Advanced Fandom Economics: It's Okay To Be A Capitalist

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Title:	Advanced Fandom Economics: It's Okay To Be A Capitalist
Creator:	Leva Cygnet
Date(s):	July 28, 2008
Medium:	online
Fandom:	multifandom
Topic:
External Links:	Advanced Fandom Economics: It's Okay To Be A Capitalist, page 1; page 2
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Advanced Fandom Economics: It's Okay To Be A Capitalist is a 2008 essay by Leva Cygnet.

It has the subtitle: "Money Isn't Evil, It's What You Do to Make it That Matters."

The topic is Cygnet's for-profit site, Firefox News, and why it doesn't commit the same sins as Laura Hale's site, Fan History Wiki.

Some Topics Discussed

• Cygnet wants to be able to "keep the lights on" at Firefox News, the site makes "less than minimum wage" per hour, and Cygnet "exactly trying to get rich"
• Firefox News isn't like Fan History Wiki (a controversy that was burning up the fannish discourse at the time) because Cygnet isn't: 1) outing, being rude to, or stalking anyone, which is violating the rules of fandom. But if you do those things, like Fan History Wiki and Laura Hale and "...violate the basic and generally accepted behavioral standards of a community that you're trying to make money off of, (1) you suck and (2) you'd better expect a vicious backlash from the community."
• a LOT of slippery slopes and rationalizations
• Firefox News is staffed and owned by fans, so making money is okay
• not making a distinction between fans who spend hours creating fanworks for no money as opposed to a fan site owner who spends hours on a public service (aka personal hobby) and wants to be paid for it
• "I know I'm not one of the bad guys, and I'm not going to let somebody else's bad behavior stop me from giving back to the community."
• it's not a fan's fault their excellent site is so popular that now it costs a lot of money to run
• making money with ads, advice about Adsense, and "There are three types of ads you need to worry about: CPM, PPC, and affiliate."

From the Essay

I wrote the how-to-fund-your-fan-site article with the best of intentions. (If I do say so myself) I'm pretty good at figuring out ways to keep Firefox News's bills paid with ads. What I've learned here should translate to other fannish sites easily. The pay isn't great -- I effectively work on the site for less than minimum wage -- but it's a fan site, I love it, and I'm not exactly trying to get rich.

However, when I sent a beta copy of the article with tips and tricks for increasing ad revenue to Melissa, my Igor assistant, she basically said, "You can't do that right now."

[...]

She suggested to me I shouldn't post it because of Laura Hale. Because of Fanhistory. Because ads, and making money on advertising, is in a bad stink in fandom right now. And my initial reaction was, "Oh. Yeah. You're right."

So I filed the article away to post at a later date.

And then I thought about it a bit.

And then I decided I was annoyed enough to write an article about how it really is okay to make money off a fannish web site. (With the usual caveat that none of us except Xing are getting rich at this.)

In the process of running a fan site, it is not okay to stalk people. Digging up personal information on people who want nothing to do with you, posting their personal contact information on your site, and then refusing to take it down borders on stalking. It's also not okay to be rude to people who are basically okay, nice people who haven't done anything to hurt you -- and have a lot to lose by you posting their identity on your site. Fanhistory is, at best, rude in the way they have compiled information on fen.

There's a certain element of fandom that is screaming, "YOU CAN'T MAKE MONEY OFF OF FANDOM! Evil! Boo! Hiss! Die, foul capitalists, die!"

And I respectfully and politely disagree. Well, mostly politely. Somehow, I can never get the snark completely out of my virtual voice, but I can see where the anti-capitalism fans are coming from. I mean, it's fandom. We're all in this for the squee and the love and the obsessive-compulsive desire to memorize every single line from our favorite TV shows. (I can do entire passages of dialog from Disney's Gargoyles. What about you?)

The anti-capitalism fans would claim that anyone trying to make money off of fandom isn't really a fan. They must be an outsider, or a turncoat.

To which I say: Pbbbbb.

Running a small site is something anyone can do. It's easy enough to get free hosting, or pay a few bucks (and by "a few" I mean $5 or so a month) for slightly better than free hosting. With a couple clicks of a mouse in Cpanel, you can install phpBB, or Wordpress, or Joomla on your $5 a month site. Then put a few pretty pictures on it, and some content, and call it a site. Voila. Easy. Simple. I could put up a small fandom site on any topic in under an hour.

But fandom needs the big sites too. By nature, we like to congregate together. By inclination, we are a pretty social lot -- what fun is being a fan without lots of other fans around you? Squeeing alone is just not the same as squeeing to an audience of other fans who squee right back. Without big sites to support large groups of fans, we'd be scattered to the four winds across the 'net -- one fan here, two fen there, all alone in our lonesomeness. The big sites let us hang out together in large mobs.

However, the more of us congregate together in one spot, the more expensive the hosting gets and the owner of the site has to pay for it somehow.

Someone might start out with a $5 a month hosting plan and a pretty site, but if bunches of fen descend on it they'll blow that cheap hosting plan to smithereens in a real hurry and then things start getting eeeeeexpensive.

It's pretty easy to end up with server costs in excess of a good-sized house payment per month. And this is why I react with pbbbbb! to anyone who says people should run fan sites out of their own pocket. Sorry, folks. When you start talking dollar amounts in the three and four figures range, I have one of two reactions: "Not happening!" or "Needs advertising!"

I love fandom. $But not that much$.

And on top of that, a really big site takes time to run. I probably spend about six hours a day doing site related work here at Firefox News -- and that includes taking my laptop to my day job so I can work on the site on lunch. I'd speculate that most web masters of large sites put in the same kind of time -- maybe less, and sometimes significantly more. Running a big site is at best a part time job; at worst, it consumes your life.

So to anyone who says that website owners are somehow in the wrong for putting ads on their sites to pay for the servers and maybe make a little profit? Have a raspberry.

... fan sites that are making money off of fandom need to be giving something back to the community. Otherwise, you're just a leech regardless of your server costs and no matter how much time you put in. Laura's site is a good example of profiting off fandom without giving back -- at least, the damage she's doing exceeds the benefit to the community. From what I've seen, Fanhistory is an attempt to link fandom identities (multiple pen names for the same person) and past fannish behavior and actions while ignoring the wishes of the fans in question who might not want this information easily available. This site is upsetting to the fans affected by it. They didn't consent to be profiled on the site, do not want their information shared, and in some cases could be professionally or personally harmed by it.

At best, fan reaction to Laura Hale's site will be for fans to keep sooper sekrit identities more secret for fear someone might blab where Laura might see. This isn't a benefit to anyone; it means fans can't tell anyone their real names or their fanfiction identities. And sometimes, you kinda need to do this. Forget giving someone your real name for a secret santa exchange, think twice about attending a con where you have to put your real name on the registration, be careful who you buy merchandise from if you need to pay with a check, and God forbid you ever tell anyone who knows you as Jane Plainfan that you also write NC-17 slash as Susie Smutfic, even if you know they like to read about boysecks!

Because Laura might find out. And she might tell everyone, including people you wouldn't want to know.

This isn't healthy and it isn't giving back to the community.

If you are giving back to the community, and spending three or four figures a month on hosting, and spending hours a day running a site that fans love and would be upset if it went away? Then yes, it's okay to put ads on the site -- hell, it's okay to even turn a profit sometimes, if you're really lucky and blessed with the right balance of traffic and ad revenue to hosting costs.

Susie Fangirl has a problem.

See, a couple of years ago, Susie Fangirl decided she wanted to create the Bestest Fan Site Ever for Jane Author. The Bestest Fan Site Ever started out as purely a hobby for Susie -- she adores Jane Author's books and decided she'd make a shrine to Jane Author, and a place for other Jane Author fans to hang out.

And so she made a really cool site. It has forums, and fanfiction archives, and art galleries. There's IRC chat rooms and podcasts and a mailing list. Susie's got a blog, and Susie's even got interviews with Jane Author (who loves the free publicity and thinks Susie's just the bee's knees). In short, the Bestest Fan Site Ever is an incredible labor of love.

Unfortunately, Susie's got a problem, because the other fans love it too. They love it too much. They love it soooooo much that Susie's gone from a $5 a month hosting plan to multiple servers with load sharing. The cost is slightly more than her house payment every month and she's ready to throw her hands up and walk away. She never expected it to cost this much money!

Fan Comments

[Scibbler]: Thanks for posting this. You made me realize that using AdBlock on fan-run non-profit sites is probably not the most civic/fandom-friendly thing to do... Must rethink my strategy on this.

[Icarus]: The line seems blurry. How do we define "giving back" to the fandom? Laura Hale probably thinks she is. (I don't like Hale. She refused to take down my FH page and banned me when I tried to do it myself.)