How will ComLuv survive? your feedback please

This site and the commentluv plugin has taken more of my time over the past few years than I care to disclose (for fear of my partner reading it!) and well, it’s starting to take it’s toll. I work pretty much full time with our offline business (A busy Chinese takeaway in Lancaster) and it’s not just the amount of time I put in to the code to keep the plugin up to date or to keep the content flowing on the blog, the tutorials and the support. It’s also the amount of money I have to shell out of my own pocket to pay for the server and bandwidth.

So far, it’s been a great hobby and the cost has been what any other of my would-be hobbies would cost, sort of. Maybe a huge tad bit more so I need to find a way to monetize this site enough so that it can at least pay it’s own hosting bill and leave me to worry about better things like new versions of the plugin and more features for the blog and sub blogs.

This is where I need your help, I need your opinions on some of the things I have thought of to bring in some money and any ideas of things I haven’t thought of yet..

Charging for more urls

Any user can receive 10x the luv when they register their url here, that’s going to stay free for each registered user but, I receive requests almost every day from people wanting to register more than one url per account so they can have all their blogs receive 10x the luv when they comment with their urls.

I propose to charge a small fee for the ability to register additional urls per account. I’m thinking on the lines of $5 per year per url.

A user could buy credits at $5 each or 3 for $12 and each credit allows them to register one more url to receive 10 posts returned when they comment using that url.

Charge for the featured site position

The featured site position has proven to be a good source of click-thrus for the site that occupies it, especially from links within the bi-monthly newsletter.

I propose to charge a user $25 for 2 weeks in the featured site box and one mention in the newsletter. Obviously this isn’t going to pay for even a weeks hosting but it’ll help a little bit.

Newsletter Advertising

The bi-monthly newsletter goes out to nearly 10,000 double opt in subscribers and has an open rate of around 30% (based on people who don’t block images in their emails). The click thrus always enter double digits for each link.

I propose a charge of $15 per link added to the newsletter with a maximum of 5 links per sending.

Or, a $40 charge for a sub heading, review and link with a maximum of 2 per sending.

Banner ad on the info panel

This would add a small banner to below the info panel that is shown when someone hovers over the little heart next to a last blog post.
There are about 20,000 views per month on info panels
$ charge????

Custom theme for a blog

There are a number of themes that can be chosen from within the dashboard for a ComLuv blog but how about a way for you to upload your own theme for a charge? The theme would have to be tested by me to make sure it doesn’t break anything on the main site but the option could be there.

Minor fix it service

A number of bloggers find it hard to edit the code necessary to make little things work with their theme like adding the code to the comments.php file for the comment form action or adding custom code to allow their own stylised twitter field.

I propose a small charge system where a user can pay a nominal fee like 5 or 10 dollars and get me to do the work for them

Sell the site, whole kit and caboodle

This is a last resort but it’s starting to become more appealing as I find myself with less and less time to spend with my loved ones.

The whole kit and caboodle would include,
13,000 + registered users
10,000~ double opt in subscribers
An enterprise edition of a professional mailing software with subscription facility for paid members (like aweber)
Access to 150,000+ blogs that have the plugin installed.
A professionally installed WPMu platform on a dedicated server running on a super fast pipe, over 1000 blogs that are active and a control of adsense on each of them along with supporter plugin and other supported custom code.

more ideas?

I’d be really interested in hearing your ideas about what extras you think would be worth paying for and would really love to hear any ideas you have about extra things that can be brought to Comluv and the plugin so please leave a comment even if it’s “no way I would pay!”.