Tips for site funding;
If monthly site maintenance depends upon 500-3000$ a month, setting up of a commercial financing plan of some kind is fairly advisable. Sametime, requiring paywalls and membership dues is not exactly ideal of such solutions.
While commercial endeavors also pose semi doxxing risk, there are someways around this, we'll get into that later for now, demonstrating options is at the forefront.
I could keep going all day on many different vectors/approaches but feel this is enough of an example for now. Reply or DM me if you have questions or want to further the discussion in new directions.
If monthly site maintenance depends upon 500-3000$ a month, setting up of a commercial financing plan of some kind is fairly advisable. Sametime, requiring paywalls and membership dues is not exactly ideal of such solutions.
While commercial endeavors also pose semi doxxing risk, there are someways around this, we'll get into that later for now, demonstrating options is at the forefront.
First option, sponsorship. If you can find commercial corporate backers, they can finance you a set monthly/annual amount under sponsorship subcontracting. This is a neat way of obtaining regular commercial income in a semi private manner. Cons are, sponsorships entail ToS contracts and those entail "clauses" of what you will/could do for your sponsor to which you are expected to uphold.
Next up, print media merchandising. This doesn't have to be directly under the corporate banner. It can be through anon artists or named artists that transfer a portion or all profits privately/anonymously. Cons, print to order sites such as red bubble, deviant art, and others, can take as much as 98% of returns as "royaltees+fees" on a per product/per order basis. As such, your per product return on print to order merch only provides a few cents per sale if that unless you add on extreme mark up to each product.
As alternative to print to order merch, you could develop your own merch in house. Screen printing is actually pretty insanely easy and compared to most "product manufacturing" options, is insanely cheap in sourcing the raw material resources. If you have access to a lazer jet printer and some acrylic gloss nail polish, then you can make your own screen print filters. Screen print assembly is just a bunch of wooden frames that hold screens which are "patterned" using acrylic gloss to prevent "ink/acrylic paint" from going through the screen. Ts are cheap AF so the bulk of your cost in this endeavor is simply acrylic paint and printer ink. Distrobution can be either webstore, BBS order form or even private mailing list catalogue system.
Design your own Fumos/plushies. Felt/fleece is cheap, poly fill is cheap. Combine the two, and with some fairly simple pattern references/programs, you can design and manufacture your own small plushie dolls for webstore/bbs/catalogue distrobution. Fumos can go for by artist declared MSRP initial price of 150.00$ to 800.00$+ per product. These things cost less than 20$ to make +/- the hours used to mass produce/limited run manufacture it. If a plushie costs 60$ MSRP to buyer, is made with 10-30$ in materials and takes only 8 hours per unit to produce, disregarding work hours this is a 50-30$ return per unit. Hours gets complicated as in theory you can have artisens produce several per day each, or contract a team to produce an order run, and pay them by flat rate upfront gig fee. So figuring out the wage hours math depends on method of production especially after factoring outsourcing of manufactufing to Asia which can be as cheap as 5-10 cents USD per employee, per day, if your ethics are "flexible" enough for it.
Custom order daki prints. Cuddly Octopus is one of the "legit" western daki makers, and they condone/support loli/shota artists. By contrast diipoo is a western "bootleg" site that, although unique in being able to produce custom oppai mousepads.... Diipoo is outsourced to asia on manufacturing, offers crap return rates, and is not above copying indie artists' works and re-releasing them under a shell name to which they retain 100% of the return from. And doing the pirate copy as "prioritized" release of that media over the original artists in webstore platform browsing. Worse since they are "bootleg" there is issue to whether the inks and materials they use are properly non-toxic/hypoallergenic.
TLDR short, if print to order custom daki prints are a goal, particularly with smolls waifus/husbandos, Cuddly Octopus is the resource you want to work with unless you are to print your own. The rest are either new/startups or bootlegs far as western co's are concerned.
TLDR short, if print to order custom daki prints are a goal, particularly with smolls waifus/husbandos, Cuddly Octopus is the resource you want to work with unless you are to print your own. The rest are either new/startups or bootlegs far as western co's are concerned.
As a website ISP, you can for profit offer coverage of services to developers. You already take a % of profits on forum, but also you can charge advertising servicing packages. Getting paid to feature content on site and to campaign that content through social media/advert networking.
This does get into ethically "grey areas" particularly with "paid vs free" artist coverage in network. "Grey area" being that if chosen/done poorly, the indies that pay for servicing get priority coverage and listing while "freemium devs" get the "backpage" treatment. So, it is worth doing the research to figure best ways to conduct such platform services.
This does get into ethically "grey areas" particularly with "paid vs free" artist coverage in network. "Grey area" being that if chosen/done poorly, the indies that pay for servicing get priority coverage and listing while "freemium devs" get the "backpage" treatment. So, it is worth doing the research to figure best ways to conduct such platform services.
You can offer tiered membership plans with both tiers of free forum membership, and levels of paid forum membership. To do this "ethically sound" in method, paid levels could include extra percs. Newsletters about game reviews and platform tech articles. Dev kit and tool support and advice for paid members. A design school style course curriculum offered to paying dev members. etc...
The idea is that the subscription cost, in part helps to establish the overhead required to offer the design diy 101 and extra content. That apart from site maintenance, the cost covers the provision of "in house only" access resources which can aid users in dev and or collection of their own media.
The idea is that the subscription cost, in part helps to establish the overhead required to offer the design diy 101 and extra content. That apart from site maintenance, the cost covers the provision of "in house only" access resources which can aid users in dev and or collection of their own media.
You can commission artists/acting talent to produce content for the site, using the media for financing option. Particularly with ASMR JOI content but really any adult art media production will work. I mention ASMR JOI content as, if you have staff or people, and those have microphones and can read a script--> you can create media which can be end user priced at on average $3.50 to $35.00 USD per media project.
The indie artists would need a % cut obviously but point is you can directly commission media production by offering the solution of indie artist network & advert platforming alone. As to royaltees, as said RB & Dev Art, these take typically 80-98% royaltees/fees per product per platform. If your offer is better, you instantly have pool of several dozen million indies whom do not have access to that "nice" a deal on the artist's end. Especially considering how other networks censor content while you allow stuff most do not.
The indie artists would need a % cut obviously but point is you can directly commission media production by offering the solution of indie artist network & advert platforming alone. As to royaltees, as said RB & Dev Art, these take typically 80-98% royaltees/fees per product per platform. If your offer is better, you instantly have pool of several dozen million indies whom do not have access to that "nice" a deal on the artist's end. Especially considering how other networks censor content while you allow stuff most do not.
I could keep going all day on many different vectors/approaches but feel this is enough of an example for now. Reply or DM me if you have questions or want to further the discussion in new directions.
