From a different thread:
they're looking for "sponsors", suggesting "an annual fee of $1000", or even all the way up to $350,000, which buys you a "thank you" from within the browser of the one million of their clients you've sponsored...
I don't know about their millions of clients but the PG website is now ranked top 3000 at alexa.com and serving ~250K pages to ~50K hosts a day. We have a Google page-rank of 8. To get that spammers would feed their mothers to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. We could put an ad space at the top of every page. I'm thinking of text-only ads, no distracting images. We could cycle ads like this: Did you know that you can help producing ebooks investing just ten minutes a day? www.pgdp.net Sponsor PG and get your web site mentioned here. See: www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/sponsoring We thank the Curl Up and Dye hair parlor for their kind gift of $1000. www.curl-up-and-dye.com Do we want to do this? And what rules should we put in place? Is selling ads compatible with the non-for-profit status? Anybody out there with an internet marketing background to figure out what we could "charge" for this ad space? -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org
In most cases, you charged based on "impressions", as in how many people see the ad. There are plenty of open source banner ad systems out there that could be modified to fit the need (including a price scale for the amount of ads purchased). Then again, Google AdSense could just be used =) *ducks* -brandon On 3/16/06, Marcello Perathoner <marcello@perathoner.de> wrote:
From a different thread:
they're looking for "sponsors", suggesting "an annual fee of $1000", or even all the way up to $350,000, which buys you a "thank you" from within the browser of the one million of their clients you've sponsored...
I don't know about their millions of clients but the PG website is now ranked top 3000 at alexa.com and serving ~250K pages to ~50K hosts a day. We have a Google page-rank of 8. To get that spammers would feed their mothers to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.
We could put an ad space at the top of every page. I'm thinking of text-only ads, no distracting images. We could cycle ads like this:
Did you know that you can help producing ebooks investing just ten minutes a day? www.pgdp.net
Sponsor PG and get your web site mentioned here. See: www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/sponsoring
We thank the Curl Up and Dye hair parlor for their kind gift of $1000. www.curl-up-and-dye.com
Do we want to do this? And what rules should we put in place?
Is selling ads compatible with the non-for-profit status?
Anybody out there with an internet marketing background to figure out what we could "charge" for this ad space?
-- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org
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-- Brandon Galbraith Email: brandon.galbraith@gmail.com AIM: brandong00 Voice: 630.400.6992
On 3/16/06, Marcello Perathoner <marcello@perathoner.de> wrote:
From a different thread:
they're looking for "sponsors", suggesting "an annual fee of $1000", or even all the way up to $350,000, which buys you a "thank you" from within the browser of the one million of their clients you've sponsored...
I don't know about their millions of clients but the PG website is now ranked top 3000 at alexa.com and serving ~250K pages to ~50K hosts a day. We have a Google page-rank of 8. To get that spammers would feed their mothers to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.
We could put an ad space at the top of every page. I'm thinking of text-only ads, no distracting images. We could cycle ads like this:
Did you know that you can help producing ebooks investing just ten minutes a day? www.pgdp.net
Sponsor PG and get your web site mentioned here. See: www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/sponsoring
We thank the Curl Up and Dye hair parlor for their kind gift of $1000. www.curl-up-and-dye.com
Do we want to do this? And what rules should we put in place?
I really like the idea of having rotating ads for DP, the various PG affiliates, ibiblio, and our other clearly-defined "partners" (at one level or another, see http://www.gutenberg.org/links). Maybe you could work on this, Marcello? No need to delay, and we already have a few banner graphics for both DP & PG. In fact, I remember we used to lead with an occasionally-rotating graphic. I'd be in favor of some clear criteria for other organizations. Including Wikipedia would be nice. Places like the Linux Fund. But it's hard to draw a line. For such organizations to submit artwork and request being added to our rotating banner would be a wonderful service that PG could provide. But those criteria are a little sticky...
Is selling ads compatible with the non-for-profit status?
No, we can't sell ad space at all. Neither PGLAF, nor ibiblio. This would need to just be free, and just for non-commercial messages. (They could be for commercial entities... but not "buy our stuff" messages.) But for not-for-profit, it's a wonderful idea, and on-mission for PG. In the US, we have "public service announcements." That's the type of model we could easily pursue. -- Greg
Is selling ads compatible with the non-for-profit status?
No, we can't sell ad space at all. Neither PGLAF, nor ibiblio. This would need to just be free, and just for non-commercial messages. (They could be for commercial entities... but not "buy our stuff" messages.) But for not-for-profit, it's a wonderful idea, and on-mission for PG.
Just so it's clear: although IANAL, I'm pretty sure that there's nothing to stop a non-profit IN GENERAL from selling ads (or products). So, the above must be restrictions specific to PGLAF and/or ibiblio. -- Cheers, Scott S. Lawton http://Classicosm.com/ - classic books
Is anyone here interested in helping to work out details of what we consider an "affiliated project"? I would like to do this as long as I have someone else to bounce ideas off of. I think it would be ideal to have a loose affiliation of projects with similar goals, particularly as there are an increasing number of websites out there focusing on individual languages that would be worth being centrally linked in one place. In the English-language wikipedia article on Project Gutenberg, there was some disagreement recently about what should be included in the list of "affiliated projects", partly because I think we don't really have a clear definition here. Although, as Greg mentions, the gray areas are where the challenge is. Andrew On Sun, 19 Mar 2006, Greg Newby wrote:
I really like the idea of having rotating ads for DP, the various PG affiliates, ibiblio, and our other clearly-defined "partners" (at one level or another, see http://www.gutenberg.org/links).
Maybe you could work on this, Marcello? No need to delay, and we already have a few banner graphics for both DP & PG. In fact, I remember we used to lead with an occasionally-rotating graphic.
I'd be in favor of some clear criteria for other organizations. Including Wikipedia would be nice. Places like the Linux Fund. But it's hard to draw a line. For such organizations to submit artwork and request being added to our rotating banner would be a wonderful service that PG could provide. But those criteria are a little sticky...
On Sun, 2006-03-19 at 18:39 -0800, Greg Newby wrote:
I'd be in favor of some clear criteria for other organizations. Including Wikipedia would be nice. Places like the Linux Fund. But it's hard to draw a line. For such organizations to submit artwork and request being added to our rotating banner would be a wonderful service that PG could provide. But those criteria are a little sticky...
Hi! If I might, I'd like to suggest the fine folk at Ubuntu Linux ( http://www.ubuntu.com/ ). For those of you who are unfamiliar with Ubuntu, it's a project which is less than two years old. Their aim is to produce a refined operating system (based on Linux) which is not only free of cost but also free as in freedom and which is also usable by everybody in their native language. As I said, they're just two years old but due largely to the quality of their "product", they've become literally overnight one of the largest Linux distributions. On DistroWatch.com, they've been the number 1 Linux distribution for over a year, and by a considerable margin too. Personally, I've been running Ubuntu Linux for over a year as my main desktop and server operating system. It's truly a worthy replacement to Windows and -- best of all -- it's free in both senses. So, I think it really is a worthy project and one which has very similar goals to Project Gutenberg. Cheers, Holden
Greg Newby wrote:
No, we can't sell ad space at all. Neither PGLAF, nor ibiblio.
I'm not sure this is true: "501 (b) Tax on unrelated business income and certain other activities An organization exempt from taxation under subsection (a) shall be subject to tax to the extent provided in parts II, III, and VI of this subchapter, but (notwithstanding parts II, III, and VI of this subchapter) shall be considered an organization exempt from income taxes for the purpose of any law which refers to organizations exempt from income taxes." http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode26/usc_sec_26_00000501----000-.... IANAL but this means to me that we would have to pay taxes on the ad revenues, but selling ads would not endanger our non-profit status. But the more interesting question is: if we just display standard "thank you" notices for donations received, without letting the donor choose the text, would this be considered "selling ads" or just being nice to our donors? -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org
IANAL but this means to me that we would have to pay taxes on the ad revenues, but selling ads would not endanger our non-profit status.
Do public radio stations pay tax on their ad revenue? Do the Girl Scouts pay tax on their cookie sales? I doubt it (but I could well be wrong). PG operates a Web site; showing ads strikes me as more "related" than "unrelated". And, even if income tax is involved, that's hardly a show stopper. I would guess the ad revenue would easily cover the tax rate and an accountant. -- Cheers, Scott S. Lawton http://Classicosm.com/ - classic books
Somehow I missed this one earlier: On Mon, Mar 20, 2006 at 06:34:39PM +0100, Marcello Perathoner wrote:
Greg Newby wrote:
No, we can't sell ad space at all. Neither PGLAF, nor ibiblio.
I'm not sure this is true:
It's against iBiblio's rules. It's outside of PGLAF's mission. It probably is legal, but that wasn't what I mean't by "can't." -- Greg
"501 (b) Tax on unrelated business income and certain other activities An organization exempt from taxation under subsection (a) shall be subject to tax to the extent provided in parts II, III, and VI of this subchapter, but (notwithstanding parts II, III, and VI of this subchapter) shall be considered an organization exempt from income taxes for the purpose of any law which refers to organizations exempt from income taxes."
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode26/usc_sec_26_00000501----000-....
IANAL but this means to me that we would have to pay taxes on the ad revenues, but selling ads would not endanger our non-profit status.
But the more interesting question is: if we just display standard "thank you" notices for donations received, without letting the donor choose the text, would this be considered "selling ads" or just being nice to our donors?
-- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org
participants (6)
-
Andrew Sly -
Brandon Galbraith -
Greg Newby -
Holden McGroin -
Marcello Perathoner -
Scott Lawton