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BTW, there's no special funding from the forum for this.
Oh, that's interesting.
So, you are funding this I think it was an original @theymos idea, with your own pockets? Thank you!
I don't think you are looking for sponsorship, but this should be carefully evaluated (sponsorships are different from simple advertising, I think).
Then sponsorship should be a taxable event i guess, it will make it more complicated.
Interesting, I saw a thread where theymos said that would consider donate some forum funds for this, but it seems that so far it's just a concept/idea. Perhaps let's see how it goes in the first year? I slightly
touched the subject of sustainability long term with some ideas that could be improved/discussed as well:
Sustainability long term
I know that this hasn't been brought up, and perhaps the creators of it aren't really looking for funding, but I believe that at least some options could be considered. To that end, I have come up with two ideas - all related with BTC:
- Accept donations from users to a certain address - This one doesn't reinvente the wheel. I was thinking of each user having it's own address to contribute to - similar to the Cooper Membership one (we could even create some sort of badge system based on the amount of donation made per user). OR, if creating a "badge system" revealed to be too much complicated due to coding / lack of staff to implement it, I would just rather create an address to accept BTC donations from.
- Accept sponsorships from services that already run their own campaigns here (like ChipMixer for example) - This one can be... not consensual. I agree that since we're going to create a channel directly related to our forum, these kind of requests/approaches will eventually appear. I'm just unsure if we really need to start "mixing" a bit of services that only use our forum to advertise or simply start saying "OK I, as bitcointalk, will start making small references to you in our channel because you pay us too". I don't think it's a bad idea necessarily but I also don't really know if it's a right decision regarding the moral aspect of it.
- MERCH! - Well...Why not right? Granted, there are thousands of merch already regarding BTC and all of that, but I think we could also host another contest to design our own graphics / memes / whatever they be. This one does involve more issues such as managing orders, finding a partner to produce the items, solve any issues upon the item being received so I would consider this one as a last resort.
From those, Welsh (that I can remember) "fancied" the idea of
mech items being produced, but I reckon that it may be something that can be harsh in the beginning - perhaps something mid-term ? If we outsource all the work (except art concepts) I'm sure it could prove to be a reasonable source of income for this project.