As time passes and there’s more and more members joining, the site is starting to require more and more time and effort.
As a result, I’ve been thinking of ways in which the community can be made sustainable, so it can generate revenue to pay for the costs that maintaining it will entail.
So I have thought of many things and I wanted to run these ideas by you guys, to see what you thought…
1) We all shop for things: besides living with diabetes, like someone told me, we’re people first. So we shop for regular stuff. At the same time, we CHOOSE to buy certain things, so I have been looking at what products/services, if you could buy them not here, but THROUGH TuDiabetes, would you do it?
Here’s a list of some products and services that could be sold through us that I’ve compiled. I’d like your opinion about them:
-Diabetes-related: American Diabetic Supply, American Diabetes Services, diabetes books (fulfilled through Amazon.com).
-Magazines: Entrepreneur Magazine.
-Music/Entertainment: eMusic, TicketsNow (live events)
-Children/parenting: CafeMom, Hooked on Phonics, SitterCity
-College Students: FastWeb
-Technology: 1&1 Hosting, Apple, GoDaddy, Verizon Broadband Services
-Gay/Lesbian: Love and Pride
-Shoes: Happy Feet Plus
This list is by no means complete, but these are companies that offer commissions to web sites that link to them, if people click on those links and complete purchases, etc. there. Any other products/services that you would just like to be able to purchase through us?
2) TuDiabetes Merchandise: We will be soon offering some more affordably-priced t-shirts, etc. that you would be able to purchase through the site directly. We opened a TuDiabetes store a while back, but I found their prices to be a little excessive, so we feel we can offer you guys with cool-looking merchandise at a reasonable price.
3) Sponsorships: I constantly struggle with the idea of how we could get others to sponsor us without compromising our integrity as a community. I would love to hear your thoughts about this.
-Which companies are complete NO-NO’s for you?
-Which companies do you think we should be involving here with us?
-How would you like to see that happen?
Would you like to see us inviting drug companies, pump companies, meter companies, etc. perhaps in a role of conducting online versions of focus groups for a fee that they would pay, a percent of which could go to the members that participate in them?
Any other thoughts you could share about this matter would mean a lot to us. We want to be able to see TuDiabetes.com live a very long life so it can reach out to many, many, many people with diabetes worldwide, so your input about this is crucial.