Paid Forum Extras (help keep the wiki alive)

Due to some trolls and a few Moral Guardians over at Google, we're having some trouble with the ad servers, specifically in relation to having creepy and/or NSFW content on the wiki. For discussing that topic, go to the linked thread.

There's not much the average troper can do on the ad front, so we'll just have to wait for Fast Eddie to get a response from Google and see how that all goes. We can, however, help in other ways, such as by making merch for the site.

At the moment, the store is extremely out of date, not to mention very difficult to find. Artistic tropers can make new things to sell, and the rest of us can brainstorm suggestions.

First order of business should be to make an obvious link to the store somewhere—preferably on the header bar.

edited 6th Apr '12 12:52:35 PM by Discar

At one time we had ads at the bottom of every page with a link there.

On the link to the store, make sure to add an * to the end when you first get onto the site so we actually get the referral money. http://www.zazzle.com/tvtropes*

I think we have stuff in one or two other places, too, right?

Maybe some magnets?

We also need a decent sales strategy too, we need to figure out our USP and really tailor our efforts into that. A few years ago, that would be a no-brainer, but now its going to be a lot harder to identify and find a market to tap into.

I favour taking what's left of our USP from a couple of years ago. Get the remaining Japanese/anime trope names, put a Japanesque bright design on a t-shirt with them and target the anime fanbase, its still got a good few bob in it and we still have some goodwill left there despite everything. Also, find the remaining offbeat, counter-intuitive, names, put on a quirky design on with them (people love expressing individuality and having a shirt that makes people ask them "what the f...?") and see if we can push through the various specialist T-shirt sites.

The main thing with the merch is to get away from the cheap and dated looking zazzle stuff. We need to have something that is bright and eye-catching, and that looks like it could be quality. Thin white t-shirts with block printing is just cringeworthy.

A much more visible donation bar/banner, and testimonials, like The Other Wiki does would be a good thing.

If we can get any tropers who are good with art, and willing to illustrate just for the joie de vivre of doing art for the wiki, who could be persuaded to give us some images to put on main tropes pages (and obviously merch) instead of sourcing from elsewhere then it means we'll own a product we can promote and sell. At the moment the only real image we own is the lampshade logo, and trope-tan. If we do quirky tee shirts, or t-shirts celebrating trope names, or tvtropes spirit, then it hampers ability to sell (both merch and wiki on the whole) if the pages have a different picture on it. Obviously though, as we mostly source images from the web, or other places, we don't own the image associated with the trope. In a very real sense it means we don't have ownership of our own product, we're trading on other people's product recognition (great for them, we're giving them free advertising, bad for us). We need to fix that. And we need to up the visibility of the logo too so we can sell it more effectively.

I remember,also, a few years back members of the mod team did interviews with various web-news places, maybe some of the more approachable moderation staff would be willing to try promoting themselves through those channels again?

Another thing could be charging for forum gingerbread like icons. If you want to have an icon on your forum post (assuming we are able to keep the forums, even in a limited capacity like wiki talk and trs) then you need to have paid a small amount for it. The more icons you want, the more you pay (monthly, six monthly, yearly, etc) and you get a little badge to put on your troper page too. That is something other sites, even professional ones, eke a small income from.

edited 6th Apr '12 1:11:53 PM by CrypticMirror

The problem with the donation bar is that back when it was more visible, some troll donated, then asked for a refund, and repeated like twenty times. So Eddie's pretty set on keeping that on the account page.

Damn, surely paypal must have some advice on how to avoid that sort of situation though? It's a donation, not a product purchase, refunds should not be an option. Might be worthwhile approaching The Other Wiki for advice on that, can't imagine they've not had that problem too.

Ultimately, the solution for the trolls is to not feed them. And that's difficult, you should have seen some of the grave dancing and "what can we do next to them" that went on on some sites after the fanfic recs thing (and before that the anime names, and before that etc...). I'd be willing to bet parts of my anatomy that this is related somehow, I can easily see "lets report them and see what happens" being brought up. They got a reaction, and are egging each other on to see how much damage they can do, and what they can make us do to ourselves. Prizes awarded for most outrageous act.

edited 6th Apr '12 1:07:00 PM by CrypticMirror

I believe Maddie, DQZ, and some others did a few images for the site. I know Madrugada did the one for Moral Event Horizon.

This is the one I made, which can apply to Pimped-Out Dress and Princesses Prefer Pink. I also say that is someone can make an actual drawing of it, go ahead as long as you also allow TV Tropes to use it for merch.

edited 6th Apr '12 1:47:28 PM by DragonQuestZ

No grandfather clauses, everyone pays the same. It wouldn't be popular with the current regular forum users, but they are the main source of revenue on this proposal. Also, there is no quicker way to drive up accusations of a clique, favoritism, and drive splits in the fanbase, than the idea someone is getting something special and others are not. The only exceptions would be the mods, and even they should only get one freebie icon for recognisability.

It wouldn't be about us being an anime and manga site, but targeting the anime and manga buying fanbase-demographic and performing, what is known in the medical trade, as a wallet-ectomy on them. We have strong brand recognition in that demographic still, so we target them with a product they can recognise and buy. Its a fairly coherent and homogeneous demographic too, which makes it easy to target. The problem we have in other areas is that we have nothing that is strongly recognised within or fanbases, or a solid fanbase of our own. Our brand is fairly diluted these days amongst the general public since we are no longer known as that quirky place with the weird names. Its hard to target-sell without a strong brand identity.

Yes! more stuff like that. Slap a tvtropes.org logo on it, shove in the words "Pimped Out Dress" in a large multi-colored odd font on it, and you've got a great poster/t-shirt/binder-cover/sticker design. They need to be page image too, that ties the site to its merch and creates brand-belonging (I own X with the picture on, that picture is on X-page, therefore I feel an attachment to that page and trope name).

We need to catalogue the trope names on the merch, those names have to be immune from being moved off main and/or renamed to build brand-belonging and identity. That is what sells merch. If we use custom made images, those have to be the pages images and have to be immune from change. If the names, or image does change, then merch has to be updated too. We can't sell something we don't have in the window, its bad for the brand because suddenly people have bought something that now no longer makes them feel like they are connected.

edited 6th Apr '12 2:01:26 PM by CrypticMirror

Trying to figure out what would make a good image to represent Awesomeness Is Volatile. What would work better, a bomb with "awesome" written on it, a container with a hazard warning that it contains awesome, or a picture showing one piece of awesome is worth a dozen sticks of TNT?

Remember if you are designing for merch the key is visually intriguing and generates curiosity about the site. Merch images is celebration and advertisement melded into one.

I am remembering. That's why I'm asking which depiction I suggested would work best. Or would more than one do? That way we could have different stuff for the same trope so people have more choices.

Apologies, I've obviously reached that time of the evening that my brain is now shutting itself down and not processing properly. I'll come back to this tomorrow afternoon, when hopefully my ability to process information rationally will be restored to me.

Honestly, if we end up losing the non-workshop forums, I'd rather ditch the gingerbread entirely. They wouldn't be forums in the same sense. We might as well ditch them all and re-integrate those functions into the wiki, if not YKTTW-style, then using a format similar to Lost And Found and Ask The Tropers.

Then we'd need to make sure beforehand that there weren't any problems with the name or the trope that might lead to them ending up changed in TRS later, and the image would have to be run through Image Pickin'.

edited 8th Apr '12 11:26:48 AM by MorganWick

Interesting idea about charging for icons. Say that X are free, and you can get another X for a donation of $Y. I kinda like that. It would make a case for the forums being directly self supporting, for once.

I agree with charging for icons. I think maybe five free. After that you need to pay to have extra storage. It would be something to get money in the pot.

What icons?

Gingerbread, maybe?

But please not in the workshops.

See that pillbug avatar you're wearing. See my unicorn. Those icons.

What's a gingerbread icon?

Your Avatar. Some people have thousands of them. If we charged people a small fee to have so many, it would help support the fora.

So, I would have to pay for having more than X avvies?

Possible, but you'd have to threat a forum cut to get it through without a flood of bitching.

ETA: For the sake of pedantery, it's not a pillbug, it's the main character of the book Septimus Heap

edited 6th Apr '12 4:03:37 PM by SeptimusHeap

Well I have just two of them. Would I lose the ability to have them up if I don't pay? And would it be a one time fee per picture or a subscription?

Also, why the heck are they called gingerbread icons?

edited 6th Apr '12 4:04:27 PM by DragonQuestZ