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?