Exploring different ways of funding project work

[derberg]

Current funding of work, that usually projects do:

• companies sponsor through different sponsor tiers + some individuals sponsor
• we apply to some funds that give budget for mentoring (GSoC, GSoD)
• we have companies delegating employees to work on project
• we now start also applying for bigger funds like OTF and others
• we will explore how to apply with some universities and LF Europe to some European Union funds

Now how about different ways? what do you think about solutions like:

• enabling developer Ads on asyncapi.com and studio.asyncapi.com -> https://www.carbonads.net/
• enabling monetization on our YT channel?
• do you know other similar solutions?

Are above really controversial? will they be really annoying for community or will people understand it is for funding open source work?

I personally believe that if we properly explain and discuss with community what we want to enable - it should be fine. Like if we display Ads in website, there will be proper info box next to it, pointing to an article where we explain our motivation. We could even keep an open discussion where people can drop feedback and concerns about the solution.

Am I too optimistic? I'm super interested what you think.

[vishvamsinh28]

I'm not sure if enabling ads on a website is a good idea because some people might find them distracting while reading the docs or exploring other pages on the website. However, ads on YouTube are a good idea. Additionally, promoting tech products during a video or stream could generate more funds; I've seen many tech influencers doing that.

[derberg]

thanks for your voice!

yeah, its all about us to make sure ads on website are not invasive.

I'm not sure about dedicated promotion in videos. Ads through independent system release us from risk of "favourism".

Product promotion in YT and Newsletter is something that could be included in new higher "diamond" sponsor package I was thinking about. Bit that would always have to be properly marked as "sponsored"

[vishvamsinh28]

Sounds good

[vishvamsinh28]

We can also get sponsors using this join button and having an button for link to our swag store

[Amzani]

enabling developer Ads on asyncapi.com and studio.asyncapi.com -> https://www.carbonads.net/

I like the idea if it's not invasive. how much ads revenue is expected?

[kaushik-rishi]

how much ads revenue is expected?

+1 on this, nice question ⚡

[derberg]

definitely we would need to make it non invasive.

I think JSON Schema gets few hundred bucks, like 300 a month, which is good imho. 3k a year will cover different tools licences for us

[kaushik-rishi]

enabling monetization on our YT channel?

Positive on this, Enabling ads on youtube channel is a good way to create some funding.

enabling developer Ads on asyncapi.com and studio.asyncapi.com -> https://www.carbonads.net/

Haven't seen many OSS projects having ads on their documentation resource, "But" if we make sure the ads don't get interfering enough, we should look forward to exploring an opportunity there.

other ways ?
I'm not sure if this has already been talked of somewhere else, have we tried registering ourselves into LFX mentorship programme (i know asyncapi has been donated to lfx) ?

[derberg]

exactly, I believe that if we make it smart, like I wrote an explanation article, we enable easy feedback on it - it should work. And if it fails, well, then we just remove it 🤷🏼

[kaushik-rishi]

Yeah, we always have a fallback, works - well enough, nope - revert 👍

[thulieblack]

+1 on monetizing YouTube and maybe look for ways to do it on Spotify and maybe write sponsored Blogs. Just an idea

[derberg]

I think podcasts on spotify cannot be monetized, unless you are Joe Rogan or other celebrity. One podcaster that I follow complained about it.

sponsored blogs, that should probably go into a sponsors package, like a higher one? or you think separate thing?