I read what you wrote, that the $21 is to be considered a donation, and the feed a 'tote bag', a thanks for donating. I have more than a hunch that DF is the model here. And I think it won't work. I have a bunch of reasons for why I think it won't work, and as always I'm not claiming any facts, but this is a brain dump:
$21 is, to me, considered steep when explicably introduced here. At DF there's a large backlog of proven content and the option of getting a T-shirt (something tangible, in the extreme sense of the word).
The problem here is also that you *do* have a backlog. There are tutorials at Cocoa Dev Central that have saved my ass, and there are articles here that have been very interesting, but Cocoa Weblogs is an unproven card yet, although I like the beginning.
You're saying that it's all part of the same effort and I read that and I know that, but there's a mental disconnect between the sites making it harder to string it together. I would not take issue with donating $21 for CDC and Theocacao, but somehow you're making me have second thoughts about Cocoa Weblogs even though I know it's all going to the same place.
DF has the advantage of being able to provide a feed for free and offer an 'upgrade' to that - Cocoa Weblogs doesn't.
What would I do? I would lower the threshold to, say, $10. I would offer the feed free for one week for anyone who submitted their email and got a special token back. I would also move the focus of the donations from the individual CDC tutorials (I'm guessing it's there because most people won't go to the CDC front page, but frankly being met by the top form *before I've read the tutorial* seems cheap) and Cocoa Weblogs to some sort of umbrella drive. My instincts would be much more likely to say "that's low" and contribute $20-ish anyway than they are to do what I think most people will take away from this article, no matter how articulate your intentions - "contribute $21 for a feed".
by Jesper — Dec 19
$21 is, to me, considered steep when explicably introduced here. At DF there's a large backlog of proven content and the option of getting a T-shirt (something tangible, in the extreme sense of the word).
The problem here is also that you *do* have a backlog. There are tutorials at Cocoa Dev Central that have saved my ass, and there are articles here that have been very interesting, but Cocoa Weblogs is an unproven card yet, although I like the beginning.
You're saying that it's all part of the same effort and I read that and I know that, but there's a mental disconnect between the sites making it harder to string it together. I would not take issue with donating $21 for CDC and Theocacao, but somehow you're making me have second thoughts about Cocoa Weblogs even though I know it's all going to the same place.
DF has the advantage of being able to provide a feed for free and offer an 'upgrade' to that - Cocoa Weblogs doesn't.
What would I do? I would lower the threshold to, say, $10. I would offer the feed free for one week for anyone who submitted their email and got a special token back. I would also move the focus of the donations from the individual CDC tutorials (I'm guessing it's there because most people won't go to the CDC front page, but frankly being met by the top form *before I've read the tutorial* seems cheap) and Cocoa Weblogs to some sort of umbrella drive. My instincts would be much more likely to say "that's low" and contribute $20-ish anyway than they are to do what I think most people will take away from this article, no matter how articulate your intentions - "contribute $21 for a feed".