README: Monetization

It should be no secret that Git Galaxy is sort of a money sink right now, with no monetization enabled. This changes today.

First, to the uninitiated, let’s talk about why this is such an important move. For months now I have been running Git Galaxy out of my own pocket, financing this startup with my own capital. While it could easily run for a while, it simply is not practical. This site is loosing money, while ideally it should be breaking even. That’s all we really want - making a profit is not a priority, and all money is funneled right back into the site, whether it be investing in better infrastructure, adding on talented writers to our roster, or partnering with other publications for exclusive content.

For a while now, I’ve considered implementing different methods of monetizing the site. Initially, I wanted to use plain old Adsense, and while it’s not ideal, it works. We know a large portion of our audience uses adblock anyways (or at least expect it), but it’s an easy way to monetize. We will only be running ads inside posts that authors opt in to, so they can decide what posts they would like to run ads and where specifically to run them. Ads in guest posts will contribute to the author, while posts by staff that contain ads will contribute back to the site. Ads will look like the one below:

We have also set up a page to support Datajoy’s “F-U, PAY ME”, and plan to leave it enabled to see how it goes. It’s roughly 1¢/visit, and their DNS does adblocking as well. We recommend you try it out (we are not sponsored by them, but believe it’s a promising project).

Lastly, but certainly not least, we’re opening up a Patreon. Yes, it’s become a cliché at this point, but it’s proven to be a good platform for people to support creatives. We don’t have many tiers yet, but it’s important to note that it’s aimed more to replace the ads, and let any reader contribute back to us.

We hope to continue investigating ways of monetizing our content without detracting from the experience or quality of our articles.

| Expense | Cost | Reason | Total | | ——- | —- | —— | —– | | 2 GB DigitalOcean Droplet | $15.77 / month | Our primary Ghost instance | | | 1 GB DigitalOcean Droplet | $7.89 / month | Our mail and DNS server (using Mailinabox) | | 512MB DigitalOcean Droplet | $3.94 / month | Our playground / podcast server | | gitgalaxy.com domain | $13.67 / year | Our primary domain for all our servers and sites | Total: $31.56 / month (All prices in USD)

Written on September 23rd , 2017 by Gabriel Simmer (@gmem_)