Ramesh Posted January 23, 2003 Share Posted January 23, 2003 I have noticed that the forums are getting really busy (as word gets round about this great product.) I was thinking that you guys need a source of income (looking at the number of live shops and the long list of books on your Amazon wishlists.....has'nt anyone purchased a book for you!) Why not have a sponsers section where you could list recommended services (like for domains & hosting) You could charge each sponser say 300 euros to appear in the list for a month (much cheaper than a quarter page mag ad in the UK). and have 5 sponsers per month. The income generated could go to the development of OSC and the hard working team members. Its fine having a great OS product and community... but you guys still need to 'wash your face' (english term meaning to live daily) and you have hosting fees and forums which are busy ....what do you think ? Also you could have a sponsered shop much like the sponsered links which appear on the right in green on google. Where stores /shops would pay to appear alongside featured shops section What does everyone think ? regards Special Effects / 3d + Flash Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gdfwilliams Posted January 23, 2003 Share Posted January 23, 2003 When I signed up for 2checkout.com, I was sure to use the link on the Gateways page so that OSC got the affiliate credit. Perhaps just making those links more noticable will help? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burt Posted January 23, 2003 Share Posted January 23, 2003 I have brought this up before - if every shop owner donated just $10 ! they Core Team would have enough income to more than cover the cost of running the Forum and extras... Every time I bring a new shop live, I donate to the Core Team, I have also bought books at least twice from one of the Core Teams wishlist as an extra way of saying thank you. There are well over 300o members of this Forum - if each of these people contributed just $2 ! that's $6,000 which I am 100% sure that the COre Team members could do with. http://www.oscommerce.com/about/team - even if you paypal just $1, it is $1 that goes towards the continued evolution of Oscommerce. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loxly Posted January 23, 2003 Share Posted January 23, 2003 I have noticed that the forums are getting really busy (as word gets round about this great product.) I was thinking that you guys need a source of income (looking at the number of live shops and the long list of books on your Amazon wishlists.....has'nt anyone purchased a book for you!) Why not have a sponsers section where you could list recommended services (like for domains & hosting) You could charge each sponser say 300 euros to appear in the list for a month (much cheaper than a quarter page mag ad in the UK). and have 5 sponsers per month. The income generated could go to the development of OSC and the hard working team members. Its fine having a great OS product and community... but you guys still need to 'wash your face' (english term meaning to live daily) and you have hosting fees and forums which are busy ....what do you think ? Also you could have a sponsered shop much like the sponsered links which appear on the right in green on google. Where stores /shops would pay to appear alongside featured shops section What does everyone think ? regards I found the gateways page, but where is the book wish list? Perhaps the core team could have a page of php, MySQL reference books and other recommended reading that is suggested by the forum members that lead to direct links at amazon.com, amazon.uk, etc. with affilate links for the team? I could help set this up, I have scripts to create pages with links built in. The team could be paid in $$ or with Amazon Gift Certificates to purchase the books they need. Debbie [no external urls in signatures please, kthanks] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ramesh Posted January 23, 2003 Author Share Posted January 23, 2003 Hi, www.oscommerce.com left 'about' box click The Team next to each member is a link to payment methods. Come on everyone, they deserve better! What if 6 months from now there was no OSC ! Think about it, its been free so far and look what we've achieved By a small contribution , OSC will truly rock ! To all you IT guys and gal's ...remember that family member /friend/neighbour who says this is only gonna take five minutes. They then trouble you for five minutes every week for about a year ! (rather than say this is gonna take 2 days ) Come on people ! Special Effects / 3d + Flash Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cvos Posted January 24, 2003 Share Posted January 24, 2003 sign me up. im happy to donate and sponsor at any time. i try to spread the word about this wonderful product as much as possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mazza Posted January 27, 2003 Share Posted January 27, 2003 Perhaps the core team could have a page of php, MySQL reference books and other recommended reading that is suggested by the forum members that lead to direct links at amazon.com, amazon.uk, etc. with affilate links for the team? I could help set this up, I have scripts to create pages with links built in. The team could be paid in $$ or with Amazon Gift Certificates to purchase the books they need. This would be a great way to support osc. Everybody wins. Amazon gets their products sold, osc dev team gets provisions, supporters dont have to pay anything extra and increase their knowledge which they can use to make osc even better. And why limit it to php/mysql books or to books at all ? Amazon sells software, hardware and other stuff nowadays. "Use no way as way, have no limitation as limitation." - Bruce Lee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ramesh Posted January 27, 2003 Author Share Posted January 27, 2003 hmm yes, unless I was a book store / Software/CD /DVD site owner. Would I buy something via the competition ? I'm just thinking out loud. If I sold .... (hard to think of something they don't sell !) ....hair dryers , I would buy my stuff through them. Special Effects / 3d + Flash Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
loxly Posted January 27, 2003 Share Posted January 27, 2003 hmm yes, unless I was a book store / Software/CD /DVD site owner. Would I buy something via the competition ? I'm just thinking out loud. If I sold .... (hard to think of something they don't sell !) ....hair dryers , I would buy my stuff through them. :lol: Even you your store sells the same thing, I think someone could buy a thing or two from the osC link just to show support. I wasn't proposing the link be on individual store sites, just on the osC site. Debbie [no external urls in signatures please, kthanks] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 28, 2003 Share Posted January 28, 2003 I'd be happy to donate per live shop, but then the whole OSC ethic goes out of the window if it becomes commerical: we would need a definite release date for the Milestone version for a start. By the way, these forums would be a lot less busy if the FAQs pages weren't empty! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burt Posted January 28, 2003 Share Posted January 28, 2003 As a shop owner, think of the money you have saved by not having to pay thousands of $ ? Yen Euro for the software you are using. As a Designer, think of the money you are making from providing bespoke looking Osc sites for your clients. As a Host, think of the money you are making from providing Hosting for your Oscommerce clientelle. If Oscommerce did not exist, you would most likely be using a paid for solution which normally costs an arm and a leg. I say again, that the site wouldn't need all these gimmicks like Affiliate pages and so on, if each user simply donated a very small amount as a way of saying thank you. I guarantee (having some experience of working on "free software") that 95% of people think of "free" as "no money". The Core Team would not need to go down the commercial route if we all took it upon ourselves to say a small monetary "thank you". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harald Ponce de Leon Posted January 29, 2003 Share Posted January 29, 2003 There is a perfect solution for this. Add logic to the Catalog to increase the product prices by a set percent (say, 45% - ok, thats little too high, 30% is good) which this amount is then donated to the project when an order is made. We will need a knowledge base entry for this otherwise people will start wondering why their prices are marked 30% higher ;) :D , osCommerce Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ramesh Posted January 30, 2003 Author Share Posted January 30, 2003 Since I started this thread, I'd obviously like a small percentage as well. Shall we say........25 % of your 30% ? (No ? , oh ok too low...) okay, okay 50 % of your 30% Thats 15% each. (15% for me and 15 % for the team) (and If you make me a team member , I'll be 1/11 th of the team ) So I'll also get 1/11 th of our 15 % as well. Cool. ....and maybe 1 Euro everytime someone mentions one of the following: Catalog Admin SSL https index.htm default.php search the forums *Please note this is a joke * Special Effects / 3d + Flash Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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