semi-regular business Q&A session

[mark]

It's been a while since the last one, so denise suggested that we do another Dreamwidth-the-Business Q&A session.

But first, some data. One of the things that we promised when we started this site - and still do! - is that we will be open with the details of how the business is run, how it's doing, where your money is going, etc. Given that, here's the breakdown of our first few months of operations (discounting May):

June: $7,500 income
July: $5,000 income
August (thus far): $2,500 income

This is pretty much what we expected. More people buying accounts towards the beginning of the site, tapering off as we come up towards the various renewal periods. We're comfortable with these numbers and trends so far.

Our current monthly expenses come to about $6,000. This breaks down roughly 50/50 into "server costs" ($3k/month) and "people costs" ($3k/month). We are presently paying a few people as contractors to do time-sensitive and business-critical work for us. (Systems administrators, ToS enforcement, and some development time.)

We are not, currently, paying any salary to Denise or myself. (Which is one thing we really hope to fix...but stay tuned for today's news post.)

Summary:

Dreamwidth is running slightly in the red, but has enough money in the bank to keep the site running for several years at the current run rate. We have a few things in the pipeline which we hope will allow for us to increase the attractiveness of the site to paying customers (features) as well as give us more sources of revenue (credits, virtual gifts, etc).

There will be more data about our next-6-months plan in the upcoming news post. But for now, if you have any particular questions about the business, things you want clarified, or anything, please comment. Denise and I will be happy to answer!

Comments

[manna]

Personally, I don't like v-gifts, and I have them turned off on LJ, but I think they're probably the least-obnoxious of all the revenue-raising ideas LJ came up with, and if lots of people want them, then you should go for it.

For other revenue-raising ideas, I think you should have profile dragons. $1 buys you an egg, which hatches after a month. For every month that you keep paying your $1 in dragon-feed and maintenance, the dragon grows a bit bigger, and starts doing interesting stuff, until it's...I don't know...breathing fire while doing back-flips and tap dancing. If there's a break in the payment, then the dragon flies off. Maybe you'll be able to catch a glimpse of it on other people's profile pages, where it will settle for a day then move on -- it starts by migrating to somewhere on your flist -- and maybe it will stop by for a visit, but it won't come back permanently until you start coughing up the $1 a month again to feed it.

Damn. I totally wasn't serious when I started that, and now I really want a tap-dancing dragon.

[cleverthylacine]

You know, aside from ads and obnoxious userpics, one of the #1 things I use Adblock for is ignoring people's dragon eggs that they post all over LJ... ;-)

[manna]

Don't those needs clicks or pats or something, though? I don't know how they work, to be honest, 'cause I always ignore them too :-)

[jd]

As I understand it, they need both image loads and actual link clicks, and there's some funny math with the proportion of views-to-clicks.

[triadruid]

Dear gods, yes.

[weofodthignen]

I rather like this idea. I don't understand how the dragon eggs work, and the comment here is the first I'd heard about being able to block them with AdBlock, but I'd rather like a tapdancing dragon on my profile page, and if it was there rather than in my entries, friends on dial-up wouldn't have it mucking them up.

M