Low Overhead Guild Funding - Your thoughts?

[Gamerprinter]

I'd have no problems paying an annual fee, however I think you will find members not all that excited about paying anything, here. I have no problem and recommend putting up a permanent Donation button, that just makes sense.

I have tried to think of other ways for the Guild to make money.

One idea, (I was waiting to see the results during the December challenge - to see how many people are actually interested in the idea,) I would be willing to offer a printing service, where maps created for monthly challenges or other specifically CG related maps are available for print from Gamer-Printshop.com and that $1 or $2 of the proceeds for each map print will be paid to the Guild each month. This could include both large format and multipage color PDF printing.

But then I didn't want to overly insert myself into Arcana's business - I wanted to see how the December challenge went, before I made this suggestion, but since the question has been officially "aired" - I'm offering.

I have no idea, how many would order, but knowing that ordering a map helps support the guild, people would be interested to a degree.

I still think the Guild needs to create sellable publications for fantasy mapping. Say, gather all the tutorials together, create fill-in tutorials in any areas we haven't covered and create say, the Fantasy Cartographers Guide to GIMP - make it available as a PDF book with 100% of proceeds going to the guild. Include all the best GIMP created maps and make this a coffee table book!

Perhaps contact some graphics application developer and try to create a packaged - buy this graphics app and receive a collection of tutorials and/or map objects ready for use (gather all pertinent map objects from the site...)

Just more ideas, for you Arcana.

GP

[Robbie]

Honestly, I've been considering offering some kind of affiliation with you for a while now...especially since the whole Gamer-Printshop concept and this site got off to a bad start initially anyways (the whole spam thing back when I was sensitive)

I definitely like the idea of offering your print services through the guild if you think thats justifiable...the guild cut might be well worth the amount of biz it funnels your way...I hope so.

In the short term though, the publishing aspect would require a level of legal/business support that I can't afford without some initial investment from members. Which is why I'm starting this low overhead initiative.

Lets talk off-site about printshop affiliation. I'll email you.

[torstan]

I voted for the donations button because I think the easiest option at this stage. If a message is posted in the news section when the hosting bill comes around I know that it would remind me to throw a few dollars in the pot for the value I had got from the Guild this year.

From that base we could then discuss a membership fee but that is entirely based on the benefits you get. If you will always be able to get the current services of the site for free, the subscription solely depends upon the extra benefits that would come with it. I'm interested to hear what ideas are around for that.