Andrew Prutsok Posted May 21, 2019 Share Posted May 21, 2019 (edited) Late to this thread. Once the 4 Channers and Q believers started asserting themselves, I quit coming -- same reason I left Facebook in 2016. If I want to read their crap I can go straight to 4 Chan, Infowars or other racist, nazi sites. You are on the right track with donations. Do not go to subscriptions and block non-payers from content. Same with ads. Every one you put on a site slows load times and detracts that much more from the user experience. Subscription implies a product relationship only. Membership, on the other hand, is a two-way street. When one is a member of a thing, he or she has responsibilities. If you are a member of a Rotary Club, you are expected to not only pay your dues, but to show up at meetings and participate, volunteer for projects, recruit other members, etc. It should be the same here. Those who believe in the work being done and can contribute money should. Perhaps for those who can't afford to give, they can fulfill their membership responsibilities in other ways -- helping moderate comments on certain days, linking to and promoting content on social media, starting threads, soliciting donations from others,I don't know. It's my guess that those who are committed and talented enough at research to do the heavy lifting day in and day out, do not want their work limited to a few subscribers. They want it to reach as large an audience as possible and a free, open platform is the only way to accomplish that. You should have the email addresses of everyone who participates in the site. A good idea would be to start a weekly, or even monthly, email newsletter -- you can use a free program like Mail Chimp. Each newsletter should highlight the most popular content, talk about any projects the EF is involved in, solicit donations, encourage members to share the newsletter others. Post the same content of the newsletter regularly to social media. Most media organizations today face the same situation as EF. There's a group studying this and making recommendations for sustainability called The Membership Puzzle Project, and they are doing good work. I highly recommend the leadership of any media organization to pay attention to what they are doing. https://membershippuzzle.org/ Edited May 21, 2019 by Andrew Prutsok Correcting an error Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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