend their RPG coin on.

Alternatively would it be possible to host it all on a local server and pay just for a high speed connection to the net instead of the hosting of it too. You will have to see what kind peak IO you would need and whether that was worth it. Or maybe mirror some of the bigger images onto other already connected servers to spread the costs out.