Design Do some Fund-raising?

[msteiger]

Afaik, @Cervator pays for the the web hosting services we currently use. This covers the website, Jenkins, Weblate, Artifactory, etc. I think it would be great if this cost could be reduced or even completely covered by (regular) funding on a donation basis.

One short-term goal (and a personal favorite) could be to raise 8$ per month in order to pay for a 24/7 online game server? This should be a realistic goal.

I think we should not touch the one-time-donations to cover monthly expenses, though.
There's an entry on the Patreon fundraising site for Terasology and explicitly deals with regular funding:

https://www.patreon.com/Terasology

Maybe we should send this around a bit more? Post it on the Facebook profile, etc?

"Pledge 1$ per month to support a 24/7 online game server"

What's your opinion on this?

 

[Cervator]

Woot, we went from $1/month to $3/month!

I don't mind posting it everywhere, so far my hesitance has been not actually putting any work into the Patreon page. For instance there only being one tier (that we don't really have a routine to even fill yet) and one goal ($75/month which is a little too high now)

Tiny goals like $8 for a 24/7 server is a cool thought as tiny targets are easier to hit. Baby steps and all that.

That exact server hosting option though appears to be $8 for the for 6 months though, then it goes up

I wonder if the server is stable enough yet to run 24/7 without crashing - it wouldn't take much of a memory leak to cause it to grind to a halt in short order. Worth a test though! Then we can fix some things and pretty up the Patreon page a bit and finally post it officially.

Another related item on the list is looking at the Xenforo widgets more so we can make sponsor blocks. One guy nearly pledged at $50/month once, just asking we put a link to his MC forum somewhere. Didn't keep hearing back from him though. I figured that could also be a Patreon tier. We could also put the IntelliJ and YourKit logos on there too.

 

[msteiger]

Sounds great. I think that also active forum users are probably a target group with high affinity to the project and might be willing to throw in 1$/month. Maybe we should make it more prominent in the forum also?

What can we offer Patreons?

• 1$ Listing in a special credits section on regular project update posts
• 2$ Get a "Patreon Donor" forum badge
• 3$ Become a member of the GitHub organization without write access (who would want that?)
• 5$ Get access to a "private" online server
• 10$ add a link to your website
• 20$ add some customized stuff to the game (blocks or creatures such as Oreons) like in World of Warcraft
• 50$ send out a T-Shirt (once) or maybe even at 20$ if donating for > 2 months

Any other ideas?

 

[Skaldarnar]

I have more ideas for one-time pledges (or maybe reaching a specific amount over time?). For instance, any artwork could include some user/fan reference, or a fan-build can be showcased in trailers on our official youtube channel. We probably can hand out some physical rewards if the pledge is high enough. Say, somebody donates 30$ per month, then we can send off some custom t-shirt for 20$ once...

In general, artwork and videos might be easier to do than actual in-game content...

 

[Cervator]

Oh boy do I have ideas

Trick is taking the time to finish them up for presentation - which this inspired me to finally do with The World Of Varied And Noteworthy Achievements - been on my mind a long time and has donation piece in it.

Patreon is a little different and often the pledge levels are set up poorly. Sometimes there is physical swag offered, but that's usually a one-time thing (which may not be clearly advertised) based on an on-going pledge, which is kinda odd. So some thoughts:

• Pledge level should focus on on-going rewards for on-going funding. Inclusion in special credits sections for releases done while active, for instance. The link above suggests bundling a special world with the game where donors are represented by a creature. So long as they have an active pledge the creature will look extra fancy. If they stop it gets less fancy, and maybe they'll decay over time and disappear. Sponsor blocks & links are other good ideas for this setup. Forum donor badges too. High enough pledge could perhaps have us offer to host a server for a particular user + friends.
  
• Milestone goals are met once and/or offer on-going effects. For instance the 24/7 server could be up as long as total monthly donations exceed a certain amount. If we get really successful one day we could host a managed server we show up on and run special events on that only patrons at a certain pledge level can join. For instance Pahimar of EE3 does a private server like that.
• Individual creations can be an alternative to monthly pledges but are probably too annoying to try to manage. Pentatonix and many other artists do that for each video they release to Youtube, for instance. They also did one-time things when milestones were hit that happen only once, the first time the milestone was met, involving only patrons part of reaching it.

Physical or even unique content swag should IMHO be tied to multi-month or one-time milestone hits, and even that is sketchy. Trying to do something like that monthly would become a chore we could easily miss. Better to put swag in an on-demand storefront. Pentatonix offers a pledge level that if you maintain for a year results in a personalized video, but that's a long time to wait for a reward.

It would be kinda nice if Patreon had an all-time or total counter for multi-month events. But then there are other crowdfunding options for "big bang" type efforts. I think custom content probably belongs in a one-time setup like that. Custom effort also gets pricy fast were we to actually charge realistic rates compared to our day jobs. Another alternative there could be individual Patreon pages if for instance @Josharias wanted to offer support and custom addons for JoshariasSurvival

 

[msteiger]

Thanks for your feedback. I integrated all of your ideas in my post above.

 

[manu3d]

Thanks msteiger for creating this thread. It prompted me to do a number of donations I had been procrastinating over, i.e. to Wikipedia.

I also just used the Patreon website to setup a monthly donation to Terasology that should cover a large chunk of the current level of monthly expenses. I'm a bit confused by it because initially it seemed to suggest that the payments would only go through if the Terasology's account holder did something to start the flow. Now an email is saying the card has been charged, but the wording is a bit odd:

"Your card has been charged and the funds are being held in your Patreon account balance currently to be delivered to the creator after we process credit cards which happens on the first of the month."

I mean: it says the card has been charged but cards are being processed only on the first of the month?

Anyway, I don't want to hijack the thread with these technical details. Hopefully the money will get to Terasology one way or another. If not, we'll sort it out. Thanks again Martin for making my wallet considerably lighter tonight...

 

[Cervator]

Much appreciated @manu3d - when I saw the notification email there I had to blink and check twice to be sure. Thank you!

As far as how it works, yeah, you shouldn't get charged until the first few days of the month. I don't know why the language is confusing like that. We run on a simple monthly subscription model, some others run on a creation-based model where you don't pay until there is something created, and that still only next time the 1st rolls around at x * the number of creations that month. That's typical for people who release Youtube videos, draw comics, and so on, you pay per video/page (probably wise to put a cap on those pledges)

Maybe they changed it around sometime to a sort of escrow model for the monthly subs. Doesn't make sense to me though, what if you change your pledge level before the month ends? It must just be weird language. Let me know if you get an actual charge early, I kinda doubt it.

Yay more incoming bounties! I think we're all set up there, just need to start throwing money at stuff

 

[msteiger]

Same for me - I didn't believe it until I went to the Patreon website and saw it there. That's awesome - I don't even know what to say!

 

[msteiger]

Cervator: I think we're all set up there, just need to start throwing money at stuff

How do we proceed here? Should we launch a page on bountysource/any other bounty mgmt. tool? I think that @Cervator did some research on that already.

 

[Cervator]

Yep we have a setup on Bountysource, just no money transferred from our Paypal there yet

I made teams for MovingBlocks and Terasology (the orgs on GitHub) and can add members to them. Just sign up and I can add you as an admin or something I figure. I just OAuthed via GitHub

 

[msteiger]

I suggest using only one organisation (probably Terasology since it's the name of the game) on BountySource. Is that it?

https://www.bountysource.com/terasology

I'm OAuth'ed through github as well:
https://www.bountysource.com/people/30806-msteiger

Maybe we should setup a poll for each of the bounties to decide where to throw the money at?

 

[Cervator]

I tried to ask them about the one team thing, but I think the way it works is that a team on Bountysource matches an organization on GitHub. So if we just moved funds to the Terasology org we couldn't use them on repo issues in MovingBlocks

To add new members I have to add via email - let me know which to use, via PM or what not if needed

Poll likely wouldn't get enough attention. We just need to pick a few things and throw some $ signs at them

We're:

• https://www.bountysource.com/teams/movingblocks
• https://www.bountysource.com/teams/terasology

 

[Cervator]

Bump! Time for an update.

The trickle of income we had over the years have combined with the recent increases and surprisingly formed Voltron.

Alright, maybe that would take just a little more cash. But we had none the less nearly made it to the astronomical sum of €1000 before I just threw down the gauntlet with two $100 bounties: behavior trees + combat. We have another couple $5 bounties but there's no reason we can't throw a few hundred more in there in pieces of assorted sizes, just start nominating issues! Even got a hold of @synopia after a long time

Our account built up so much in part from me never actually reimbursing myself for any hosting costs or anything else like that. I figure rather than hit more fees I'll just pretend I reimbursed myself then used my personal cash to make bounties

We have both euros and dollars because :details: like the forum favoring donations in euros (originally set up by @begla) and Patreon favoring dollars. Bountysource is defaulting to dollars for me but you can probably do euros there as well. In any case I moved our balance from Patreon to our PayPal so I could use it for dollar-based bounties and avoid a currency exchange fee and not have to pay tax on it. Anything above $600/year I'm liable to be taxed on (technically through my registered corporation Nanoware, which provides us with business tax documents for a few places). So that'll happen next year at the current rate. No worries, I don't mind and it helps that my father-in-law is a tax accountant

I also did a $5/month donation to our Bountysource team just to see how that works out. I asked them a bunch of questions about their "Salt" option (basically Patreon) and why I can only see 36 of our module repos. Oh, speaking of, we have the Bountysource GitHub plugin enabled now for 36 modules and most the MovingBlocks repos. Shiny! Even Destination Sol can now have easy bounties attached.

Lots of rambling aside I moved this suggestion to Design as we still need to come up with tiers/goals for Patreon and Salt as well if we go for it (but really, that would probably be 100% code bounties while Patreon can be anything). Should start including a thank you to donors for each release starting with v1.0.0. Eventually could have a Slack-tier on Patreon if we keep the paid account after our big credit runs out. We might eventually push expenses high enough to where I'll worry about reimbursement, but in the meantime I'd rather just absorb the hit and start placing more bounties

So, seriously: Start nominating more things for bounties! Would also be nice to have a few others placing them using our funds so they don't all depend on me approving resolutions.

Ultimate result for now:

Edit: Maybe mildly relevant old link: http://forum.terasology.org/threads/organizing-all-the-things-with-waffle-io-trello-and-maybe-some-bounties.1173 - Waffle.io actually also has a Bountysource integration, but I'm torn on Waffle vs trying out Zenhub :/

Edit2: Handy link for pulling Patreon stats for donation highlights: https://www.patreon.com/manageRewardsList?hid=3468441 (when logged in as Terasology, naturally)

 

[Cervator]

$340 now up in bounties! Some are pretty small but we still have plenty more space and they can be added to over time. Neat.