patrick.net

Let's say making $10/year fee for each member? that won't be hard on anybody I think.

- have some thing like Digg / Slashdot, where users submit stories and they get voted up / down by the members. The top stories will show up on front page.
(this will require significant amount of coding, unless there is an free/open-source library/plugin for wordpress)

- select a few moderators and let them promote stories to the front page. This way the work-load is shared among us

I think there are both great ideas.

Also, I am not too skeptical about 100K. It is the 5th day of the year and we are at about 14K.

I have been thinking about a price point for the price service, too. I think lower might be much better. Or single reports on homes at 10 each. When you are about to rent or buy, 10 dollars is pretty trivial.

Mr.Fantastic says

I wouldn’t make any assumptions bubblesitter. There are some cheap pretenders here. That being said, I think $10 for universal membership (including the rent comp map thingy) might just work.

yes, this works for me too. Rather than paying $7 every time I compare rents.. .I'd rather pay a membership fee and get access to the data

I've seen far less relevant, less important website owners make more than 50k a year (after expenses). With a little bit of advertising and development, I don't see why Patrick shouldn't be able to clear at least 75 or 100K a year for such a great service to the community. BTW, That would be just a modest (middle class) income, and for being an authority on such an important subject, I would say it would be worth more.

I'd def pay for a membership as well. Been reading this site since 2006-2007 ish.

My mornings start off with a several cups of coffee and housing death articles.

Patrick maybe you should send emails to prospective advertisers such as youwalkaway.com (maybe) and others who would buy ad spots. They might not realize how high you are on search rankings for real estate.

Also I dont have a problem with banner ads from google showing Bank Of America ads or something. If the banks can help fund this site - let them!!

I just donated to you. but you are leaving lots of AD revenue on the table.

is sort of like Steven Colbert's rally to Keep fear alive?

I kind of agree about the advertising. If some stupid ass bank or whatever wanted to advertise, I would think that would be funny. You could screen shot the best of the ironic advertisers and make it a link in the news feed. I am happy to pay some fees or donate. Also happy to ignore the ads if that helps you keep afloat or flourishing. I was suggesting speaking gigs. My mentor was an expert is something and gave speeches on it. 3K per engagement.

I opt for the combination of multiple resources. Do we know how many unique visitors on this site? I like the idea of universal membership fee suggested by Fantastic. Each one's financial strength is different. If we have 1000 readers, and each pay $10 per year, we have $10k fixed income. I would think most of us can afford $10 dollars per year. This way, we don't turn visitors off. It is less than most of the monthly internet connection itself.

Next with some modest ads, that may bring in a few hundreds or a few thousands per months. Banners or popup are fine. Most recent browsers do have popup blocker. At the end, throw in the year end fund raising for those who has deeper pocket.

Just my 2 cents.

kimtitu says

Just my 2 cents.

Please forward that 2 cents to patnet... :)

I think the solution for Patrick is to use a combination of affiliate advertising and donations. He can use an autoblogger if he doesn't already and run the site on autopilot. He has a large enough base of readers now he may even be able to charge to advertise on his site rather than asking the readers for donations.

I'd be fine with some adverts, but I think the idea of multiple streams of income is the way to go. A few radio appearances, some speaking engagements, a regular column or two and I bet he'd be make that 100k without too much trouble. Patrick should have a look at Leo Leporte and his empire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Laporte). Laporte started in radio, but Patrick really has the RE knowledge and seems to have (or could build) the personality and temperament for the public appearance arena. He has a good base and a good rep with patrick.net.

Finally got around to donating this morning. Got to keep the lights on.

Landru3000 says

A few radio appearances, some speaking engagements, a regular column or two and I bet he’d be make that 100k without too much trouble.

How about Patrick running for public office, say Insurance Commissioner? My feeling is that Patrick would be pretty much incorruptible, which is what we need in a public officer.

Patrick, I'm near certain you could easily get a replacement job if you really wanted to. My guess is that your heart is in other things, the bigger picture. Why not run with it?

True, I could probably get some job if I were willing to take the lower pay on offer now and give up most of what I hope to do with patrick.net. But you're right that my heart is not in being a corporate drone again. So on the one hand, you could say I'm a slacker, but on the other, I really do work very hard on the site every day, harder than I worked in a normal job.

As for politics, what happened to Giffords is not exactly inspiring. I already get hate mail from people who let their brains be taken over by Fox News hate-mongers.

But it would be totally worth the risk if there were the possibility of doing something really different, instead of just being co-opted by the existing corporate parties. I really like much of the platform of Teddy Roosevelt's old Bull Moose party, especially their reason for being:

"To destroy this invisible Government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day."

But it would be totally worth the risk if there were the possibility of doing something really different, instead of just being co-opted by the existing corporate parties.

My advice would be to aim HIGH right away. As an example, do NOT run for Menlo Park city council or any other "local" office. You will just get bogged down with mindless stuff that has very little global effect. Aim for high office.

Also, real estate crash news and sentiment can only go for so long. This time around seems to be longer than usual. In late 80s and early 90s, the crash only last a few years and things just burping at the flat bottom until 2000.
This crisis may last until 2015 or longer before it goes into a long bottom flat line again. Since patrick.net still has momentum currently and few more years, why not think of transforming it to a broader audience base site. When the RE hits the bottom, what are we going to talk about then?
May be inviting a few foreclosure businesses to join the forum to provide some insight of some discussion, then allow them advertise modestly among the thread using text link within the reply. This can be profit sharing model with patrick.net. Just throw it out there for input.