Hi. I have just this minute subscribed to the list and read about your fundraising difficulties, discussed in early Nov. I came after having thrown $25 your way, the average donation i see. I have an idea as to how you guys could make money ethically, unobtrusively, wiithout alienating customers, and it's cheap to implement. Micropayments. Ask people to voluntarily become subscribers to a micropayment system. They give you $5 up front. You charge them .01 a page, or maybe .05 tops. I like $.01 better, because it is literally the least you can ask. Charge their account, you don't need to ask for a credit card each time, you have $5, just take it out of that until it's gone. You can embellish the program a bit. Don't charge for contributions or edits or other "giving" activities, only for article views. In fact giving activities could earn you a credit, although there are "cheating" issues with that. Make sure you remind them that they just donated a penny, and hey, thanks for that, we appreciate it. When they use up the $5, which will probably take a while, it's 500 articles, but they will use it up eventually, and then you start by emailing them a reminder and then nagging them at the bottom of the article that they need to refill their account. DO NOT STOP SERVING THEM PAGES. Anyone can still see Wikipedia for free, but you should make your point that hey, it costs money, and you're asking for a friggin penny a hit, so come on. How many articles do you serve a day? a buck a hundred will add up fast. And it is an ongoing source of funding, permanent really, as long as people are willing to do it. So you have to sell them on it, but i think it could work. It's technically easy to implement, i would think, you'd need a login and then just track session hits. You'd want to make real sure to avoid double-charges or other BS that could piss people off, and you'd need to be careful that people couldn't get in and force payments from the wrong account, although there's not much incentive to do that, since you can still see if free if you want to. what do you all think? -- == -- == -- == -- == -- == Colin Maroney cjmaroney01(a)gmail.com -- == -- == -- == -- == -- _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Colin Maroney Sent: 18 November 2007 07:49 To: foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Foundation-l] fundraising idea Hi. I have just this minute subscribed to the list and read about your fundraising difficulties, discussed in early Nov. I came after having thrown $25 your way, the average donation i see. I have an idea as to how you guys could make money ethically, unobtrusively, wiithout alienating customers, and it's cheap to implement. Micropayments. Ask people to voluntarily become subscribers to a micropayment system. They give you $5 up front. You charge them .01 a page, or maybe .05 tops. I like $.01 better, because it is literally the least you can ask. Charge their account, you don't need to ask for a credit card each time, you have $5, just take it out of that until it's gone. You can embellish the program a bit. Don't charge for contributions or edits or other "giving" activities, only for article views. In fact giving activities could earn you a credit, although there are "cheating" issues with that. Make sure you remind them that they just donated a penny, and hey, thanks for that, we appreciate it. When they use up the $5, which will probably take a while, it's 500 articles, but they will use it up eventually, and then you start by emailing them a reminder and then nagging them at the bottom of the article that they need to refill their account. DO NOT STOP SERVING THEM PAGES. Anyone can still see Wikipedia for free, but you should make your point that hey, it costs money, and you're asking for a friggin penny a hit, so come on. How many articles do you serve a day? a buck a hundred will add up fast. And it is an ongoing source of funding, permanent really, as long as people are willing to do it. So you have to sell them on it, but i think it could work. It's technically easy to implement, i would think, you'd need a login and then just track session hits. You'd want to make real sure to avoid double-charges or other BS that could piss people off, and you'd need to be careful that people couldn't get in and force payments from the wrong account, although there's not much incentive to do that, since you can still see if free if you want to. what do you all think? -- == -- == -- == -- == -- == Colin Maroney cjmaroney01(a)gmail.com -- == -- == -- == -- == -- _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l