Drupal.org advertising proposals requested

Your contact info isn't complete (mailto:kieran@ ??? under "get in touch").
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Drupal Themes Live Preview - themegarden.org

Have you thought about placing google adsense ads ?

Well placed ads gets very high click trough, + there is now an option for specific site targetting.

Adsense is much easier to get going than a custom solution (+ it doesn't eat server resource).

Cordially,
Brakkar

Hi Kieran,

I'm from Malaysia. I'd sent you an e-mail, hope to hear from you on how we should contribute to the benefit
of Drupal developers and communities at large.

The idea of Drupal.org generating it's own revenue sounds great!Drupal.org should most definitely benefit from the great contributions it has facilitated.

As a Drupal evangelist and a Drupal developer I'm somewhat alarmed about how all this will work, as I imagine a lot of other people/companies maybe, too.

Please pardon the directness of the questions which follow - it's understood that in an open source project that it is normally considered bad form to question the 'why's and wherefores' of initiatives already underway, but in this case there's a matter of large-scale implications of propriety, and the welfare of Drupal.org at hand:

• Why are there no details about how this process will work in terms of selection (by whom, how, and/or for what reasons, etc)?
• Why is there only one contact email address to send proposals to and, why is the contact email also the personal email address of an established Drupal developer/shop? Judged merely from the 'face value facts' of the situation, one could say the current process, "appears" to cozy for good appearances.

Please, consider and respond to these question in the sincere and interested way that I mean them and please do not read any personal accusations/judgments into them. I'm talking about processes and transparency of processes here not personalities or personal judgments.

Kind regards,
- Caleb

This sounds like a great way to implement a pro-drupal advertising program and is so much better than something sloppy like adsense. Funding infrastructure for drupal.org is clearly something that the Drupal community continues to demand.

First, I could not find links to the Drupal Association in the main tabbed pages making it difficult to get background information. So, here ya go:
http://drupal.org/node/122835
http://association.drupal.org/

Second, I prefer the craigslist module of revenue generation (as I understand it): no ads, only charge for services the majority of users feel are reasonable to charge for, maintain a goal of maximizing the amount of free content.

How this applies to Drupal.org...

As a Drupal developer, I usually explain to my clients that one of the benefits of open source software is the pool of developers that can work on their website - thereby solving some of the legacy code and developer lock-in problems.

But, it has been very difficult to find Drupal developers, with a proven track record, and who have availability.

In my domain of experience - there is a huge need to match paying clients with developers of varying experience depending on the complexity of the problem.

These clients want to use Drupal! But, they cannot find someone who can give them the straight dope about the costs (both time and money) it takes to design, develop, deploy, and maintain a Drupal website.

There are resources available but they are not very useable, have limited entries, or do not have the legitimization that being posted on Drupal.org would give:

• http://drupal.org/drupal-services (information unstructured - not searchable)
• http://cmsacademy.net/drupal/resources (good list of resources, but only if you want to build your own site)
• http://www.mydrupal.com (limited number of resources, but nice use of ads)

My suggestion:
A new node type and/or subdomain dedicated to Drupal resource(s) that is paid for

CCK fields & features I would like for developers node type

• General info: name, address
• Years of Drupal experience
• Years of web experience
• Links to example sites
• Areas of interest (non-profit, music, ...?)
• Level of technical experience
• Number of Drupal websites launched
• Availability!!!
• Comments by the community

All of this could be sorted / searched for via the views module.

I would be happy to pay to be listed. But, more importantly - I would be very happy to pay to view this list. Access to a definitive list of Drupal developers (something only a site hosted by Drupal could accomplish) would be invaluable.

I hope this half-baked idea sparks discussion of alternative directions and ideas.

I wonder if we could go about this as part of a gradual, stepped approach -- for the first pass, we could forgo ads in favor of a series of donor pages of organizations who pay to support the infrastructure/Association, with links to web sites of the companies/individuals donating -- Then, if the donor system didn't work, we could look at ads as a way of increasing revenue.And, when I say the donor system, I also mean soliciting sponsors to help underwrite the cost of Drupal-specific events, like the Yahoo! sponsored event at Sunnyvale. I also think that companies who are listed in the Drupal Services section of the handbook should be a place to start soliciting contributions, and I say that as a company listed in this section.

From this proposal/discussion, it's hard to tell where exactly the ads might appear on the site, but any mixing of ads with content (specifically if it's context-related, for example having ads for hosting companies next to handbook pages on how to build a hosting environment) could blur the lines between content and ads, particularly in a multinational community where English isn't always the first language

As soon as there are "responsible hosting and consulting practices," which, as Amazon has said, are yet to be determined, it's pretty difficult to distinguish between companies who meet these standards (and there will need to be a screening process for these standards to mean anything) and companies who are Association Approved.

I'm all for getting more money into the Association to defray expenses and support growth. The stronger the community is, the greater the
potential for companies working directly with Drupal. Presenting ads alongside content is not the way to go. Donor pages provide a good
middle ground -- recognition for organizations who put money into d.o and the Association, without diluting the quality of the content and the user experience. Ads could be revisited after we get a sense of how much revenue could be brought in via community-centered contributions. A few people have mentioned Craig's List as an example, and I think it has some relevance. They have explicitly chosen not to aggressively monetize the service, and they have a fanatically loyal community and a spanking good cash flow. While ads could generate revenue, they would also impact the tenor of the community. We shouldn't overlook this aspect of drupal.org --

And yes, I'm ready to hear many people saying that ads can be ignored, that they're everywhere so we don't even notice them, etc. I still hold that screen real estate is valuable, and that people looking for content should be able to focus on content and not screening out unwanted visual noise.

Cheers,

Bill

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http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers

I think one way to start this is to offer Google Adsense on Drupal.org.

Google text ads are not intrusive and clearly marked as ads. Companies interested in advertising can click "advertise on this site" and Google automatically handles the back end for the Association.

This can be done for an experimental period (e.g. 2 months) and then reevaluated.

This serves the main goals of this experiment: expose service providers to visitors, and raise money for the association.

It also relieves the Association from the decisions on what ads to run, and all the potential complaints about that. It will be Google's algorithms that are deciding what ads to run in an auction style ad system.

Still the downside, whichever way we do it, is that big shops with big bucks can drown out the smaller shops who do not have a large advertising budget.

The Google Adsense module can be used for this. It offers blocks of different sizes/channels, and blocks can be made to appear on certain paths only if needed.
--
Drupal development and customization: 2bits.com
Personal: Baheyeldin.com

While just selling advertising space, or using Ad sense is the easy way, I think we could do something really better which is running only useful ads that are also meaningful information.

So instead of just having adverts everywhere:
- You select very specific places
- You select the advertisers

Examples: where, who
- Drupal services and hosting pages. Replace the blocks on the right with paid adverts. Just for companies offering Drupal services and hosting.
- Module pages. There's a place for a sample site where we could have a bigger space, just for a web site actually using that module. The revenues generated from this page can be shared with the module maintainers to pay for module development.
- Books page. We could have a selection of books related with Drupal technologies and have referral links from there. But not for any book, but just for selected ones related to web development.
- Web site advertising. Just for web sites built on Drupal and only on some pages, like the Drupal sites list.

Other ideas:
- In the support forum, offer the option to pay some small fee for a forum post. Then you just mark the post with a star and people answering the question will know that the guy has 'donated to Drupal'. I'd be willing to answer that questions before others, maybe other people too, knowing that we are also contributing to Drupal at the same time. So the idea is 'just mark, small fee, this is a donation, no compromise about replies, but people will know you're a donor'.
- Drupal 'seal of approval' for web hosting companies. Certification program for hosting companies that prove that Drupal runs out of the box with no issues in that hosting. Better: just for web hostings offering PHP5 :-)
- More targetted donations: offer the possibility to donate for specifics modules, themes, etc.. Some percentage would go to drupal.org. I think people will be more willing to donate when they know exactly on what the money will be invested.

Now that there's some legal entity, the Drupal Association, there should be lots of ways to serve as a channel for the money from donors to Drupal/module development, just keeping a percentage for drupal.org maintenance.

Hi Amazon,

Interesting idea.

As an aside, I just thought I'd mention that the wording of your pitch for proposals is bordering on a call for sponsorship applications......in other words, it could be argued what you're really selling is 'targetted branding' rather than straightforward 'paid advertising'.

Selling 'Sponsorship' usually involves more thought and deliberation, on both sides, than run-of-the-mill 'paid advertising' and the bottom-line-difference between the two is:Advertisers are just looking for their pound of flesh while Sponsors are looking to build relationships and are therefore looking for a very different return.

For example, it maybe possible to allocate and sell In association with: [company name+logo] real-estate in the hosting companies and Performance and scalability forums as part of a sponsorship deal, rather than an advertising deal, to hosting companies who fulfill a certain and simple criteria.

However, if I've just misread what your looking for and you're just really going for paid advertisers, in the way you described, I would echo what others have said on this thread already and worry how that might have a knock-on effect on the community and how far Drupal will have to go to provide that pound of flesh...paid advertising is a slippery slope towards newsletter branding and email notices.

Not sure if that makes sense or not, but, that is just my 2.0 cents.

As a quick follow-up to that - I would qualify as the second type of 'paid advertiser' (Web development and consulting companies and practioners which provide contributions back to the Drupal community.) you're looking for proposals from, so instead of emailing my proposal, here it is as a discussion starter:

Proposal

I'm a freelance Drupal Web developer and consultant that provides contributions back to the Drupal community and I would like to propose a Voluntary Drupal Added Tax as an alternative to the ads idea, whereby professional drupallers contribute 5.1% of each invoice for Drupal related work to the Drupal association in return for scrapping the paid advertising program.

Dublin Drupaller
dub(AT)dublindrupaller.com
-------------------------

My point is that I'm not so sure that the paid advertising programme, as outlined, is as simple as vetting the advertisers who want to pay for space. I think it will not only have negative cultural ramifications on the Drupal community but it will also turn into a very time-consuming exercise in itself.

5.1% is not a lot, I know and I'm aware that some Drupallers already do this, anyway, but, if there was enough like-minded consultants/developers/companies out there, who commercially benefit from Drupal and it was promoted in the right way, it might be a practical solution to avoid flirting with advertisers and all the baggage that comes with that, to raise funds.

Which begs the question: how much are you planning to raise via the paid advertising programme?

cheers

Dub

Edited: as an afterthought, the Voluntary Drupal Added Tax idea might become more interesting if, as part of the donation process, Drupallers specified which modules where used in the project. So, if enough Drupal practitioners signed up to the idea, there could be a source of funds, not just for the Drupal association, but, as a reward mechanism to module developers/patchers.

Or worded another way... charge for the things that the people with money to spend and money to make are interested in.

A number of sites I read regularly charge for posting to their jobs page...

http://jobs.paidcontent.org/ charges from 7 days for $150 to 30 days for $440.

Charging potential customers to develop a karma system of vetting developers and development shops would get my +1. If the people who respond "on list" to RFQ on the consulting list are any indication, looking for consultants there will result in a lot of bot-type offers from people I don't see participating anywhere else. As someone who was recently looking for consultants, it is difficult to make any type of judgment on who is and isn't legit without investing a lot of time investigating each response and their reputation in the community. Automating and providing some validation for any of that would be helpful.

There are obviously some key consulting shops involved in Drupal's development. Their big projects and the module work they have given back to community are now a big part of what Drupal is today. A concern I have in any advertising plan is that these existing shops will "lock out" smaller shops from any chance at more work. Drupal.org, now brought to you by Bryght, Lullabot, etc... Click here to for a quote on your work!

I don't think these shops are trying to do something like that, but that's what it could become. Building a system for posting jobs and RFQs that provides any type of validation should actually help the shops that have contributed so much already, but give independent developers (who may also contribute a lot) a chance to get some of this work as well.

The fact Drupal.org promotes a contributor's work has nothing to do with the advertising proposal mentioned on this posting.

I mean if Drupal.org opens itself to paid advertising, it's not going to prevent it from promoting contributions or highlighting a well done site (which uses drupal) through a front page posting.

However, I think that paid advertising on drupal.org should be reserved to sponsors which truly bring a benefit to the drupal community and I think that's already where the proposal just made by Drupal.org tends to.

In addition, so as to not have winners and losers based on how much money one can offer for paid advertising, Drupal.org could also offer a totally free directory of paid product & service providers for drupal but which offers similar visibility to Drupal's plug-in/themes download section.

I think the Job offers idea is also excellent, but if you combine that with the directory of paid products/services idea, you need to decide if an independant developer should be considered as a service provider or not.

This should be a good example where a well planned poll or even series of polls would help gather useful information about the idea and its potential. (How long will it be until drupal.org start using polls?)

Carefully planned and documented polls can be an efficient way of focusing the discussions on issues that has the greatest interest and potential.

Just for the record, I'd like to stress "well planned", as we are seeing far too many quick polls around the net which are missing lots of valuable information (the real potential of the poll) whenever the questions, order, wording and "poll strategy" is not well thought out. So I am not suggesting a "quick poll" here, merely pointing out the relevance.

The very planning of such a poll could be its own discussion thread here, so we can collaboratively work out its questions, goals, etc. before launching it. There are several good arguments for such an approach.

Btw: Regarding the comments about "transparency":

It would seem more "proper" to use a contact form or email address that clearly goes to an appointed group (several people), not only "filtered" through one person, regardless of his or her trustworthiness. A matter of good policy, so to speak. That would emphasize and confirm that all parts of this goes through a democratic community. I am not in doubt that this is in the best hands, but still find reason to point out that it has a value of its own to use such approaches.

I appreciate and understand the need to explore revenue generation options. This call for feedback is a good step.

Is there an appropriate place for paid commercial advertising on drupal.org? If so, where?

drupal.org is a resource of the community. My feeling is that participating in and contributing to the community - submitting patches, asking for or providing help to others, making or reviewing proposals - should not come at the expense of being subjected to commercial advertising.

At a minimum, I feel large sections of the site should be kept free of paid ads. It should be possible to carry out one's regular participation in the community ad-free.

However, it may be appropriate to provide advertising on sections where people are primarily coming for the sort of information that advertising provides. One approach might be to create a distinct subsite of drupal.org - e.g., services.drupal.org. We would e.g. move service-related content and forums there (the jobs listings from groups.drupal.org, the "hosting companies" and "paid Drupal services" forums, etc.) and enable advertising.

Ref. this thread: http://drupal.org/node/147300
("Advertisements and cultural issues. Example: Different perceptions in Europe & USA.")

"Advertisement is a multi-headed beast. There are good reasons why multi-national companies use local teams to determine the marketing strategy for each region."

Hi Kieran:
How are you today ?

Instead of outright classical advertising, I would like to propose creation of a Drupal Business Directory, into which individual consultants (smaller $25/year fee), medium companies (medium $250/year fee) and larger corporations (larger $2500/year fee) could make entries about themselves and/or their businesses.

At those fee levels, an individual could create an entry that was equivalent to a resume, a medium company could create a brochure and a larger corporation a more elaborate presentation. Annual revenue or some other criteria, such as number of employees, could be used for sizing into different categories. You could set up various categories such that individuals could be placed into 1-2, medium companies into 3-4 and large corporations into 5-6 categories. Drupal development contributors (be they coders, documentors, evangelists or whoever) would not only receive free entries but would also be placed at the top of their chosen categories and would be clearly marked as contributors - similar to how Google marks paid advertisers at the top of their search results.

After such an initial English language Drupal Business Directory, one could also launch business directories that are in various other languages. This would give drupal a better international flavour and could be done by promoting establishment of international drupal user groups. This would also go a long way toward Drupal being not only translated into many languages but would help its adoption and utilization around the world.

I believe that this is precisely the type of unique and creative idea that you might be looking for. Instead of selling more classical advertising and having to position it onto very limited advertising space that ends up soliing up the sites, you simply open up the flood gates and let everyone advertise themselves in what amounts to a limitless business directory. In addition to fund raising, you end up setting Drupal community on fire and promoting Drupal itself around the world in ways that would simply not be possible through more classic advertising schemes. Instead of having to walk the tight rope of balancing the revenue interests of having to take ads that pay the most and those that benefit the community in other ways, you simply solve that problem by letting everyone in at a much smaller cost. In the process, you also end up serving better the whole global Drupal community by making it better aware of the different types of Drupal related commercial services that exist and that are available to them.

Finally, the same way that mostly developers contribute to Drupal currently, this also opens up very important flood gates by involving the varous businessy types amongst us who are not developers but who would like to participate in other ways. Instead of counting how many modules and/or commits they have contributed (in order to be able to join that current elite consulting community) perhaps "karma" could be accumulated by helping to administer such a portal or simply by prettying up somebody's entry in the business directory.

P.S. While this proposal has very specific suggestions, right down to individual rates to be charged, this is just for illustration purpose. If you have any specific questions then all you have to do is ask. As I am writing this last bit, I just realize that it might be a good idea to let other folks tear this apart and make their own improvements. So, I am also posting it as a comment to your original solicitation.

Regards,
___________________________________
Svi smo mi zarobljenici svojih ličnih iskustva.
We are all prisoners of our own experiences.

Amazon, please remember that you're getting the extreme views in this thread -- those that get excited one way or another when you mention the idea of advertising. I think that the majority of drupal.org visitors will adjust to whatever model gets accepted. How obtrusive and/or obnoxious ANY ads on drupal.org become is really a matter of design, and we should try to avoid "bolting" them on to the current layout.

Also, for the record, the cost of entry on AdSense ads is VERY low. Most people can get an ad out there for around $20 (and targeting it at the "Drupal" keyword would pretty much guarantee that it would show up on drupal.org). And the potential profits for the Drupal Association are VERY high.

Doing some quick math on the d.i.y. option, what is a reasonable price to charge for a drupal.org ad for a company? $500 per month? (This could feel like a lot of money to many in the Drupal community.) And how many ads are rotating at any time? Maybe 10 ads? That's $5,000 /mo to the Drupal Association. Not too bad, but I would bet that AdSense would be double that.. or more...

Also consider whether the Drupal Association really wants to become an internet advertising company. It could become a LOT of work to coordinate this advertising. AdSense could make this easy -- even to just try out temporarily to get an idea of what the revenue would be like.

And AdSense is certainly not the only game in town, there are others out there that might be a lot more customizable and more easily tweaked to the needs of drupal.org. (Ping me if you're looking for contacts at non-Google ad companies.)

The focus needs to be on the end goal: Yeah we've got some ads, but the Drupal Association is able to use that money to provide the community with X, Y, and Z -- that's the whole point of taxes after all, isn't it?

--= Jeff Robbins | www.lullabot.com =--

I agree with Bills suggestion above (way above). For my two cents, I really dont like the idea of seeing paid advertising on drupal.org. Somehow seeing banners on drupal.org just doesnt feel right. Google Adsense text links might be worth considering, but Im not sure how successful that would be. I really like the idea of seeing a nice big donate button on the front page. Maybe you can have a listing of Drupal related companies who qualify for some sort of membership and who pay to have a listing in the directory.

newms

I really don't want to see advertising on drupal.org. I understand that everyone has a bottom line and the D.A. needs to pay the bills for our benefit. Starting an advertising program though is just a slippery slope. Drupal.org is too cool of a community to let it start heading in a direction that is so contrary to its core values. Advertising is just the quickest solution, not the best. Would craigslist still be so popular if there were ads all over? I think their method should be considered, maybe Drupal.com where DA members can get rad profiles pages? I wouldn't be at all offended by a donate button on every page on this site. Could we get a "donate to drupal" button to embed on our own sites?
Anyway...I vote no on advertisements... not yet. Craigslist approach all the way.

While there may be pros and cons to advertisement or no-advertisement
I, like many, will like to see an advert-free, CLEAN site as it has been over years.

The main cost is the cost of running server :
is there no host really who can bear this in lieu of a small bottom text-link ( like yahoo->php.net )
+ more donations to couple this
(is it that without ads this site is crashing or about to crash in future ? )

Php.net is certainly a site that goes thru bigger data transfer, yet they have no ads as such,
it will be very nice to see drupal ( born out of php ) going that way in philosophy, design and application.
Like to hear what Dries say about this.

Best regards

Is there a particular category of ads that you don't want to see, or a particular category of ads that you don't have a problem with? We could use feedback like this to develop guidelines (assuming that we decide to run ads).

Example guideline #1: many of the people on drupal.org are consultants, but relatively few run a hosting business. Ads from/for hosting companies are less disruptive than ads for Drupal development companies/consultants.

Example guideline #2: ads from publishers like O'Reilly, Packt or Apress are considered less disruptive than ads from Drupal development companies/consultants. Would you mind if we put up a prominent "Drupal books" page that generate us royalties or would you mind that we'd feature a Drupal book on the Drupal.org main page for 1 or 2 months? I'd think it creates a win-win situation.

Example guideline #3: ads on the main page are not wanted, but a stand-alone page with "affiliate hosting companies" is acceptable (cfr. http://wordpress.org/hosting/).

Example guideline #4: if a big non-Drupal company like Yahoo! or Google would give us a lot of money that we can invest in the Drupal.org infrastructure, would you be OK with us putting an ad on drupal.org? Such an ad would not disturb the balance as none of us are competing with Yahoo! or Google anyway.

Example guideline #5: ads from MySQL or PostgreSQL consulting/hardware companies are preferred over ads from Drupal development companies.

Example guideline #6: ads for PHP/tech magazines, PHP development tools (Zend), PHP optimizers would be considered less disruptive than ads from Drupal development companies/consultants.

Example guideline #7: ads for companies that integrate with Drupal (a blogger tool using the blogger API, a news aggregator that reads Drupal's RSS feeds) or a company that provides Drupal bindings for an existing product are less disruptive than ads from Drupal development companies. For example, if Adobe invested money in making Drupal work with Apolle/Flex, would we be OK with featuring an Adobe/Apollo ad? If SalesForce provides the community a Drupal module, would we accept ads from SalesForce? If Oracle provides an Oracle port for Drupal, would we accept ads from Oracle? If Sun provides us hardware, would be accept ads from Sun?

If you can come up with additional guidelines that help make advertising deals more acceptable, that would be helpful.

Does anybody know how this problem is solved in another open-source CMS's communities?

Here's a proposal:

Make drupal.org users pay to have a signature.

signature handling in drupal is going to be much more flexible in 6.x, so it'd be straightforward to have a role with "signature" enabled, and a simple "pay per role" thing which would put someone in that role with a donation automatically.

Make it $5/$10 or something, there's many tens of thousands of users, a fair number of users use their signature to advertise their site/services anyway. It'd be one-off per user, but given the growth in user base I reckon you'd see an initial amount of a couple thousand dollars, and then more afterwards. And there'd be no more advertising on d.o than there is now.

I would disagree with having Drupal.org admin's try to editorialize on the adverts to run on drupal.org. Such decision-making will cut against your stand that adverts are not endorsed by the Drupal Assn (after all you're deciding which ones to run or not...)

As an alternative I would encourage checking out a new advert platform that uses a real-time auction model that displays the ad from the advertiser who values the ad the most at that time. It's called Project Wonderful (http://www.projectwonderful.com/), it's taken off like wildfire in the comics (webcomics really) community and the owner/designed Ryan North is a heck of a nice (and smart) guy.

Kieran,

Since I am 100% sure that you mean what you say about keeping an open mind on this subject , I think it would be helpful if the D.A. approaches this exercise from the broader perspective of fund raising rather than the narrow one of advertising revenue. I mean, I am sure the intention is indeed fund raising, but the somewhat misleading title implies that a choice has already been made about the method and that narrows the debate somewhat.

I think you will find it constructive to use the typical, non-profit fund raising paradigm of the four-legged stool of fund raising. The four legs are:

1.) Annual Fund
2.) Major Gifts
3.) Planned Giving
4.) Capital Campaigns

It is said that a well planned fund raising campaign needs all the four legs to stand upon (or at least three, since capital campaigns are usually conducted once in many years and planned giving may not always be appropriate or possible). If D.A were to proceed with fund raising keeping this larger framework consciously in mind, you will find it possible to fit all kinds of ideas and proposals expressed in this thread into a coordinated fund raising initiative.

For example, Boris' idea of annual memberships would fit into an annual fund raising plan, as would raising funds for specific, big-ticket, drupal events. The front page donation button would also fit into the Annual Fund. Major donations could be the larger donor contributions/sponsorships that Bill has been talking about. Capital Campaigns would meet Drupal.org's needs ( and possibly that of D.A) for increasing assets, renovating facilities, building new facilities etc. I suspect this would directly be tied to expansion of drupal.org infrastructure and possibly even physical infrastructure for D.A. You could (probably should) even build an endowment component into such a capital campaign as something would be required for ongoing maintenance and you can't go about doing a capital campaign every year. I am not too sure about planned giving for D.O as it has mostly to do with wills, bequests , charitable gift annuities etc.

In sum, my point is that if D.O approaches fund raising using a framework like this, you would find it easier to incorporate many different techniques, methods and ideas into the mix than if you only approached it from the advertising angle. For example, you could easily fit in paid advertising or Google AdSense into the Annual Fund Plan. I suspect there will be much less resistance (though not less work managing it!) to paid advertising if it is presented as one of the many ways of building the Annual Fund for drupal.

I also second DanieltheViking's post about the need for a proper business plan for D.O for the next 2 or 3 years at least in terms of expected growth and then working backwards from it to fix the annual fund raising objectives and after that, the methods of fund raising. I think this is absolutely crucial. This is the way fund raising works in the nonprofit world, from the little experience that I have had.

----
Previously user Ramdak.

If the objective is to raise funds, can we run a Paid Drupal Certification program for Drupal Developers & Themers?

The program might run like this:

- Drupal.org runs an online Drupal.Org Certified "Developer" / "Themer" / "Any other category" program
- Developers / themers etc enrol for the program & pay a small fee to participate in the program
- Participants take an appropriate online examination (may also submit examples of their code / themes for evaluation)
- The exam answers & code samples are evaluated by a team of D.O. volunteers (or automatically)
- Successfull participants are awarded Drupal.org Certifications (e.g. D.O. Certified Developer, D.O. Certified Themer, etc)
- D.O certified members have a priviledge to use D.O Certified Logo on their sites / cards / letterheads etc
- D.O. certified members are required to adhere to a Code of Conduct & participate in continued learning / development
- D.O certified members pay a small annual membership fee & take membership continuation exam annually to remain certified...

How this program might help developers / themers etc?

- For getting new jobs (if employees)
- For getting clients (if freelance developers)

If Certified Drupalers are getting jobs quicker or clients faster, then this might prompt other Drupalers to take up the certification (and contribute financially to D.O.) and possibly Drupal Community will have pool of Drupalers who are adhering to Drupal Code of Conduct, delivering drupal based solutions & contributing financially back to D.O.

Its quite likely that Drupal community members from some of the 'constituencies' (as mentioned earlier in this thread) or backgrounds might not be able to genuinely afford (or transfer electronically) even the smallest of the certification fees. For such members, there should be an alternative way of either paying fees (e.g. finding sponsors) or deferring fees payment (e.g. after they get first job / client)... and a way to accept, process & approve such applications.

(This revenue generation idea is based on the way in which many Professional Organizations of the likes of Accountants, Lawyers etc work, where the organizations are non-profit based, but the members may be profit oriented)

If this idea is something worth considering, I would be happy to writeup and present a proposal...

I think paid advertising will hurt the Drupal experience. NP

Your current methods aren't working, because you're not trying hard enough. I've read through the comments and found out that you folks have a donate button on the site. Well, where is it? I don't see it. If I'm not seeing it, chances are 99% of the people coming here aren't either. You folks also just released a new book which was apparently written buy the core developers. Aren't you generating funds from the book? Where's the link on drupal.org to buy it?

Honestly, try harder. I don't mean to sound rude, but your current attempts are piss poor. Of course the donation method isn't going to work when it's hidden somewhere in your web site (I still don't even know where it's at). Ads on the site that get in the way of content should be the last thing you do.

I've taken a look at other open source projects, all far, far more popular than Drupal. Not a single ad on the site. Not one. How would Drupal look if it had ads on the web site? Not good. In fact, just having this in your front page news makes Drupal look bad. Never ask your community for money. Ever. Just provide the means for them to get it to you if they so choose.

Suggestions (PUT THEM ON THE FRONT PAGE):

• Donation button (use PayPal). Example: http://joomla.org/ (top right hand corner of the web site "Support Joomla" graphic)
• Buy Drupal books linking to Amazon (associate). Example: http://wordpress.org/ and http://joomla.org/ (scroll down a bit on the front page)
• Hosting link with a list of web host providers (associates). Example: http://wordpress.org/hosting/
• Create a job board and charge companies to list their paid positions (full/part time jobs). Example: http://jobs.37signals.com/
• Sell some T-shirts, mugs, etc. This also has the added benefit of free advertisement. Example: http://shop.joomla.org/

Have you considered a yearly scheme by which you would solicit detailed proposals that you would then put onto a list and where community voting would let you know which new ideas should be adopted and which old ones should be dropped ?
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Svi smo mi zarobljenici svojih ličnih iskustva.
We are all prisoners of our own experiences.

Since there already seems to be a shameless ;) sentiment of "If you want it then pay for it", have you fully considered its ramifications as well as its enormous potential for fund raising ?

At least some of the fund raising schemes could be done in a way where every $ raised ends up being a vote for very specific tasks to be done. Some of those tasks could be new modules to be coded, existing ones to be enhanced and of course it could be for all sorts of other things that need to be done (: such as proper documentation :) that enhance the overall quality of the product.

Sure there would be cries that the bigger the donors the more influence that they would have on what is being done and how it would end up being done. IMHO, this would be a good thing. If a big corporation wants something to be better documented and/or even to be officially supported the way that commercial products are supported then what exactly would be wrong with that?

While development is most important (specifically the coding) it actually seems to have too much exclusivity (for lack of a better word) by which tons of things get done that then end up not being best utilized by the masses because everything else (: did I mention documentation :) ends up falling way too short.

First of all, considereing the fact that Drupal is being developed right here, the way that existing documentation and even much of this site is organized seems not to be the best showcase of Drupal's benefits nor capabilities. I am forever having to go through too much 4.x material in order to dig up the relevent 5.x pieces.

Please lets not get sidetracked by my criticism (regardless if I am right or wrong) and lets focus on everything else that it takes to move a just-coded module to a live-web-site usable stage. My point is that this still considerable amount of effort is being repeated, over and over, by huge masses of non developers.

I believe that this is the next biggest area out of which the biggest bang for the buck can be squeezed out. The same arguments of not having to code it all yourself, that can be made in support of financially supporting open software projects, the same arguments could be made towards also supporting everyting else that is required once the coding is done.

Therefore, in order to reduce everyone's implementation efforts and their implementation costs, as well as Drupal's overall maintenability, have you considered making everthing else (: beyond coding :) an integral part of Drupal's development? This is where millions and millions of dollars are being wasted by Drupal's community and where some form of charging for better out-of-box solutions would make financial sense for just about everyone involved.

P.S. Since most developers do what they do out of the love of coding, should most of your fund raising efforts not be directed towards everything else ;?)

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Svi smo mi zarobljenici svojih ličnih iskustva.
We are all prisoners of our own experiences.

There are a number of companies who offer drupal based services that they charge for. Perhaps d.o could offer a kind of "Official Drupal xxxxx" button/badge to these groups at a cost. Many software companies do this (Microsoft's "Official Windows Distributor" badges aren't cheap). It's something to consider and it's something that a lot of these companies would seriously consider if the benefits not only included the badge but perhaps a listing on d.o, we already talk about these companies in the forums.

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Michael O'Toole

Gay Youth :: South East - Chair & Operations Administrator

I like some of the proposals here. all i can add is that i'm NOT for the ads.

other folks have proposed many non Ad options here that need to be given some chance to work. many avenues for revenue outside of ads.

Paid ads will likely favor the highest bidder. The highest bidder (the one with the marketing budget) doesn't necessarily provide better services and therefore doesn't guarantee a better image / promotion of goodwill for drupal in the eyes of clients. It just means the bidder has more money to spend. There are countless examples in the real world (microsoft v opensource) where the guy with deeper pockets wins but doesn't make the best product or offer the better service. It's basically an uneven playing field. And i don't see how you will prevent that here.

That might be ok if drupal was a commercial enterprise. But i wonder if it clashes with the original intent of the project as an org / association. Maybe it's heading in a different direction and maybe that's ok too. But let's see it for what it is. And call it what it might be heading towards.

As an example, if i have an option to donate to an environmental non profit and i see they are taking ads (not donations) that are displayed in their site content and print materials from companies that sell organic products are they really a non-profit or association anymore? they may be the most honest ship on the ocean but the perception arises that they might be playing favs. in fact they might be. or they might not. but it's a slippery slope.

When you apply the ad model discussed in this thread to an outside non profit like the environmental one above, it's more clear where the flaws might be and easier to see how that may impact the current drupal org model. At least it is to me.

Also, unless i've missed the information in this thread, i'd also like to see a budget or something made prominent. The association needs money. Cool. What for? equipment? which equipment? staff? what staff? conferences? how much?

When i go to the bank for a loan, they want to know what for? they don't just give me the dough although i wish they would ;-)

fwiw, i'm willing to give to the foundation because i've been here for awhile and i see the work and hours donated by complete strangers. very cool. however, I think people might be more inclined to donate if they knew what they were actually donating to / for and it was made visibile in a prominent place. someone mentioned above the notion of "targets".

also, my local community radio station here does fund drives periodically. they focus their efforst on that soley 2x a year and the community responds. maybe drupal can have a drive / push 2x a year. where the importance of donations is stressed to the community which encourages them to donate. that might sound a little rah, rah, but it actually works in the real world. unfortunately it takes time and organization (volunteers) to coordinate it and make the thing happen prominently on the site pages / possibly screencasts etc..

my 2 or 3 cents :-)

Drupal.org won't last forever. Don't go out like a chump.

Use some of the nifty p2p hosting schemes or write a Drupal module to interface these.

Forget about conferences. That's for public parks and private homes. Drupal is not even an entity. It's a bunch of talk (that works). Once Drupal.org separates itself from the community, it's end has begun.

Who says Drupal has to stay PHP? Don't waste our your time with that slick, worthless-but-working-better-than-most, non-copyleft pile of beautiful, but lost and potentially dangerous code.

At least use code that asks to remain available and for the user. Drupal's copyleft for a reason. We're all here cause of it.

But don't go out like a chump - Drupal.org. If you need money, figure out that you don't. You've got more than money can buy, and we're all here to confirm that. If you do go for the money, interest and contribution (true value) will leave and start BetterDrupal using a copyleft programming language and environment, useful for all of us now, and all of us to come.

It's the name we all are. Drupal. We're alive and our contributions flow freely.

Let's wisen up while we're still on the spot.

And yeah, I wanna say it again - Don't go out like a chump.