We’re always looking for ways to generate more interesting stuff to review and talk about, but as you know, no one at esk8.news is making any money off this–so buy and try is tough. So we wanted to see if the following Patreon-funded ideas were something the community would be interested in doing.
Maner Makes It Build Series
This idea involves the community creating a Patreon-generated build fund of a certain amount which Mike has to use to build the best board he can at the price. His progress will be updated through a build thread that documents the ups and downs of the process. Maybe we figure out a one-time challenge (based on most likes for an idea) we can throw in his path or force him to use something from Trampa.
At the end of the build, the board will be raffled off to those who participated in the funding and whoever wins merely pays shipping. (Or someone can buy it by paying back the people who funded it either in full or a healthy percentage.) No one from esk8.news is eligible to win the raffle. (MAYBE if Mike falls in love with a build, he can buy it by paying back the Patreon funders. But we give him a full ration of shit for it.)
Power of Community Review Series
This one is more straighforward in that we use a Patreon-generated fund to buy either completes or parts which we then review and then raffle off to the pool of funders. Winner pays shipping. No one from esk8.news is eligible to win the raffle.
Important notes:
*We will include someone outside of the esk8.news contributors to help run the Patreon funds and increase transparency. Every aspect of the financial end will be shared.
*Any deals or discounts offered to esk8.news by vendors will be put back into the Patreon funds and no one from esk8news can financially benefit in any way.
So, any interest in these? As always, we are open to better ideas/improvements if an idea feels close or someone has a more interesting take on this.
not sure if funds are needed for this (as min not always).
with growing influence of esk8news vendors might be interested to sent some of there main/new products to some of us for testing and reviewing.
Sure it´s not always possible, but I think if there is an interest in a review of a specific product the team behind esk8news could first try to get in contact with the producer or seller to ask for some review samples for free (if they need to be sent back after testing that would be ok as well). if that´s not possible we can talk about a community funded order.
About the build series,
I could imagine as well a trash to bash build.
We all threw together our left over parts from other builds and @mmaner than pick the parts which would work together and build a board out of all that.
The board we can than put for sale to fund the forum or give it to somebody who win a competition or something.
Yes, I am constantly working the angles you mentioned. I can’t count how many emails I’ve sent out looking for gear to review. It works better for stuff like Meepos and lower cost products, but tougher for the kinds of gear that most people like here.
I like the “trash to bash” idea. Maybe it gets sold off to pay back the shipping costs of the people who donated the parts. Very cool.
I really like the first idea – there have been a few threads in the past with titles like “Has anyone ever tried X with Y?” and I think it would be cool if we used the Patreon money to fund such experiments
often one out of the community tried the product x or y.
problem is, that this people rarely do a review or test the product to its limits.
might be an idea to ask this people to write a review about there experience and they get a small esk8new gift for it.
I think patreon money should be for maintaining the forum only. For now everything run fine, but we also grow slowly and the uploads not getting less in future. So we might need more space as well, which will up the monthly cost of the forum.
I agree that the patreon money should be used to maintain the site, however I believe that the idea here would be to use additional contributions specifically for the project at hand.
Besides the thing that I don´t really see a reason why to do that combination. I mean for what this massive riser to use than small urethane wheels. why not directly use trucks which made for the right angle.
For science! Maybe it ends up being a good experience, maybe not. Just giving an example.
In any case, the forum earns enough money in a single month to cover yearly costs I bet, so we have like 11 months of money per year to do cool or stupid stuff with
only @longhairedboy can say for sure.
I think i remember he said he cover the turn around cost when we have been at 200$ish. We run out of space multiple time on the other forum and there have been days where it was so slowly you couldn´t even load a picture.
The thing i want to say is, that in my humble opinion it would be better to fund different projekts seperatly instead of using the patreon money.
like this, everybody who want to support an idea can do that but don´t need to fund something he/she is not interested in.
Yep it’s on AWS, check the source on the pictures and you’ll see they all have S3 host names.
AWS is pretty cheap compared to other companies, may not be the cheapest but with 11 9’s of durability, I’d rather pay a bit more to not have the forum go down.
