Fur Affinity calls on users to open wallets
Posted by GreenReaper (Laurence Parry) on Sun 30 May 2010 - 20:58 — Edited as of 21:10
Fur Affinity is looking to bolster its advertisement income by drumming up donations with a page listing donors by name and donation amount.
The site hopes to cover expenses of $890 a month. As of May 30, six people had donated over $200, entitling them to a "supporter bag".
FA uses AlertPay for payment processing due to PayPal's prohibition on payment for sites with adult content. As it is not a charity, donations are not tax-deductible.
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GreenReaper (Laurence Parry) — read stories — contact (login required)a developer, editor and Kai Norn from London, United Kingdom, interested in wikis and computers
Small fuzzy creature who likes cheese & carrots. Founder of WikiFur, lead admin of Inkbunny, and Editor-in-Chief of Flayrah.
Comments
"FA uses AlertPay for payment due to PayPal's prohibition on payment for sites with adult content."
I love this! A sad but true comment on FurAffinity I'm afraid...
Dito. I laughed when I read that.
What's sad about it? PayPal probably isn't making a moral judgment - the chargeback and fraud ratio is higher for adult services, so perhaps they feel it's just not worth their time.
FA isn't the only furry site to use AlertPay for payments, either. There'll probably be a story about another this week.
This is what they get for having double standards.
I feel sorry for FA, in that they follow the familiar narrative of a web service made for a [relatively speaking] small community. It starts out with the optimism of providing a community service that is free for everyone and it's all lovely bubbly hippy, till popularity takes hold and bills need paying to which the
begging bowldonation jar must be held out, advertisement put in place and other ideas to fund the service. All the while the service has to remain free else feel the wrath of the community.What I'm getting at is that I'm reflecting on early 00's community sites and the web in genera, filled with youthful optimism and niave ideals of freedom, but now we surf in a web that has changed with time. The likes of FA serve as a case study for others. We can learn from their experience. Bottom line is that I believe if a furry is going to start a furry website service today they should always have a solid business plan in place to fund its operations and should not be afraid to consider premium accounts. It's something you can pretty much do as a start up cus you don't have an established user-base there to moan at you, where as implimenting it later down the line means you have to take stick on the chin.
It's why I disagree with services like the recently reported WatchTail, a video streaming service relying on advertisement and donations. Donations are not the way forward.
I don't think it's a bad idea to rely on charity if that's what you are. (FA isn't, it's just funded like one.)
However, if you're going to do things that way, it would be a good idea for at least part of the funds to operate as an endowment, so that that the organization might fulfill its purpose in perpetuity.
There are options besides donations for long-term funding. We'll soon be covering a site that explores some of them.
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