Wed 25 Nov 2009 |
How Would You Feel About Enhanced JRD Listings?
Written by Wendy Robinson
Back in January, Andrew Eddie put out the Request For Comment call for what would eventually become the Joomla! Resources Directory. He received a great deal of feedback from the community about what direction the new site should take, and, when the JRD editors team was formed, he shared that with the team. Thanks to all those who did send in an email. I'm proud to say that we were able to follow the general tune of the community and individual comments and have resulted in a successful directory.
I'd like to focus this entry on one of the things Andrew mentioned in that blog:
"We are also researching via our legal and financial advisers whether it is possible to derive revenue from paid services such as premium listings, etc. While we don't know what shape or form this might take (or even if it is possible at all) we would nonetheless like your feedback on this aspect as we are investigating such possibilities for the site."
Turns out, it is quite possible and legal. Not a lot of those who responded to the RFC email made comment about the idea of monetizing parts of the directory, but those who did seemed positive about it. As this is unlike anything the project has done before I think it best that we get a better scope on how the community would respond to it before we commit to launching anything.
The JRD is listing service that is and will remain free for firms in the Joomla! ecosystem. We want to keep that essential element of the JRD but also to allow those businesses that wish to do so to enhance their listings. We want to do this in a way that is fair to large and small companies alike. For example, most smaller companies cannot afford to advertise on the joomla.org family of sites, so we want to have options that are accessible to them. In order to keep management as simple as possible for the JRD team and the financial team, we'd like to keep the prices based on yearly subscriptions for each feature while also keeping in mind what that would break down to per month.
The JRD team has come up with a few ideas and some possible costs, but we'd very much like to hear from you, the community and the listings owners, if a) you think it's a good idea at all to monetize parts of the JRD? and b) what kind of features do you think could/should be added? as well as c) what do you consider a reasonable price tag for those features? Some of the enhanced listing ideas we have come up with are: additional images, a site map, and listing in multiple categories. There are probably a lot of other good ideas out there.
The idea of enhanced features is something we'd like to launch, with the support of the community, in the very near future. If you have suggestions, questions or general opinions on this, please leave your comments here.
As I'm sure you are aware, Joomla! as an Open Source project and as a community is growing at a substantial rate. We see more and more Joomla! Day events being planned, we have the Joomla! Developer's Conference coming up, there are plans for large scale international events and now we are experimenting with some paid development. Our software needs testing and bugs need to be squashed - more bug squashing events would be great. We also find ourselves in need of legal consultation given the popularity of the software and use of its trademark. We've got hosting bills, and a merchandise store to keep stocked. All of these things require income. So what do you think about using the JRD for this and what ideas do you have for implementing it?
2009-11-25 05:43:04
2009-11-25 07:03:44
I am glad that you also acknowledge smaller companies that cannot afford to have paid listing on the Joomla! Sites Network, also consider that some of the sites may offer Free Joomla Resources( extensions and Tutorials ) as a service to the Community.
In the same Vein there are many sites that offer paid access to Joomla Resources ( Tutorials as an example ), so its a difficult task you have setting up baselines for something like this.
I was under the impression that Joomla! hosting was sponsored ? Has this changed ?
It would be great if you could open up the ideas that the JRD is toying with on this topic so they can be explored further if possible.
2009-11-25 07:10:16
Just try it and if it don't work we can always change, improve and make it better to suit the Joomla community. If it dont work well lets close it down.
And its good that you ask and communicate this with the community before any decision as you do now.
I also believe my self in other hybrid founding models and using this founding for a real time commitment of a few core VIPs Joomla people so they can focus almost full time for faster and better Joomla core dev.
2009-11-25 10:47:57
Otherwise this idea seems fine.
2009-11-25 10:50:25
2009-11-25 13:49:46
2009-11-25 13:51:53
Great idea.
2009-11-25 14:07:23
Klas - respect is the foundation of our community. That was unnecessary.
2009-11-25 14:14:24
I agree both with the idea and the opinion of Klas.
2009-11-25 14:52:26
Never understand the "eco" system of Joomla in comparison of other great opensource projects like "sugarcrm" and "magento commerce"
R.
2009-11-25 15:41:03
B) Some of the most important features (to me) would be things like Listing in multiple categories, Ability to pull in a site's RSS feed (as in, you can see a few of my latest blog posts right there), Rich text for description areas (as opposed to a plain-text area for non-paying listers), Appearing at or towards the top of the category listings, Slightly different layout or color scheme on the detail page.
C) This question is a can of worms
Hope this helps.
2009-11-25 16:06:42
You didn't help us before. Indeed you did harm to us.
What do I think? YOU HAVE TO LEAVE THE GPL VIRUS BEHIND FOR V1.6.
When you do, you'll get all my support. If you don't, I'll try my best for replacing Joomla! with other open source CMS that cares for developers, and asks for developers feedback everytime, not only when YOU want to earn money for your work. What about the rest of us? Don't we deserve to earn money for our job? Or do we only deserve to do that as tha GPL states, not as we believe it's the best way to do it?
GPL doesn't give me any freedom, he steals freedom from me.
My advice, again: leave the GPL virus behind, because lately they're behaving much more like the Microsoft ULA. As a developer, you're not getting my support yet. And I know I'm not the only one. Maybe you are now able to understand now what you've lost so much developer support, aren't you?
Kind regards, and welcome to the real world of work, effort, freedom and, may I say, commitment?
2009-11-25 17:30:37
GPL does not say anything about commercially selling your extension and relicencing is virtually impossible (remember the Joomla project does not work with a contributer licence agreement). Please do not mix things up and do not try to start a new GPL debate, this not the place.
This is an open source project (mainly) run by volunteers, and keeping the infrastructure, events support and lots of other things. After all only a few things are really free. Please admire the fact that the project has managed to serve the community for free that long.
@Wendy: I think it is great to openly call for input. I see some practical and logistical complications, but in general I support the idea.
2009-11-25 17:41:12
Whilst all non-commercial extensions are put under unpaid listing group, all commercial extensions (regarless whatever the license is) must be put under paid listing group. That's fair enough.
Regarding price, I would suggest $40 - $50 monthly fee should be fair enough.
2009-11-25 19:24:58
2009-11-25 19:45:52
It's not only extension developers that are listed in the JRD, but anyone that provides Joomla related services , like Support, Design, Hosting etc... so its complex to work out a caseline because some are Free, some charge a fee etc .. I have even seen Sites offering paid acess to the same Documentation that you can find on the Joomla Docs site and these are well known Community members.
@ Amy, there was no need to snap at Klas, show some respect for his views.
2009-11-25 20:25:48
I believe that JRD listings should have reviews with ratings, and that the listings should be sorted by top rated/most reviews. My listing is about 15 listings down, though it has 15 comments, more than any other listing in my category, I believe.
How does a listing get to be "popular"? If it is the number of times the listing is viewed, anybody who makes it as "popular" will obviously keep getting more hits because they are at the top of the list, reinforcing their popularity endlessly and keeping the lower listings from every reaching the top.
I'm suprised that will all of the extensions out there to do ratings and reviews, we can't have a directory based on those very important factors. JRD editors, can you please comment on this?
2009-11-25 21:44:47
I think that 3 positions on the page could be sold for $50 per day per position, and be in a daily schedule, that would create 1095 ad-day positions.
This would be tremendous inflow of work for any business to be on the main page. I might be careful to know what day I was advertising there and to not have advertising take place within the same month or quarter. too many customers... too fast, does nobody any good.
1095 ad positions could be bought by the 165 companies listed in the JRD.
Assuming some new companies would be listed in the next year.
An average purchase by each company of 6 advertisement ad-days per year or $300 per year.
That would generate $150 per day of revenue and that could pay developer(s).
In 1 year that would create $54,750.
10 Developers could be paid $150 per day for 3 days per month for 12 months.
Who would these 10 developers be? well... they should self-nominate, and should explain their case in an essay, a very fair system would have to be devised.
This should not be limited to devs, but anyone who is particularly over-involved.
To sum it up... the sale (or bidding process) for certain days could be held during December 2009 for all of the advertising in the 2010 year.
This would also create a fund of $54,750 pretty quickly. (assuming all positions are sold)
Although if you think hard about it, obviously there are weaknesses of equality that would have to be hammered out as a very judicially publicly accounted for system.
Mike
2009-11-25 21:55:06
Here my comments for this public RFC
1) does Joomla really need that additional revenue ? are the actual revenues not enough to cover the budget ?
2) commercializing and giving weight to money paid for listings is not a good idea for an open-source project imho. Free and open-source providers would automatically be further disadvantaged on the listing compared to commercial ones (free providers are already not doing google ads obviously).
3) managing the levels of listings individually as planed will further strain resources away from essential tasks which are lagging, and require additional resources for asserting and auditing companies' books to determine levels (which btw is an impossible task when facing multiple companies, and certainly not Joomla's task).
4) it's a start of monetizing Joomla, and a very slippery slope, which killed the soul of quite a few open-source projects.
For all those reasons, I don't think it's a good idea to do such highlights/advantagings on a paid basis.
For people wanting to contribute financially to Joomla there must be way less time-consuming and easier ways...
Respectfully,
Beat
2009-11-26 02:07:55
To be clear, I do respect Klas. And, I should have allowed for the fact that Klas does not speak English as his native tongue. In English, the phrasing of his comment was harsh, but that was likely not his intention.
You were right to correct me. My apologies to Klas.
Thank you.
2009-11-26 02:35:23
The JRD team is very pleased with all of the feedback (the for's and the not for's) so far. I'm going to take a little time to digest all you've written and post some more indepth responses, but I just wanted to say thanks for now while I've got a free minute
Keep em coming!
2009-11-26 05:02:03
I do like the idea of having the option for time-limited featured listings and the idea of having the inclusion of feeds (though that could easily get "sticky").
What I would be willing to pay most for would be a simple lead generation form - a "contact form" on my listing. There is nothing more valuable to my business than the regular ability to receive qualified leads.
The second thing I would be willing to pay most for would be the ability to include a gallery of work/portfolio.
I think as far as ad spots go that would open a can of worms in terms of management of the ads. But would still be open to considering purchasing ad spots.
That's my two cents.
2009-11-26 06:05:13
I know there is not only extension developers, but also freelancers, hosting, templates, training, vidoes, etc, etc. Regardless of what they are offering/rendering/selling, it's still can be categorized as two major groups: commercial and non-commercial.
My point is, for those non-commercial resources, put them in unpaid listing. And for those commercial resources, put them in paid listing. Simple, isn't it?
@Beat
Even with full open source spirit, people still live on earth. And as long as you live on earth, you will need some sort of money to make everything better, including Joomla itself. IMHO.
2009-11-26 07:08:47
I'd like something that would help accelerate the CMS development while simultaneously accelerating volunteer developer involvement and development. I think these are not necessarily exclusive goals. Thanks for open source!
2009-11-26 08:57:43
Regards
Nik
2009-11-26 14:52:04
2009-11-26 16:55:56
Thanks for the clarification, I agree with you, you did not mention Non extension Listings previously that's why I raised that
2009-11-28 05:00:20
I also believe that that fees for listings commercial services was a reasonable way to bring in needed revenue since individuals and businesses were profiting by offering commercial Joomla based services.
I suggest that $100/year is a reasonable amount for premium listings. This makes it affordable for even those starting out in business.
I also suggest that that there be the opportunity to be listed in more than one category as many commercial Joomla based businesses offers services in several categories on the JRD site. There could be small additional fees to be listed in each suitable category.
If one day there are 500 paid premium listings at $100/year, this would bring in $50,000/year.
Michelle Bisson
Joomla! Team Honor Roll
2009-12-02 02:07:46
Hi all, again thanks so much for your feedback. I'm going to try to respond as much as possible here.
@Mike H - your enthusiasm is always appreciated. You've got some great ideas and energy. The idea of paid 'positions' on the JRD site is an option, though right now I think we want to start a bit smaller to see how things go.
In response to your later comment, ad positions are something that would require a lot of consideration and time. Great idea, but again I think it's best to start small and see where we go
@Mustaq - Yes, we want to raise funds for financial purposes. Not something we'd just do on a whim if there weren't a need for it.
We definitely want to continue to acknowledge smaller companies. Exposure for all who contribute to the Joomla project has always been a top priority of the JRD.
For the record, thanks to our tremendous Hosting Provider, most of our hosting is donated but we do pay for Joomlacode.
@Darb - yes, this is definitely going to be a bit of an experiment and you are correct in that if it doesn't work we can make it better, or if necessary go back to basic free listings only. Only with Community input of course
@Klas - Noted, thanks.
@Stefan, John and Eric - Thank you for the encouragement!
@Amy and Birnak - I asked for honest feedback and Klas gave his. So in that context it wasn't at all 'unnecessary' and certainly no harm done.
@Amy - thanks for your feedback.
@Richard - Simple answer: We can't turn off the GPL license.
@James - Awesome suggestions. I love your RSS idea, definitely something for consideration and probably pretty simple to implement. Thanks! As far as page position, we really don't want to get into a situation where we have all the paying listing holders at the top and all the non paying at the bottom. If we can find a nice balance, like maybe a top rotating module or something that randomly picks paid providers on page load, we might be better off out of fairness to go that route. Layout or Colour scheme on the detail page is something we've also considered.
Continued...
2009-12-02 02:08:13
@Wilco - Thank you for stepping in there
@Sharper - that would be an interesting approach. However if those who offer non-commercial resources wanted to have some of the benefit of a paid listing or feature I wouldn't want to deny them that.
Thanks for the feedback on cost. What you propose seems reasonable. Cost to the user is going to be the biggest consideration here.
@Casey - thanks for the encouragement!
@Jesse - There is an option to leave reviews in the JRD. As for ratings, while it seems an easy thing to implement it is also something that takes a lot of work to monitor. Toni Marie recently posted on this topic and how much work it takes to keep it 'honest' in the JED. If nothing else, it's time/manpower issue.
@Beat - Very thoughtful and well said, thank you.
1) If we want to continue exactly as we do now then no, I'd say we don't need the additional revenue. However if we want to evolve in a broader direction with more advantages for the community (like events) then I think we do.
2) Keeping non paying listing providers happy and for them to remain in equal position on the JRD is very important. It's been discussed at great length within the JRD team. The last thing I want to see is good, contributing, smaller companies bumped to the bottom of the list to make room for people who are paying for features.
3) The JRD listings and features (paid and unpaid) will still be managed by the JRD editorial team. Taking these steps towards some paid features will definitely increase our workload and we're aware of that. We'd see how it goes first and if necessary, broaden the JRD team with more editors to help out. Financials would be handled by OSM, not the JRD.
I hear what you're saying and it is possible that it could be a slippery slope. However what if it wasn't? If we worked hard at making this happen and the community above all reaps the rewards, maybe it would be a good thing?
@Matt Lipscomb - The contact form idea is excellent, never even occurred to us... and so easy! awesome. We were thinking of doing something like a portfolio gallery similar to what you see in the JED listings where people have multiple thumbs of their work (be it screenshots or whatever) that open in a light box.
I'm with you on your opinion of Ad spots. I think more work than we can manage currently, but for sure always an option to be considered.
@Chay - Excellent philosophy, that's exactly what we're trying to do here
@Nikhil - if you'd like to send us some projections we'd love to see them. You can find us at team[at]resources[dot]joomla[dot]org. Thanks.
@Michelle - as I've told you in email, your ideas on fundraising are always appreciated. Thanks! Nice to see you pop here again, btw
@Everyone - If there's anything I missed in response, please let me know. As well if there's something you'd like us to be more specific about please also let us know and we'll do our best.
2009-12-04 23:07:13
Thanks for keeping the community in the loop and for all the answers to community comments. Keeping this RFC process public is really a change from the past, and very encouraging. The resulting level of "collective smartness" is also impressing me each time in public communication. Hope the rest of the process(es) take that great sunny road too.
1) To answer my "1)" I have a lack of any publicly available past numbers more recent than 2007 and of any budgetary 2010 numbers and action plans, hope those exist internally and are available to those making such decisions
2) I'm not sure how you can achieve your answer to "2)" without major work, and keeping all parties happy, but if that has been discussed internally, I do believe you that you found a way.
3) Some kind of at least "exercise" budget and profitability study should be made within JRD. I didn't see that here either. I would expect for instance that wining 25$ for the project should not take 3 hours (free unpaid) work from someone at JRD to do all checks needed and 2 hours from OSM to handle the financials and cost 10$ in the outsourced accounting firm (that's what accounting an invoice and payment costs on average when outsourcing accounting and doing it manually).
4) Finally to clarify my note of the "slippery road": the slippery road is pretty clear: while JRD itself might be ok as most comments tend to agree to, above, it clearly opens the road to other "easy" monetizing actions in other areas, which might be less appropriate. The slippery road might not include JRD, but it clearly starts at this JRD monetization.
The immediate one that starts in that way is the demo-site "outsourcing", and which only has private RFPs. Nothing public like here, no prior Community RFC, and so on. Just "old-way" closed internal hidden decisions.
Not saying that Joomla should not rely on multiple hosting companies (it really should do so to be less dependent one a single one), but a community discussion or at least RFC should have been welcome, like here.
There are other monetizations that could go on and on, "easily" and could be a big temptation, specially if more people start getting paid more, and that could just change the nature of Joomla and community contributions completely. We "just" should make sure that these are a top (Community?) - down (OSM?) decision before it's all already there without structure.
@sharper: No, I'm not an idealist. Yes, it's a real world with real costs also for open-source projects (believe me, I got a feeling of those..), but in 2006 and 2007 those were well covered by existing googleads revenues and sponsorings (2008 and 2009 numbers and 2010 budgets from OSM are missing to public so can't comment). For large for-profit companies "more" seems to be never enough (which is imho dangerous too as lots saw in 2008/2009 and after brave governments stepped in already forgot in 2009/2010, but that's out of topic here). But in a non-for-profit "more" money involved might just mean "less" free community contributions. That one is also slightly out-of-topic here, but a very serious concern, and still linked to this RFC.
Respectfully,
Beat
2009-12-14 09:19:23
Thanks, I realize it would be tough to manage the ratings. Could you at least provide some insight into how these listings are ordered in the first place? What makes a listing popular?
2009-12-15 08:03:59
Listings are ordered by the number of hits they get, ie: the more hits a listing get, the higher up they will appear in a category. Since we are not taking votes at JRD, these are the best available data to show the most relevant/interesting listings first.
A listing is considered popular when they have 20 (used to be 10 and we may change this as we see fit) or more hits per day on average.
2010-01-31 15:07:25
Hosting is an incredible difficult business to survive in. By having good hosts out there that support Joomla you have more happy Joomla customers and more stay with Joomla over other CMS's.
The bottom line is we both need each other
I think the Joomla RD team needs to get with a few companies and see what type of revenue companies bring in in the real world from the RD. This will allow them to get a feel of what the market will bare.
I am not a big fan of this. I love Joomla and support it but I don't see how this will benefit the end user.
Only the largest of companies (that tend to provide the worst Joomla support) will win on this.
2010-02-01 13:56:58
Listing are now alphabetical. A change was made recently removing any other ordering. I am very disappointed in this change because it was made without any regard to how the companies that are listed may feel about this and witout any notification.