If the reddit exodus happens and Lemmy gets even 2% of reddit’s daily active users, how will Lemmy sustain the increased traffic? I know donations are an option, but I don’t think long term donations will be sustainable. Most users will never donate.
I know the goal of Lemmy isn’t to make money, but I know that servers and storage costs add up quickly. Not to mention the development costs.
I would love to hear the plans for how to offset those costs in the future?
If you have ever browsed sites like questionablecontent.net, you may have noticed that they have a privately hosted ad server where people can reach out to Jeph and buy ads for his site.
This is a fairly rare occurrence as the requirements for the ads that he approves are pretty strict from what I understand and he’s not just going to hawk the latest caffeinated Seltzer vitamin water blend to his followers.
That being said there are a lot of self hosted ad platforms that can be easily monetized and allow the site owner to dictate exactly how intrusive the ads are where the ads are coming from and to ensure that the ads effectively blend into their site design.
But a more realistic approach would be to ask users to pay an annual fee or something.
If I knew that the community was fairly strong and robust I wouldn’t mind paying $10 a year or something to keep my community vibrant and strong, or rather than going with a fixed annual amount if they were to put out a donation drive the way Wikipedia does then I might be tempted to throw a little cash when I’m feeling flush.