wren

Meta is profitable but that’s more because they are a world-consuming surveillance entity

have staff at least considered becoming a world-consuming surveillance entity

and occasional legal/professional services

also since this isn't immediately obvious from the name (which sounds like a fancy way of saying "lawyers") I want to make clear that this isn't just lawyers, nor is it even primarily lawyers: it's also things like business licenses, accountants, accounting software, sales tax preparation software, registered agents (the people who receive lawsuits on our behalf in the states in which the company has a legal existence, and also allow us to run the company from our homes without doxing ourselves), a DMCA agent to do upfront processing on any copyright takedown notices we receive, etc. unfortunately these are all ongoing costs that we don't just avoid if we don't have any legal documents to write.

This was really hard to read, and I'm sure it was harder to write. I want cohost to stay existing, and I want it to continue to resemble the amazing place it is now. I don't know if it means anything at this stage of the game, but I'll be subscribing so I can put my money where my mouth is. I should have done so sooner. Good luck, and thank you for the transparency.

Thanks for sharing that <3

Also, do i recall correctly that you have been considering a pay-what-you-want (but with the minimum amount) payment model for Cohost Plus?
Not sure about other subscribers, but i'd personally just throw double the current price of subscription on it and the only way to do it with the current system would be gifting a sub to someone else - far from an easy solution.

Or you have gathered some data and decided that not enough subscribers would do it to make it worth the resources needed to implement that?

would open sourcing cohost alleviate some of the burden of not having enough devs? I know a lot of the features (especially the more revenue-generating ones) are kind of hard for a one-off contributor, but... figured it's worth asking. There's definitely a lot of people here who want cohost to succeed & would be willing to help out

thank you for the transparency

while i wouldn’t mind the untargeted ad banners approach, the “tumblr blaze”-like solution feels not too great. ideally i never want to see posts from people i don’t follow on my timeline, this is one of the reasons i love this Website.

Thanks for the transparency! Rooting for you.

I hope Cohost is able to sustain itself as long as you all are happy having it be the thing you do with your lives, but I just wanna say that I won't feel like this was a failure if you end up having to shut things down sooner than that. you've created a reprieve from the worst parts of the internet, and that will still be true even if it turns out to be just a temporary reprieve. maybe I'll go get an eggbug tattoo if you end up shutting down, and it will be a reminder that it's possible to create good, nice things online

So question: is Cohost looking for profitability or sustainability? Like, if social media as a concept is unprofitable even with ad revenue models, why bother aiming above "revenue = cost" anyway?

And if y'all do want to be profitable, will those profits (i.e. the surplus value of worker labor) be shared among your workers, poured back into the company, concentrated in executive positions (if the company restructures with more employees), or something else?

Sorry for putting my Marxist hat on, but I'm just curious and excited to see what happens

I wouldn't be opposed to some kind of "not obnoxious ad from another human who posts here."

A less terrible Patreon sounds cool.

I have no idea what an "ask" is.

Stay cool. Take care of yourselves. Best.

Thanks for the transparency! I want to see Cohost continue, just got a Plus! subscription!

I really missed these

steve huffman is a Business Genius and if he puts out a book i’ll pirate it day one and screenshot all the dumbest bits.

would be a post of All Time tbh

re footnote 8: no shame, jae, personally I'm glad you're here while you're here

I would assume resigning doesn't lose your equity in the company though? which is, at this point, effectively part ownership of the debt?

okay thinking about that bit makes my head spin and I'm not even involved. something about drawing a salary from debt backed by the entity you part own...i love you all staff and i can't believe you're that brave

even if defaulting is basically just handing the company over to your brave financier

I really love that we have a miniature scale elon who just decided to bankroll the social media they wanted to see in the world...but like they actually helped create something in doing so, they don't expect literally any clout for it, and they're probably pretty cool i bet. statistically anyway. I like effectively everyone here despite the occasional discourse headaches

excited to see Aidan's take on these

See now I'm thinking of cursed funding ideas. "For $100/month we'll notify you whenever someone writes a private note about you! Just an extra $50/month to see what the note says! $200/month to disable people being able to block you!"

Best of luck, I hope there's a path to sustainability, both financially and personally--I love what you've built here and the spirit behind it.

thank you as always for the transparency and candor, it feels important and good that this kind of information is public.

and thank you for continuing to make one of very very few websites that i don't actively hate being on!

sending y'all my love, this is such a big thing you're working on and I appreciate everything you've done

if it meant this site coming even a step closer to surviving i'd gladly turn off my adblocker and scroll past a toyotathon ad every page or so.

also promoted posts sounds like it'd be fun. if there's any site i'd trust to have either goofy shitposts or quality art show up as promoted instead of just crappy products, it'd be this one.

but above all, even if i have absolutely no way i can help (broke jobless 19 year old moment) i believe in this website. more than any other place on the web i hope this site succeeds. the work you've all put in is commendable, i love this community, and i really do wish the best for the website and for all of you.

i wanna echo the other comments about project wonderful-style ads sounding like a good option. personally, seeing a few banner ads for things other people on cohost are making would be worlds apart from the targeted corporate ads so much of the rest of the internet is slathered in (in that the odds i would actually click on them are greater than zero)

Thanks for making Cohost! Personally I'd be fine with non-targeted ads if they were clearly delineated from normal posts, like banner ads. I'd prefer no ads, but if it's a choice between ads and no Cohost, I'd rather have ads.

What I’m hearing is that with the new ability to have multiple subscriptions, we can achieve a theoretical >100% conversion rate.

a bummer for sure seeing numbers as they are, but the transparency is much appreciated. i certainly believe in the creativity and capability of the team. i imagine you'll be able to look at cohost+ subscription numbers in response to this posting, and you may be able to leverage yet more transparency (% bars for "hosting costs covered" like some sites do each month?)

i think you've got room certainly in the subscription posts/pages space, small creator piracy has been a concern for example, even the barest of a steganographic filter option would differentiate cohost

as for user growth in general, an api (and the mobile apps that could exist as a result) could certainly help. the overall ownership and equity structure being what it is, iirc there have been part-time or contract workers with assc before?, is there consideration for bringing another on in this way to get these out the door quicker?

i'm hopeful y'all'll find ways to make it make sense for yourselves too, burnout is a terrible thing.

all in all, take care of yourselves, and thanks for what you're doing

I am certain this was miserable as hell to write, and I'm sorry (empathy) this shit's coming up while everything else is going so, so wrong.

From a personal standpoint, I can absolutely say I'd be interested in a Patreon-style alternative, don't think I'd mind Project Wonderful style ads, and I'll probably change my quantity up a lil bit until then.

Completely understanding in terms of the "contributions make things hard" and everything, and recognize that debugging, review, etc are not free activities either. I'm not sure I really have a solution or thing to suggest here, because I'm a big fan of the stance -- just as a developer also going through burnout, I get it, I'd love to contribute spare cycles too, glad to just throw some more money and not add to the stress pile. <3

Make me a mod. I will work for free but I will only ban people I consider my enemies and sow discord wherever I step so it would be incredibly costly and stupid but you should do it anyway. Grant me power

thank you for making cohost, and for this update.

Official eggbug sticker design contest? I know you said the merch didn't bring a lot of money but I also can't find the merch website link. I'd bristle at the idea of most websites asking for free design labour but "keep the website going" feels different than "buy me a yacht"

On the subject of money owed, I feel compelled to ask, his much risk are you each taking on individually here? What do you stand to lose if cohost cannot recoup it's costs? I am enjoying this service, truly. But if meeting your financial obligations is dependant on putting cohost in the black, and if we are acknowledging that even the most enormous, aggressively monetized, for-profit platforms have consistently failed to break even, then I think the writing is on the wall here as far as sustainability goes, and I don't like the idea of any of you having worse lives for trying to make this happen.

To echo what others have said, a blaze-style feature to put posts directly on people's dashboards... I feel very conflicted about.

But untargeted banner ads advertising small creators? Yes please. I would enthusiastically support that. If ads become a necessity for the site, that is absolutely what I would prefer.

There are only a couple other indie media darling-type sites where I could expect this kind of transparent and thoughtful update (the first one I can think of is Autostraddle). Thank you for doing it; it's important to me as a community member and a Plus! member.

this reminded me to re-start cohost plus, now that i'm all moved and my own expenses are a bit more predictable. i believe in cohost. i want it to succeed! it's helped me succeed a lot more lately (this is the only social media where my Etsy-related posts get a lot of eyeballs on them)!

also fuck i'm sorry you've been dealing with long covid. UGH. fingers crossed it doesn't hang around too long.

P.S. i would LOVE project-wonderful-style and/or blaze-style ads. if there was a way for small creators to buy ads on cohost i would absolutely do it. maybe to reduce any potential obnoxiousness as much as possible, there could be a "don't show me this one again please" feature or tags that the already existing tag-muffling system applies to.

"Optional ad button"? Is that a thing? Kinda like in a mobile game. "Watch this ad to help us keep Cohost going!" clicks button 30 times a day

ComicAd.net also is the inheritor of the Will of Wonderful.

If you had to run ads here, I probably wouldn't see them because I'm currently on Cohost Plus. However, I don't think I'd actually mind also seeing generally well curated ads (I mean ads that aren't shilling NFTs, or a crypto scam, or the gross stuff I currently see on Twitter) if they helped bump your revenue and make the site more sustainable. This is to say: given the choice, as a Cohost Plus subscriber, I'd also still be OK to see curated ads if that meant Cohost was more sustainable for it.

Cohost having it's own Patreon-like service is really cool to think about, and I'm sure would be very welcome to everyone wanting a subscription service they can trust. That said, be careful about becoming a cornerstone of the U.S. healthcare system!

the transparency is much appreciated. as many others are saying, i also wouldn't mind a project wonderful-style ad system on cohost. but before deciding on something like that, try to poll the wider audience of cohost somehow. user input is important, but the comment section on one post shouldn't be the basis for a big decision.
best of luck going forward. that you all got this far is nothing to scoff at, and its abundantly clear how much the team cares.
edit: adding onto what someone else said, an optional add switch or button might be a good idea. something like an artist alley feed where user-promoted ads are displayed could be interesting as well. being creative with it could make the userbase more open to ads.

I don't have any solutions, but thank you for the transparency, and I'm wishing you all the best!

honestly, while in most other contexts id probably be a little bristly about ads, i think a Project Wonderful style system would be alright (altho id prefer if it was limited to static images so its not really distracting while trying to navigate the page)

Thanks for the transparency! I can afford some extra so I've picked up some extra subscriptions. It's just a drop in the bucket but hopefully it can help some

regarding ads:

even if it's almost certainly never gonna happen, i honestly don't think i'd be too opposed to seeing untargeted ads on this platform, as long as they also don't take up post space like many other websites have opted for these days. i yearn for the days around ~2010 where the only ads you would see are banners at the top/bottom of the page, or those big blocks next to the actual page content.

my main issue with modern day advertising is how they actively disrupt your browsing and waste so much of your time in an attempt to forcibly grab your attention. there's also the tracking and privacy nightmare most ad systems present, but if we're given something that never can (or has to) mine your data to begin with, i think it'd be tolerable.

infact, it might actually be kinda cool to see a feature where we could pay a bit of money to put up our own ads, vaguely similar to that tumblr blaze thing. or maybe this is closer to roblox ads idk lol. still could be an interesting feature, i think.

i would like to put forward the idea of Dark Staff, a group of evil anti-employees who pay the equivalent of a salary for the privilege of being extremely unhelpful during business hours. i think it could be what the social media industry needs

yay numbers! its understandable that financial posts take a while to write, im glad it got here in the end.

ive seen some people in the comments say they don't like tumblr blaze ads, but for me personally they've been neutrally-ignorable-to-pretty good 95% of the time (minus the odd (hah) terf or evangelical screed, which i can trust cohost staff to not approve). im reticent to give kara more moderation work however (sidenote: it's always been very prompt to nuke my enemies off the site-- i mean respond to my reports, so good job kara ) but the concept appeals to me! i'm always looking for interesting people to follow and blaze-style posts would be another avenue for that. i feel like it would serve functionally the same purpose as the webcomic-esque banner ads, just on a different spot in the site and limited to cohost users. i'm not sure i understand why people like one but not the other.

Just popping in to say I'd be okay with less intrusive advertisements, as long as you can manage to filter out sketchy stuff. I also fully support the idea from elsewhere in the comments of being able to give eggbuggs like Reddit Gold

I was flat broke so I missed last month on Cohost plus!. Have now subscribed 3x. I'm between jobs, otherwise I could see myself giving a lot more.
You see, when I first heard of Cohost, I thought "that's my place". I'm more of a fediverse-optimist than most but I did have a really bad experience with that too, and I immediately understood the appeal of a well-moderated adless platform built on robust software.
Mods (all one of them lol) bopped me on the head for tone and e-mailed me a warning and I rolled my eyes- I didn't quite agree with where the line was drawn though what I said was borderline- but what comforted me was that, if what I did was over the line, the harassment and flame wars that at one point ruined my life had no chance of happening to me again here.
I love it here even though I don't use it all that much to be honest. That this site exists means a lot to me. I'll fight to keep it that way.
I hope you feel better soon, Jae.

Big ups for the Patreon-esque idea. You might have trouble getting established ppl to move, bit there's loads of us that have had no chance getting in a crowded platform like that who'd love shoot out shot on a new platform

Also echoing the banner ads idea. Please let me pay you a hundo bucks for my silly little goobs to appear on your banners lol

Sorry if I've missed the obvious, is there somewhere I can read more about the subscription -management plans? I've seen mentions of them off and on but never found a real breakdown of how that would work.

That certainly sounds interesting (and much more like a solution than ads on their own, has anyone ever actually made an ad-based revenue model work?) but I haven't the foggiest how big a lift it'd be from here

It's bizarre actually getting to see behind the curtain of a site in a way that isn't leaks or court documents. Anyways it would be interesting to see a Project Wonderful 2: Oops It's All Hiveworks Comics Again advertising approach made, I miss the era of looking up from the Homestuck panel and wondering what the other interesting thing on the page is. The patreon-like service would be interesting to see work, since I like kicking money to artists I think are cool but don't like seeing them stress about whether or not the middleman for their income is going to combust from venture capital madness.

thanks for making cohost <3 feel better soon jae

Furaffinity has a lot of problems, but the banners ads they run are generally from the community, non-intrusive, and generally fine. Like, as of right now, it's 2 artists who are open for commissions and a furry-centric Minecraft server.

If it's a difference between Cohost going under and having those, I'd go for those in a heartbeat. It's not even a contest.

Or just sell twitter-like features that make the experience worse behind hefty subscription fees. For $40/month, you can see who unfollows and follows you!

Thank you for another update! I am sure it was not fun to write but from the bottom of my heart I appreciate the transparency and honesty– a lot of places would insist everything is fine right up until the CEO flees into the night. Thank you for your commitment to being The Anti-Software Software Club.

I am nervous that maybe it was already brought up a hundred times and I don't want to be that person, but: have any of you ever spoken to the people owning/running Dreamwidth about how they keep the lights on? I inquire because they're the other ad-free subscription social media with a moral backbone and they've been running for... awhile. I don't recall them publishing financial breakdowns but from what they've posted they seem to have stayed properly solvent (and maybe even figured out something to deal with The Burnout Bus). It's obviously an entirely different site, but there's a chance they might have knowledge or advice that would help. Or maybe not! I dunno, I'm a casual user with no connections. But the thought occurred to me.

Either way thanks for the update and wishing Cohost a very "big subscription boom". 💕

Thank you for writing everything out! I’m saddened to hear the amount of stress you’ve taken on. The challenges in running a site, even in best circumstances, definitely arent to be underestimated. I appreciate you sharing it with us, difficult as it is, bc we cant find the best way to move forward without knowing the truth of the sitch.

I would greatly welcome Project Wonderful style ads. I remember really enjoying them back when they existed on Tegaki E and the like! (i have a cohost plus sub so i guess its a moot point but LMAO)
i also think the “blazed” posts thing is fine! i have started using tumblr recently and find them quite unobtrusive bc if a blazed post has crossed my feed, i havent noticed. also i think the humor inherent in the concept is great. LMFAO

Looking forward to the patreon style options too! I hope all of these factors can go at least a little way towards relieving the pressure.

"(a single time-limited site-wide sponsor, like how Blaseball managed sponsorships)"

I know this is a drop in the bucket to this post but Blaseball lost money the entire time it ran and now no longer exists

I'm no experienced business genius so I'm not qualified to give advice here, but opinions are like buttholes everyone has one etc. etc., my approach to running a website like this would be to never let costs get any high:

• maybe don't self-host media like photos at all (at least not for free users), for example upload photos directly to IPFS and use public gateways like cloudflare's to embed it lmao
  • or heck I'd prefer a literally text-only site to an unsustainable one
  • or host them with a HARD limit (just like a 420kb upload limit, and on the client side let the uploader crunch the webp quality lower and lower until it fits) on the CHEAPEST static hoster / s3 clone
  • or here's a wild idea: instead of a flat subscription fee, make every user have a cash balance from which upload fees per kilobyte will be taken xD
• write the backend with extreme performance in mind so that it would run with as cheap hw as possible
• never pay for any commercial services for monitoring/performance/teamwork/whatever
• don't live in the USA or any other place with high cost of living I guess.. I live in Argentina, I don't even know what the fuck I would do with a 7.8kUSD/mo salary

+1 on the project wonderful type thing, i think its a fantastic idea. i hope you guys can pull through and survive as the itch.io of social media - i appreciate your transparency, your flexibility, and your dedication to the humble art of the chost. if anyone deserves to somehow attain sustainability in this cursed industry, its you. praise be eggbug

I do legit think having a Patreon-alike service as a part of cohost would be beneficial- it'd be a huge fuckin' undertaking, but people have been thirsting for an alternative for years. Subscribestar shot themselves in the foot by letting Nazis on originally and then backtracking and Comradery STILL isn't out of alpha and there doesn't appear to be any date as to when they'll open.

(If you want to pursue that and need advice, please let me know, I've been drawing pornography online for a decade and was giving Comradery advice about payment processors via email before they decided to put all adult content talks onto the super mega back burner.)

thanks for being real about this, i appreciate these updates regardless of how crummy they must be to write sometimes. also very hyped at the Project Wonderful shoutout-- it ruled and didn't deserve to peter out like it did. i'd definitely be willing to bid on Cohost ad space for my upcoming crowdfunding events-- maybe X amount of dollars for Y amount of time as a promoted post, which would be especially useful if the analytics on said ads were tracked. (might also be cool if we could target specific communities or tags with said ads on here? that might be putting the cart before the horse though.)

it fucking sucks that the internet needs so much money to keep trudging along nowadays, and it double fucking sucks that social media sites in particular have like a million different extra vectors to maintain and fund. that said, y'all have been kicking ass and i'm proud to be a Cohost Plus subscriber. hang in there!!!

I think an interesting way of doing ad targeting without collecting user data would be to tie them into tags! So you could advertise your commissions for custom pet portraits on like "#dog" and "#cat" and "#art" or something, your etsy for fandom merch on that fandom's tag, stuff like that. Seems like it could hit the Project Wonderful type sweet spot?

Hell, maybe a "Cohost Classifieds" page where users could just see all the ads in one place could be nice too, if they're good ads!!! I'd hit that up when searching for Christmas presents.

updating my quantity to $15 because I can afford to do so. I hope those who can afford to do so and love this site as much as I do will do the same...

thank you for the update

not much to say other than good luck! i'll give y'all a couple bucks once you get tip jar working

To echo some of the other comments here: I've added myself to Cohost Plus, and additionally, even before Cohost Plus, I would have been perfectly fine with adverts. Cohost provides a valuable service to me that I do not wish to lose.

Money has to come from somewhere, and it sounds like there is a very urgent need to increase revenue. Do what needs to be done to keep yourselves healthy physically and financially.

Doubled up my sub for this

bummer. running a social media site is really really hard. pretty much all the big ones are owned by huge companies that can subsidize their losses. without relying on brands, it's pretty tough. no targeted ads or sponsorship stuff. your revenue is probably going to be from the community itself (and outside funding).

co-host is very content creator oriented and so might be worth leaning into it. non-targeted ads for creators to promote their works is a good idea. same with patreon-esque subscriptions and tipping. i do think it would be reasonable to take a cut and i'm sure a lot of the current cohost users would understand (esp given a 17% user conversion rate!!). you'd need to make sure it's less than popular alternatives though so people would actually use it.

been years since i've used the site so not sure if it still exists, but you could do something like deviantart points/llama badges and add some kind of meta currency that you can use to do things (that are purely cosmetic). have an option to buy it as well as acquire it slowly without spending money? maybe every time you tip/commission someone? steam points does something similar too. i imagine it doesn't make that much money but with such a high level of support from current users, it could help. maybe it's a bit too gamey though

either way, best of luck! hope you find some kind of model that works for you. it's not an easy situation. and appreciate the transparency, you don't really see it much on stuff like this.
look after yourself 👍

so i made a jokepost but for real real:
i love cohost and i wanna see it succeed. imo the idea of a Project Wonderful-type ad system is great. i think when people want "ad-free" they mean a specific, very modern style of attention-stealing advertisement. corpo ads are a bummer but unobtrusive sidebar ads from indie projects/artists/crafters/etc are legit and tbh sometimes fun to talk about.
do give some thought to Dark Staff though, i've got cash on hand. let me loose on them. let me loose.

I'm going to echo others here in my appreciation for the transparency and for all the work you've done and continue to do. And also the sentiment that I personally would not feel at all bothered by a Project Wonderful style ad banner.

im down for non-targeted ads and tumblr-blaze like posts, though i would like a feature that would allow me to dismiss the blazed post if i dont want to see it (idk if tumblr has this already). i would consider using it to advertise commissions, or things i release on itchio, stuff like that. im not so much into a patreon-like feature, its not what i want from this site. i just wouldnt use it.

i dont have the money rn to subscribe. but i really enjoy this site and want to see it succeed. once im in a place where i can support, i will do so. thank you for the transparency, the effort is much appreciated!

I would be all in for a web-ring styled ad system, where it has a little clickable banner at the bottom of the page

i hope this isn't an insensitive question, but in the worst case scenario of the site going down, would you be able to give advanced notice + allow everyone the option of downloading all their data?

either way, i love this website and appreciate the transparency. i hope that these issues find some sort of resolution so we can all keep hangin out on the #1 social media site

I re-subscribed to plus after this! I had canceled it during last year's budget trimming but I feel like it's well worth my $5 even if I don't post it a ton (yet?)

Also I would buy a cohost bond even if there's no collateral. Not saying you should offer that if it's bad for the finances, just putting that out there.

wouldn't a good solution be like, i dunno, making posts here get more traction somehow

as a content creator who left twitter due to that hellhole imploding it really feels like i'm talking to a brick wall most days due to all my tagging not working and nobody seeing my stuff. My WP site stats show i get less than 10 views monthly from this site the last time I promoted my work here aggressively. It really is not viable in the slightest but I cannot go back on twitter for my own mental health, and this site seems allergic to moving ahead by doing things such as a social media app to pull in more users, or perhaps pre-determined tags (ie, ones created by the mod staff) for genres such as video game discussion, movies, etc instead of a bajillion variations on stuff like Games, Gaming, Retro Games, Retro Gaming, etc all being their own unique tags to go through if you just wanna try and bookmark a circle of new folk

I'm getting very similar vibes to vidme before they abruptly shut the site down without letting anyone say their goodbyes and crippled anyone who tried to fully move there from youtube. Then years later, all their embeds became linkrot when the domain got bought by porn people. Please don't have it be so that if I embed a cohost post on my site in 3-4 years it'll turn into porn.

on the ad front though iirc, Furaffinity at least allows ads of stuff the community is pushing, like open commissions or comics or whatnot: maybe ads of say, someone's big project or game or open art slots could be viable? I'd consider spending a good chunk of my funds to get my PMD Documentary out there via an ad if so...

count me as super interested in the idea of cohost functioning like a patreon-lite service for creators. i'm living the trans nightmare of having negative income so it is beyond my means to afford cohost plus as i would like to otherwise, but allowing me to chip in a percentage of monthly support from fans/friends as a way to passively contribute to the funding for the site and inch claw-by-claw towards sustainability would be super nice. i just hope that doesn't become too great of a headache by figuring out a sensible interface and how to shape the Cohost Experience to enable it

thank you for every bit of yourselves that you put into cohost 💗 there are many with you on the rough road ahead, but i hope it leads to a long future where this website and community can grow and be a healthy thing

Love cohost, been really happy with my time here. If this is it, then it’s been a pleasure. I’ve upped my subscription just in case my drop in the bucket can help stem the bleed.

Hey @staff, you are doing a great job with Cohost. I love the site, i hope it manages to keep afloat and flourish, and that all of you at ASSC are safe and happy.

I know that it's a small pinch of help, but now i see life in .beat timestamps. 加油！

Also, cheers to that brave and lone investor! You keeping the site running financially is a blessing for so many people, thank you!

If Cohost is looking to compete with Patreon I'd definitely give that a shot, assuming it wouldn't mess up anything with my existing Patreon. I don't really hate Patreon, but they've had weird vibes for a long time and it feels like I'm in a perpetual state of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Like they're always sauntering up to a really bad idea but never quite commit to it.

This is basically what I expected to read, not many surprises for me here.

I think CoHost really highlights the need for a state socialized social media website. And I know even saying that phrase that's going to set off alarm bells in a few peoples' heads (for some good reasons admittedly), and it wouldn't be the kind of solution that would make most people here happy. But if the goal is sustainability, then that is the only way I see a "better social media" working in the long term without exploding or gradually decaying until it's shit and no one wants to use it anymore.

The aims of this website simply do not mesh well with private ownership. Private individuals like yourselves need to run the website like a business or it dies, because at the end of the day the people running the website need to get paid, and as you know people's time is extremely expensive. That isn't something a government needs to worry about. A government doesn't need to make a profit on a project or break even. It can justify the losses as doing what is best in the public interest. Not to mention there are a few ways that money invested would work its way back to the government in the long run.

Also I think it's worth discussing the elephant in the room, which is assuming CoHost did get more users and got enough subscriptions to be 100%+ sustainable, would it even be worth it? I am skeptical of the idea that better social media = social media as a net positive. No matter how many ways one tries to improve it, it's still a degraded form of communication when compared to interacting with people face to face. Not only is it a very poor substitute for face to face community interaction, but I would argue that it also directly competes for time and attention that would otherwise be spent engaging with local communities. At the end of the day no matter how much you try and polish a ball of dung, it is still dung.
And yes, I know social media has done a lot of good for a lot of people. And for some it may be their only viable method of community. But I also think that it has had a profound and broadly negative impact on even more people than it has helped.

I think CoHost is pretty good right now, but I don't know if the difficulty of moderation as it gains more users is something that's going to scale linearly or not. If it ever reached mass adoption I could see the culture of the website changing in ways that many of the present users would be unhappy with. And assuming mass adoption did happen, I highly doubt competing social media websites would just sit idly on their hands while CoHost cannibalizes their userbases. There's a lot to consider when thinking about the long term of the site. For now I'm just happy with what we have while we have it.

Am I understanding this right, you're getting 2GB/US$ at Fastly? That seems ludicrously expensive.

Appreciate the transparency! Glad to see these reports coming back even if it's a bit of a dire state. Hopefully some of those revenue-generating services can be rolled out sooner than later. Also echoing what others have been saying, some kind of non-targeted ads, esp if they're user submitted (i really enjoy the idea of being able to advertise commissions in a sidebar), would be fine by me.

Dumb idea that is possibly unworkable and probably undesirable: Ads based on one's bookmarked tags.

I appreciate the frankness of this post. Thank you for all you all are doing. Even if this doesn’t last forever, it’s been delightful for the time it has and I suspect it will be as long as the site stands.

1. Always appreciate these writeups, no matter how hard they can be to read, the transparency means a lot.
2. I know I'm not the only one but I know a few of us would be 100% willing to help on more than just filling up the request forum. I mean that seriously, though, I'd rather do volunteering on something like Cohost than to start another side-project I'll let rot in 6 months. Y'all know where to find me 😁

Putting a superscript 2 after a number made me very confused about math for a good minute.

throwing my hat in the ring; i concur with the project wonderful styled ads. a small pet-game site i'm on, pixel cat's end, has an "ad" system that is essentially "users pay $6 to display their own personalized banner and/or link to their site/store/commission sheet/whatever for 30 days", and it is the only site i have unblocked on ublock origins to date. i love seeing people's handmade etsy shop ads, their tictail banners, their commission sheets being advertised, personally!

i definitely don't mind the tumblr "Blaze ads". other ppl has said they have an issue with it but i honestly don't mind, i hope you keep the options for users to filter some content on the ads and to be able to dismiss them. i also would LOVE to pay for cute small badges on our profiles. like idk, i just love these cute things!! 😤😤

I'll make the big comment number go up too: thanks for the transparency and the honesty.

Regardless of the relative success of Cohost as a business venture, I wish staff more happiness and less stress in the coming months. (Well, it can't be disregarded, but you know what I mean.)

I definitely like the idea of banner ads, coming from Ravelry (which has useful, non-intrusive ads for shops I might actually buy from).

With ads, if push comes to shove, I wouldn't oppose the Project Wonderful approach. (fun fact, this post is how I found out Project Wonderful shut down! I hadn't seen any ads from it in so long I guess I assumed it was still humming along.) I love that Cohost is ad-free, but I value Cohost existing more than it being ad-free. Definitely gonna subscribe to Plus when I can, it's well worth the 5 bucks. Thank all of you for being open about how Cohost is doing!

would volunteer advisory positions for some matters (such as moderation) be a way of reducing the stress load on the @staff?

There'd be a full vetting round for the volunteers, like, not a totally open funnel - but a smallish group of people to convene when something needs some heads to think about stuff, especially if it's borderline, or it's already a big situation with lots of meta posts, or something that might cause such a discourse spill.

perhaps even to once-over some staff-to-user communications and "lgtm 👍" or "wait a minute 🤔" or "not good, please revise 😬" before they're posted/sent.

I didn't even know that your payment gateway could offer anything but credit card payment (the more you know 🌈🌟)

This is a great place in the internet, thank you 💜

I don't know the kind of technical overhead this would entail - but have you considered some kind of twitch-like emote feature?

People seem to be willing to pay for cute emotes, and the very act of using them advertises the feature. It would also pair well with any Patreon-like service you're considering.

Another lurker just chiming in to say this post was great, this site is amazing, and for me at least this post was a direct impetus to subscribe just to do my part so this site doesnt disappear

honestly, i might actually PREFER if cohost had the types of ads you describe (project wonderful or blaze thing) more than no ads at all.
maybe that sounds weird, but that kind of small time ads would feed my nostalgia for the old web that this website is already tapping into.
so add an option for plus users to see these ads if you ever implement them, i want to see them too :p
also i could see myself using the ads too.
the patreon thing also sounds great.

wasn't aware you could get cohost plus multiple times! now on Cohost+++++ i guess

I genuinely would not mind seeing advertisements if they're as funny as the ones I'm getting on tumblr or twitter: Buy our 9% more efficient 11x11 Uranium Fuel Rod Arrays Now! #WhyWait
(this is a real ad I got on twitter)

I'd be fine with a Wikipedia style "Please give us three dollars to stay sustainable" ad on the regular. I hope it all works out, this place is cool and good

i doubt it helps much but i put my quantity up to 4. love y'all.

Thanks for the update! The fact that y'all write these gives me a lot of trust in you and your team. Speaking for myself, I've been meaning to get plus for a while but always forget. I wish the site prompted me more about it, like how npr or public TV reminds listeners a lot that they depend on donations.

I appreciate your candor regarding the (un)sustainability of social media platforms. As a filthy heathen free user of this platform, I realize I am part of the immediate financial problem, though as you've pointed out, that seems to be the case regardless of where we go or what we use. CoHost's model may be the least abusive of the user, but it could be argued that it's one of the more harmful models to the owners (which really isn't appreciated for the sacrifice that it is. Seriously, thank you for sacrificing your sanity and health so that a lot of us have a little breathing room on where to go or what to do next).

If I might put on my infrastructure hat for a bit (CorpoInfra Dinosaur here), you mentioned a pivot to a model similar to Panic, wherein you publish something for others and take a slice of the pie. I think that's not far off base for what CoHost could try, and something that seems either entirely unavailable or locked behind XaaS subscriptions: self-hosting.

A large gripe I have in the era of the modern internet is that self-hosting your own web presence on a Raspberry Pi or NAS is an overly complicated pain in the rear. You need your web server (NGINX or Apache? Or something crazier?), and the underlying OS (Linux? Windows? OS/2 Warp? Solaris?), and the load balancer, and the relational database, and you have to configure them all to talk to each other after installation unless you use containers, in which case they may talk to each other but now you also need an ingress controller into that subnet unless you're running Kubernetes in which case-

You get the idea. Pain in the rear, and definitely not for Joe Average.

But what if this was already bundled up, tied off with a nice bow, and as easy to deploy as an app or software package? What if it came with the same familiar tools as CoHost? The short term proposition could be a one-time purchase of, say, ~$100 that includes a year of support and updates, or maybe the ability to "hook" into the CoHost CDN and Firewall for hosting on a standard residential ISP. Almost like CH+, but on your own machine, in your own home, that you own. Then CH+ could cover another year of updates and CDN/Firewall access, if you so choose. Or not, if that's not viable from a financial perspective. Or maybe you sell support tiers for professional users who need help with it. I dunno, I'm an infrastructure dinosaur, not a business guru.

For a fossil like myself who grew up Telnetting over to NCSA and uploading my horrific webpage one line of HTML at a time, the prospect of a solution that's easy to deploy, use, and maintain is one I've lamented for since my first community implosion in the 2000s. Something I'm not paying a hosting provider gobs of money for dedicated server time, when all they do is reuse FOSS packages and never donate to the underlying projects.

That's just my two cents. A Panic-style revenue model where I can buy a CoHost container/package/ISO, throw it onto a RPi or Container engine, and either manually port forward on my router/domain name or hook into a CDN + Firewall would be a dream come true. The important part to me is a basic web presence that's easy to use and maintain, which CoHost certainly is.

Again, thanks for the transparency on finances and your efforts thus far. Whatever happens next, I appreciate your attempts to build something better.

I support tumblr-style untargeted boosting of user posts, they seem to work well for that site. I’m not sure how that would be implemented into the user feed, but it would be neat and not too obnoxious.

Another option is to add a bunch of little gimmicky cosmetic purchases. Badges or site themes or something. This would be more obnoxious than my other ideas but once you have a template set up it shouldn’t be hard to pump out more of them.

Someone else suggested being able to award posts with eggbug icons, similar to Reddit’s award system and I think that would be an excellent and cohost-y idea.

I think the most obvious move is to make Cohost Plus more attractive or more profitable. Coming up with Plus-exclusive features and making it more obviously pay-what-you-want-above-minimum should be very high priorities right now.

I like Cohost a lot, and I want it to continue. This financial update is… kind of a bucket of cold water. I really hope that you guys can find some way of becoming sustainable and having cohost continue to exist long-term.

public funds need to be funneled into social media platforms at some point. they're public services!

Trying to push some extra monetization ideas such as untargeted, community ads like Project Wonderful and silly microtransactions like badges and eggbugs for your profile would probably be well-accepted by the community, and I personally don't see any issues with that at all! I've enjoyed my experience around and I'm also going to support the website with what I'm able to, hoping that this post helps with more subscriptions as well!

Tossing in my support of webcomic-style banner ads off to the side. Would be mutually beneficial for artists and other creatives who use the platform, and sometimes I actually find cool things that I like from those, unlike, say, Twitter's promoted crap being 60% bitcoin bullshit and directly interrupting my feed.

I only request minimal animations, or animating on hover according to settings. Tumblr ads ignore my motion settings and it's infuriating. I expect you already know that problem very well though heh.

Thanks for sharing. For anyone else who sees this comment and got scared or feels doomer after reading the post, see this: https://cohost.org/Bigg/post/1694625-also-hopefully-this

On the topic of ads, I was literally discussing Project Wonderful several hours before reading this. 😀 I miss it, which is an insane thing to say about an ad network, especially one that I was only a consumer with, never an advertiser, but wow if I didn't prefer it to everything else out there.

Not sure how others would feel about it, but what about self-targeted ads? It would be possible if Cohost is looking to craft their own advertising setup. Users can select categories of ads to give to cohost that they'd like to see (gaming, fashion, etc., or perhaps independent, small business, major brand, etc.), and perhaps some limits (no political ads might be a big one for many). It's a much more open model than the usual data collection, and you can include in the ToS and other such places legal guarantees that you don't share that info outside the company, and the data doesn't get given or sold to advertisers in any way - they just learn that they got X views, or perhaps X total views of which Y were targeted. Potentially could charge advertisers more for targeting - or it might be that the targeting is needed to attract advertisers in sufficient quantities at all.

In theory, that's the ideal of targeted ads - people see what they care about, but without the whole "your soul is carved up into data points and sold piecemeal to fill a billionaire's vault with gold" thing that is fairly standard. But apart from a pile of potential technical issues, I'm sure I'm overlooking some pain points and complex questions. Might be worth considering.

Ehh, I'll be honest here. After that last whiplash re: cub stuff, I feel like y'all would take one look at how CC companies treat porn, sell out, and just become another Patreon with the same problems if you tried to make an alternative.

I'm here because some of my friends still use the platform, but if the money runs out, if it dies, it dies. It's not worth paying for that.

hands @staff a plushie

Something Awful managed to stay around by adding a $10 entrance fee, and turning petty site infighting into a revenue stream like allowing people to buy someone else's avatar for a price, but resetting it back for a much smaller price for the original user.

Tho having ads is probably unavoidable. I would not mind unobtrusive ads if there was no harvesting of data promised.

There was also a one-time fundraiser where people were granted silly titles on their accounts depending on how much they donated.

Latest Staff Post for CoHost Corner should probably be updated? Unless the guidelines updates are meant to stay there for now.

Maybe make banner ads that are community or small business only?

I'm a filthy f*rry but a lot of furry art gallery sites allow users to spend an amount of money to like, advertise their commissions on a randomly appearing/rotating banner ad at the top of a page.

I doubt you'd make 42k but you'd prob make some.

Man fuck Cohost. We hate Cohost. Just subscribed to plus for .beat time though. That's the ONLY reason. NO OTHER REASON.

Many creatives have been desperately wanting a Patreon alternative. The name of this platform lends itself well to versatile branding that would be needed for diversification of revenue, and I do hope that becomes something possible soon. Per various previous media/contemporary online technology critics' observations, things like Patreon (as well as gumroad) can be (relatively) sustainable business models, provided the logistics are managed. Add things like ability to customize one's profile/blog page more heavily the way tumblr allows, various payment/donation gimmicks would definitely help stymie some of the loss.

A number of us (as an artist I can definitely speak to this) have considered finding small ways to re-create the beauty of Project Wonderful through self-curated ad structures. And, on smaller scales, it's possible--especially considering just how nice it was to actually see ads for stuff I cared about and would have wanted to check out (but not served to me creepily the way Instagram does).

By no means am I saying that with my eyes shut to how hard things have been and how challenging all of this is/can be--I appreciate the transparency and update, and I'm rooting for you guys.

I'm currently in no position financially to spend money on this, sorry. Though i wouldn't bat an eye if you put ads on this (as long as they can't be mistaken for actual posts)

thanks for the transparency, i'm one of the people who jumped from twitter and didn't really look into how the site was run until i this post! just paid for a year up front because what y'all are doing is worth supporting in this day & age.

i hope y'all will add more ways for us to give you money in the future -- maybe neat features that lets users buy silly things like gif banners or content promos.

I love the “Blaseball Model” and yet RIV to Blaseball

Leaving a possibly strange comment. The report sounds. Well not sustainable.

I'm sure the staff already noticed that convincing users to pay for a service is not as hard convincing users to continually use a service vs. competition.

I'm certain there are users who maybe are not willing/able to pay for CoHost Plus but might be willing to give some support via a few untargeted ads. Viewing the comments, I see there are other users in agreement, so maybe unobtrusive ads are the way to go.
Minor ad banners sound good, if you are particular on not imposing ads unto the userbase then consider making the ads op-out for everyone, and the ad-space can have a short message about how the ads help costs, other ways to support, and how to turn off the ads in settings.
Staff may also want to consider buying/selling ad space to other start-up sites like Itaku or something. Itaku itself sells ad-space to its own userbase (BUT it's important to know Itaku has sold to only one person and relies mostly on Patreon support) and maybe that's something that can be good for the community and site.

My confidence of the site is still shaky, but I want to continue watching how the site develops. You're in a unique position where the continual failures of SNS like twitter and Tumblr can accelerate CoHost's growth if done right. Users are increasingly wary of Big Tech and for-profit SNS. If you want to foster a self-curated community and don't collect user data or create algorithms fine. But find a way to stick to your principles while working around them healthily.

As someone who used Project Wonderful as an advertiser for a hot minute: do it, do the thing, serve me the ads

As a current and ongoing Cohost Plus subscriber: let me opt into seeing the ads!!!

I was directed to this post only through a Discord conversation, and as a somewhat more recent user of the site, I think this financial information could use to be a bit more in-your-face. Conversion might improve if people are more aware that your monetization goal is direct user support and how far from that goal you are is clear. I don't think people are against paying for the value they get, but it needs to be clear that this doesn't continue existing without it.

...

Does buying an Eggbug sticker help?

Their financial update is the first time I realized that was possible and I might not be the only one.