When we re-launched the site at the beginning of the year, I mentioned that I’d considered shuttering OSNews as a response to needing such a major overhaul, since conventional advertising was no longer sufficient for covering expenses. A few weeks ago, I decided to experiment with offering a sponsorship, wherein a patron pays a fee to be the exclusive sponsor of the site for a week. It was all just a pipe dream until someone agreed last week to be our first sponsor. So we’re cautiously optimistic that this may be a viable way to keep the site running and maybe even expand.
It won’t work, though, unless we can fill our pipeline with sponsors. I doubt we’ll be able to do that just by putting up a shingle and hoping people contact us. So I wanted to reach out to you, beloved readers, to see if you could help.
- If you know someone, maybe your employer, who offers a product or service that might be interesting to OSNews readers, see if they’ll be willing to sponsor the site.
- We’re open to ideas on how to structure the sponsorship program. If you were to sponsor the site, what would you want to get in exchange for your money? We’d love feedback on the terms of the sponsorship.
- Do you know of any ways that we might be able to publicize the availability of sponsorships? Would you be interested in acting as a salesperson and reaching out to firms to solicit sponsorships? Let me know.
- And finally, sponsorships will be desirable if OSNews itself is popular and vibrant. You can do your part by reading the site, commenting, submitting news, and contacting us if you’re interested in writing a feature.
Patreon model works for many sites (more so for multimedia though).
I think $1000 is a steep price, and many people would like to chip in smaller amounts. The “long tail” [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail ] will probably bring the same amount of money, however will allow a larger portion of the members to feel “ownership” of the site.
It would also eliminate potential commercial or editorial conflict of interests.
Patreon is definitely on the list too!
The 1k is a bit steep for me too but a few quid a month would be a deffinate. I’ve been a use of this site for so long it’s one of the urls I use to tast my connection is up. (osnews and BBC)
I like this direction much better than google adwords (which I refuse to allow though my filters for privacy reasons). IMHO direct sponsorship is better for everyone if you can make it viable – I hope I’m not too far off base but I’m optimistically hoping it might fund some original content for osnews.
I may be willing to help in ways other than money, which I realize may not be as useful…but if you guys do need other kinds of help please do consider asking us. Many of us here are coders.
Speaking of which, several weeks ago I emailed Adam a proof of concept script to allow comments to be sorted chronologically. I converted it to a greasemonkey script so I can use it for myself locally, but it’d be nice to get it fully tested for all edge cases+devices and put it up on osnews itself.
Unfortunately I don’t know anyone to do serious sponsorship.
Happy to put in a few quid a month, should the opportunity arise.
I have no problem with Google ads. I know some do not like it but I think you need to use them (or something similar) at least to start off. I also do not know anyone who would be interested in sponsoring but if I come across anyone I will definitely mention it to them.
As mentioned before Patreon might be a good model. I would likely chip in a bit as I find this site really useful and valuable.
My 2 pennies worth
TheNerd,
That’s a good point, where does everyone else stand on google ads?
The thing is, osnews wouldn’t really be “starting off” with google ads, really they’ve been using google ads for a very long time already and it’s a safe bet that the motivation for switching is because google ads have disappointing results. Maybe google is getting too greedy, or maybe there are increasing number of people blocking them,
https://www.statista.com/statistics/804008/ad-blocking-reach-usage-us/
I would think that tech sites like this one have a significantly disproportionate number of users who are blocking google and consequently deflated google ad profits. It would be interesting to see the actual stats and breakdowns. I suspect Thom Holwerda is aware of the awkward juxtaposition when he criticizes google on the one hand, while simultaneously giving them advertising business on the other. IMHO osnews would be journalisticly better off without google ads, but I also appreciate just how difficult/futile it is to fight the corporate giants that dominate everything these days. Virtually all my clients have google web trackers in spite of my moral objections to letting google track us.
The truth is many tech publishers have fallen in the past two decades as google and facebook have siphoned off the advertisers.
Indeed.
Ultimately I don’t know if osnews’ sponsorships will be viable, but I certainly want to applaud them for trying and I very much hope that it works out.