Marketing - Money Received from Donations

I do not know any other forum which would get so many greens (aka cash) which was donated voluntarily by the members. I personally started donating to animal shelters, because donations are their only income, they are desperate and I KNOW what they spend their money on (you can donate to the specific animal/cause).

Ads and donations are pretty much the only income of Sythe so it plays a huge role. I think it would make sense if members would see what that money is spent for. Members donate way more than it is needed to host a website and they donate not just to say thanks/get a rank, but also to help the site. However, the money is not being spent on advertising, market research and more. Sythe's Social Media accounts show what a big problem it is, we need to spend money to drive traffic, to increase awareness, to show that everyone's contribution is spent to make Sythe great. If these problems would be solved, people would also be more willing to donate.

Number one priority of the donation money is of course hosting and all other website-related costs, however, this does not take the majority of the funds even if hosting is expensive. Priority number two SHOULD be advertising and marketing-related costs. Sythe is no longer a start-up, it is big, therefore it requires a lot of research to be done if we want other non-RuneScape fans to visit the forum. Third, staff incentives, staff members do not get paid, but in the future it would be nice if they would receive something minor during special occasions. This would a tokken of their appreciation, especially when it comes to old staff members who have done a lot of work and if such member leaves his/her position. For example Skele and such members like him who have done a lot of work. When such members leave, it would be nice to show that their work was appreciated. Focus more on training and rewarding your current team than bringing new people (this way you will concentrate on the tasks and there won't be that many changes unless it will be really necessary). It is like running a company, you have to make sure that HR (hiring, staff training) and Marketing (promotions, advertising, awareness, uniqueness, ability to sell yourself) departments are running smoothly.

Same goes to competitions, if once or twice a year Sythe would support some sort of a competition (money-wise) that would be nice, it would also get some attention on social media.

To conclude I would like to say, that we all need to see a clear path. The start was very good, but now we are transitioning and have to make appropriate changes.

 

If I understood correctly, you want big rich to post everything he spends donation/advertiser money on so we know where the money goes?

Would be nice with a tl;dr for us non-native english speakers

 

Community does not need any updates on that, what we need is action, numbers won't show us much, we already know what is needed.

 

Still dont know what you are suggesting. Probs because my english isnt the best, but im lost @WeRnIS

I do agree with mods getting some reward for their work tho

 

My suggestion is to spend money on Marketing, it is very important for every company/organisation, Sythe is not an exception. Forum is mature/well-known, so it is the right time to start spending money (wisely) and attract more people (such as Pokemon Go players) and this way get more visitors which means more donations (because of new members and because of old members who will be more willing to donate).

 

I think we let Richard run his website the way he wants. I dont think this suggestion should be in the forums internal suggestions sub forum. At most pm Richard.



We have literally no right to say what he should and should not do with the income we volunitary give him.

 

That's right, but there are some things which have to be done by every successful organisation/company including marketing. Successful marketing plan equals more customers (in this case more donators).

No one forces Sythe to use a domain, he could use a subdomain like sythe.abcdefg.com and save money, but that wouldn't be wise and that is not something that a bigger organisation/community would do.

Marketing is my field (have a degree), so I look at it as a member and as an expert.

 

Thanks for clearing that up. But I have to agree with Tyler. Its his website and he makes this kind of decisions on his own

 

It is your website, it is my website, it is all our website, we are a community.
Indeed, the owner decides what to do and what not to do, but this has to be in a ''To Do'' list, and it is quite a serious matter.

 

I think that you are correct in the sense that money should be put to marketing, but ALL of it after expenses? If Richard doesn't work, this website is his income, and he has dedicated several years to it. I think he should be able to do whatever he wants with it as its his creation.

 

Pretty sure all of the donations go to Sythe's income because I think he mentioned this is his only job so it's his only source of money.

 

It goes into hosting, then a small portion goes to Matthew, then the rest goes to Richard.

Sythe doesn't need to spend money on marketing (I'd even go so far as to say this would be a waste.) Targeted Facebook/Twitter ads would just be throwing money into a pit and there is a slow but steady stream of new users joining daily already.

Believe it or not, the site has stood the test of time and has been doing decently activity wise over the years. I don't see this trend really coming to a stop abruptly.

 

Not all of it, my suggestion is that there should be some sort of portion, it all comes down to the marketing plan.

Farcast, yes, throwing the money and spending it for advertising without a plan would be suicidal, especially if targeting RuneScape players (everyone already knows about Sythe).

However, it is not just advertising, there are lots of other ways to promote and as mentioned we should offer those leads something. For example, if a Pokemon Go player gets to know that there is a forum where he has a chance to hang out with a lot of fans, he will definitely join, but we have to make sure that we have something to start with (a decent number of members for that particular section before we even spend anything significant and you also have to make sure that you meet their needs).

 

I like your idea but I feel that this website is limited in the sense it's not a "social media" website based around hanging out. It's very rare for people to sign up just wanting to socialize with strangers as there are 1000's of game forum boards for that. I'm almost certain this website is based on the market and makes 99% of it's profit from it. The whole chatting around sections is nice and fun but I don't think that is whats driving the donations. Majority of people joining to stick around and donate are either sellers looking to profit by building rep up or donating because they have already made profit. It's a nice idea to just "advertise" to get more profit but I don't think it's like that because Sythe isn't selling a product themselves and are limited to the fanbase of the game's markets to get revenue.

As for your

Sythe actually does host many competitions a year with cash payouts. A great example was the summer olympics CDT event and the CDT paper trading event. They had a summer photo contest as well. All three had cash payouts.

 

Sythe does this for a living. The donations themselves wouldn't even cover a full time developer of his quality.

I consider donations an incentive for him to keep going, and of course pay for things like hosting costs as well.

I guess what I'm saying is I don't care if my donation is treating him to a meal or being used for some specific site purpose.

 

I don't really care for a Sythe.org financial statement. It's obvious that a forum with so many members donating would benefit its owner. It'd be cool to see the numbers, but don't think it's necessary as it would cost so much drama.

 

Sythe works on this website as a full time gig. the amount of hours and work he does, the donations dont even match what he could do.
i dont really mind knowing exactly where everything goes, because i know most of the money goes into keeping this website running.
im glad Sythe does everything he does for this site.

 

If he chooses to share this information he can do so on his own accord. He's certainly not forced to and speaking personally as a $1k+ donor, I have full faith that my money was put to good use supporting the site