Before my fannish interaction moved to LJ in 2003, I was heavily involved at MBTV/TWOP. At one point the site was about to shut down, finances were not great, and they instituted some things that let us help the site.
One was what they literally called the "Overpriced Donation Sticker" which you could purchase at their CafePress store. There were legal complications with the users just giving the site money, since they were not a charity. And the profit margin on the regular Cafe Press goods wasn't fantastic (that's why they later moved the T-Shirt business in-house.) But if what you really wanted to do was throw money at the site you could buy an oval sticker for $10 or $20. The value of the sticker was low and shipping also low (even int'l), because it arrived in an envelope. So the site ended up with most of the money.
Limited-time swag that has to be ordered by a certain date is one way to motivate people to buy it now. Although I think TWOP started doing that because in some cases they were handling packaging and shipping themselves.
As far as swag goes, I've really liked the ceramic mugs I've gotten from CafePress (for TWOP and VividCon). And if you do a travel-mug (I like those too!) please get one that actually has a water-tight seal.
The other thing that TWOP did was letting users buy time for the banners on the forum pages. (You supplied the art in the specified format.) They could pick the specific day, which was good for things like promoting the fact that Farscape was starting in re-runs, or running a "thanks for the memories" banner the day of the BtVS finale. It also resulted in what was referred to as the most expensive flame war ever (since the banners were $50 or $100 a day.) What outsiders didn't necessarily get is that we were just coming up with fun ways to throw money at the site, because we were trying to keep it going.
I'm not exactly sure how to implement the user banner concept here. I mean, obviously there are no ads here. But, hmm, a community? dw_market? Where users could opt-in to watch the comm. And members could pay X to have a post appear there to advertise to the other members? (New book, come to my convention, join my community, congratulations to X, come to our meet-up). And there would only be one post per day, and you could choose the specific day you wanted your announcement to run, if that mattered to you? (Season finale of SPN is tonight!)
Seed accounts: I don't think you guys said NEVER AGAIN. So I don't think that offering them again breaks a promise. You did say it wasn't something you planned to do again, but you also didn't plan to have so many disruptions to the CC system. (And also, the disruptions were not due to your incompetence, or a neutral cause, but by active malice on the part of others against the site.) If you decide to do it, I suggest announcing it fairly well in advance so that people can budget the money. And also selling .5X at Time1 and .5X at Time2 because of time zones.
(Also, the site isn't in beta anymore, it is has more feature! I also don't see a reason why the price couldn't be a bit higher than it was last time.)
Some people (like me) take a lot of comfort in knowing that their account is Permanent/Seed. It's really not just a money-saving over time/supporting the site thing, *I* feel more secure. The suggestion above about offering people the option to pay for 2 years at a time might be welcome by many people (with or without a slight discount), and might be a way to take in more money now w/o cannibalizing your long-term funds.
PS - For some reason I find the gift a random user thing creepy. I'd be much happier gifting a random community.
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One was what they literally called the "Overpriced Donation Sticker" which you could purchase at their CafePress store. There were legal complications with the users just giving the site money, since they were not a charity. And the profit margin on the regular Cafe Press goods wasn't fantastic (that's why they later moved the T-Shirt business in-house.) But if what you really wanted to do was throw money at the site you could buy an oval sticker for $10 or $20. The value of the sticker was low and shipping also low (even int'l), because it arrived in an envelope. So the site ended up with most of the money.
Limited-time swag that has to be ordered by a certain date is one way to motivate people to buy it now. Although I think TWOP started doing that because in some cases they were handling packaging and shipping themselves.
As far as swag goes, I've really liked the ceramic mugs I've gotten from CafePress (for TWOP and VividCon). And if you do a travel-mug (I like those too!) please get one that actually has a water-tight seal.
The other thing that TWOP did was letting users buy time for the banners on the forum pages. (You supplied the art in the specified format.) They could pick the specific day, which was good for things like promoting the fact that Farscape was starting in re-runs, or running a "thanks for the memories" banner the day of the BtVS finale. It also resulted in what was referred to as the most expensive flame war ever (since the banners were $50 or $100 a day.) What outsiders didn't necessarily get is that we were just coming up with fun ways to throw money at the site, because we were trying to keep it going.
I'm not exactly sure how to implement the user banner concept here. I mean, obviously there are no ads here. But, hmm, a community? dw_market? Where users could opt-in to watch the comm. And members could pay X to have a post appear there to advertise to the other members? (New book, come to my convention, join my community, congratulations to X, come to our meet-up). And there would only be one post per day, and you could choose the specific day you wanted your announcement to run, if that mattered to you? (Season finale of SPN is tonight!)
Seed accounts: I don't think you guys said NEVER AGAIN. So I don't think that offering them again breaks a promise. You did say it wasn't something you planned to do again, but you also didn't plan to have so many disruptions to the CC system. (And also, the disruptions were not due to your incompetence, or a neutral cause, but by active malice on the part of others against the site.) If you decide to do it, I suggest announcing it fairly well in advance so that people can budget the money. And also selling .5X at Time1 and .5X at Time2 because of time zones.
(Also, the site isn't in beta anymore, it is has more feature! I also don't see a reason why the price couldn't be a bit higher than it was last time.)
Some people (like me) take a lot of comfort in knowing that their account is Permanent/Seed. It's really not just a money-saving over time/supporting the site thing, *I* feel more secure. The suggestion above about offering people the option to pay for 2 years at a time might be welcome by many people (with or without a slight discount), and might be a way to take in more money now w/o cannibalizing your long-term funds.
PS - For some reason I find the gift a random user thing creepy. I'd be much happier gifting a random community.