Support your Wesleying!
So Wesleying has finally gotten its shit together: we're moving to WordPress, which is some extremely superior blogging software that most respectable blogs in the world use. However, this means we'll no longer be getting free hosting from Blogger, and so we need to buy our own domain name and hosting. We're switching to wesleying.org! This is expensive, and we Wesleying contributors can't pay for it all out-of-pocket.
There were several possible sources of raising money that we quickly rejected:
- Advertisements
- Corporate sponsors
- SBC/University funds
The only people we want Wesleying to be beholden to are you, our loyal readers. So we're kicking off a massive fundraising effort with the primary goal of paying Wesleying's hosting for at least the next two years, by the end of this semester. How can you help contribute to this grassroots effort?
- Donate money online via PayPal or credit card
- Send cash or check through campus mail
- Buy yummies at our upcoming bake sale(s)
- Buy a Wesleying T-shirt (design yet to be finalized; email mjweiss@wes if you have a good idea)
Donate money! If every single one of our readers donated $1, we'd be set. Any amount you can give will be helpful.
Thanks so much for your support! It's been great serving you for the past two years. Keep watching for more info about our ongoing fundraising efforts.
26 comments:
If we are paying money, we want weekend roundups.
Why move to wordpress? It seemed to me that your guys server-load on blogspot was fine.
If I was the CEO of Wesleying, Inc. I would execute the following moves:
* implement Google AdWords, you have an pageview of >3,000/day that justify it. Given your target audience, you should have a high enough cpm that should bring revenue for at least >$100/month.
* leverage Wesleying to take-over the Wesleyan ACB. The ACB is a highly trafficked website - but Wesleying is in a unique position as the de-facto portal for everything Wesleyan, by either rolling your own ACB + crawling posts on LJ and integrating ACB posts in blog format. You can easily rollover ACB into the Wesleying umbrella (and more traffic and ad revenue).
* implement alum/corporate ad's, tap into the pockets of companies that are looking to recruit college students and offer competitive job classified ad's. This is a win-win for both students who are looking to get internships/jobs and companies/alums who want to hire from Wesleyan. (see SnapTalent)
* increase the visibility of the blog by syndication in print-media (Hartford Courant, Middletown Press, New Haven Register, NYTimes). I would pitch to the Courant editors (whom already have a internship program with Wesleyan English dept) to have a "college column" with existing Wesleying content on it. Not only would this bring more revenue but more rollover traffic and more ad revenue (see TechCrunch's syndication deal with WashPost).
* lastly, expand the Wesleying operations to be a global college blogging network.
But of course, you guys are no Gecko Gordon so y'all gonna act like you are on PBS/NPR and ask for handouts,
Love,
Numbercrunchr
Please don't place external ads on Wesleying. I want it to be student-driven without imposing the views of corporations, even if it is college-related content. That is a major reason why I trust Wesleying and continue to use it all the time.
I know websites like Facebook use advertising, but that stretches beyond one school and the people that run Facebook draw salaries on operating that website. I am sure nobody on Wesleying is drawing a salary and is completely non-profit with altruistic goals. I am more than happy to donate whenever Wesleying needs a little help, within reason.
I hope that Wesleying will always be real students, real student life at Wesleyan. Thank you.
Anon 5:55, I just added a Weekend Roundup(backdated to keep this post on top).
We look forward to processing your contribution.
don't hate on npr
no corporate ads on wesleying! meh.
so other than a bill to pay, what do you get by making the switch?
failfailfailfailfailfailfailfail
Numbercrunchr,
I'm embarrassed for you.
If you guys are really into the whole no corporate sponsor thing, you should register as a non-profit. This opens up all sorts of great fund raising strategies. The one that immediately came to mind is http://www.goodsearch.com/. I am sure wesleying readers do a LOT of searching. If you encourage them to use the site, then you get $0.01 per search. It's a good way to get broke college students to contribute really easily.
6:45--there are a lot of improvements we'd like to make to the site that we simply can't do with Blogger. It's an extremely limited system and allows for virtually no customization. I don't want to out everything we're planning right now. One of the ideas we've had is an automated event calendar in the sidebar. We have several others as well.
open up advertising to wesleyan sponsored events only--it could not be a main source of revenue, but it could help.
+1 for no advertising.
Try HostGator or BlueHost for lowcost webhosting with wordpress support.
For example HostGator has $5/mo package for a single domain with unlimited disk and bandwidth. If you need unlimited domains, its $8/mo. If you need dedicated IP and private SSL its $13/mo.
BlueHost starts at $7/mo and includes the cost of the domain name.
Please explain "very expensive"...I am confused by this representation.
Anyway, in terms of T-shirts, webhosting + domain registration is about 2 shirts a month ;-)
When you switch over, is there any way to transfer the old blog posts, or would they be gone?
We should be able to import the Blogger archive, and the Blogger blog isn't necessarily going to get deleted, anyway.
this is a WASTE at a time of financial WORRIES
stay where you are
What is the annual or monthly cost of the new hosting site?
i'm so down for a t-shirt. make it colorful&sexy
i will buy a tshirt but it seems more than fine here
verrrry expensive.
If you give me specific numbers and justification for those specific numbers, I will gladly contribute. If this is supposed to be a "grassroots blog" we should at least be told how much it costs and what exactly we're paying for.
Don't take this as final, because I don't think we've made a completely final decision yet, but I think we were planning on going with Dreamhost, and I think it was going to be about $120 a year. And we'd like to get the money for a few years of hosting if we can, so we don't have to worry about it expiring every year.
please, at least get rid of the awful new banner.
get someone who knows something about design to design you something, the new banner is such naive design
why dont you poll people about it? i dont think anyone has a problem with the website as it is now.. these are unnecessary expenses.
wordpress offers free hosting too - why pay?
i just don't like the green on the banner because it gets me falsely excited. every time i see it i think it is christmas, but it's not!
Post a Comment