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That trap happens because of sites basing themselves on venture capital, advertising, and chasing growth/profit. Tildes is a non-profit with no advertising or

That trap happens because of sites basing themselves on venture capital, advertising, and chasing growth/profit. Tildes is a non-profit with no advertising or investors, so none of that pressure is there. There's no danger of donations not being enough to sustain it. The expenses are already far more than covered and it could easily stay running in its current state forever.

city41 7y ago
How do you know donations will keep up with usage? I felt like the OP was referring to a situation where Tildes takes off and becomes large organically. I'm currently building a site that I am considering attempting to make possible via donations, much like Tildes. Any advice you can share? How well have donations been working? Any gotchas? Thanks for any insights you can share!
- _ps6d 7y ago
  You can see the site's current expenses and donations here: https://tildes.net/financials https://tildes.net/financials The costs to keep it running are already covered by over 10x with the current donations, and I believe the existing servers could easily handle at least 100x the current traffic level. In terms of advice, I'd say: - Don't go into debt (or take any investments) to launch the site. - Build something lightweight so the costs are low. Use dedicated server(s), avoid cloud hosting like AWS. - Incorporate as a non-profit if you can.
  - stevewodil 7y ago
    +1 for transparency of financials, that's a really awesome idea
- nexuist 7y ago
  Not OP but server costs are not that expensive in the grand scheme of things. A $5 DO droplet can easily sustain 500-1000 active users. If you were doing video or audio streaming I could see concerns, but at the core of it all the server is doing is reading and writing strings and that's not a very intensive process. A $200/mo server could handle millions of daily visits, and you'd likely not grow further than that without running into the actual wall: labor. That's where things get dicey. You have to pay people, and ideally yourself, for the labor you invest into the project. As Tildes is a non profit it's already clear that the developer is building it out of love and not a desire to sustain his or her lifestyle. If the developer wanted a developer salary or enough income to hire another developer, though, I agree that donations wouldn't be adequate enough. That's when you turn to selling features (i.e. Reddit coins) or selling ads.

city41 7y ago

How do you know donations will keep up with usage? I felt like the OP was referring to a situation where Tildes takes off and becomes large organically. I'm currently building a site that I am considering attempting to make possible via donations, much like Tildes. Any advice you can share? How well have donations been working? Any gotchas? Thanks for any insights you can share!

_ps6d 7y ago
You can see the site's current expenses and donations here: https://tildes.net/financials https://tildes.net/financials The costs to keep it running are already covered by over 10x with the current donations, and I believe the existing servers could easily handle at least 100x the current traffic level. In terms of advice, I'd say: - Don't go into debt (or take any investments) to launch the site. - Build something lightweight so the costs are low. Use dedicated server(s), avoid cloud hosting like AWS. - Incorporate as a non-profit if you can.
- stevewodil 7y ago
  +1 for transparency of financials, that's a really awesome idea
nexuist 7y ago
Not OP but server costs are not that expensive in the grand scheme of things. A $5 DO droplet can easily sustain 500-1000 active users. If you were doing video or audio streaming I could see concerns, but at the core of it all the server is doing is reading and writing strings and that's not a very intensive process. A $200/mo server could handle millions of daily visits, and you'd likely not grow further than that without running into the actual wall: labor. That's where things get dicey. You have to pay people, and ideally yourself, for the labor you invest into the project. As Tildes is a non profit it's already clear that the developer is building it out of love and not a desire to sustain his or her lifestyle. If the developer wanted a developer salary or enough income to hire another developer, though, I agree that donations wouldn't be adequate enough. That's when you turn to selling features (i.e. Reddit coins) or selling ads.