After suggesting we might go the crowd-funding route, I’d hoped a minimum of 25 of you would write me saying you’d be willing to contribute anywhere from $25 to $100 to the relaunch project. After all, we almost never get fewer than 1,200 readers a day, and often up to 2,000 and more. So I can’t help feeling disappointed that only 15 guys came through, even if one of you said he’d be willing to put in from $300-$500—for a lifetime membership, which of course we’d eagerly give him.
For that matter, everyone who puts in even as much as $25 would get something for his generosity. We haven’t worked out the quid pro quos yet, but have been thinking mainly in terms of memberships running anywhere from one month to forever.
A few of you wrote asking about the form the new “magazine” would take, if it would be similar to the old print publication, or even to the former online site.
The answer to that is no. To try to go the print route would be suicide, and nobody will pay anything anymore for a traditional-style magazine with columns, departments, articles, stories and pictures. We hope to include all those things in the new Bound & Gagged, but the magazine part itself will mostly be in video format, since that’s what people will pay for on adult sites nowadays—that and memberships in social networking arenas that enable them to make contacts and find like-minded friends they can talk to and, ideally, meet. Which is why we will also be a social-networking site. In olden days, that part would have been called the “classified” section, but our intention is to modify the "classified" concept and transform it into something truly exceptional.
Videos and social networking are the two things we primarily intend to offer new, paying B&G members, who will also have full access to our enormous archive of well over a thousand stories and many thousands of photos.
The videos will come in the form of short scenes, some based on simply putting doms and subs together, others in story-form, often taken from old Bound & Gagged stories, and some new full-length features.
The social networking component will be amazingly interactive, though I don’t want to go into more detail about that here, except to say that through that component we’ll also develop the material for a “magazine” that will grow steadily into a full-sized edition throughout the course of every month.
Lee and I have been looking into adult crowd-funding sources, and what we’ve mainly discovered is that they seem to take a very high percentage—from 20% to 35%—of individual contributions, and also, as far as we can tell, they limit goal amounts to sums considerably lower than we need. I still think that us creating an escrow account would be the preferred route to go, if we can make contributors feel secure using it, and make it easy for them to put their contributions in.
More about that later.
Right now, I’m going to let this go on another week, and make another call for those of you who haven’t written me yet to do so: tell me if you would be willing to contribute to a Bound & Gagged crowd-funding campaign. And urge your friends, who may not read my blog but who may have good memories of Bound & Gagged, to contact me, too. Twitter them, Facebook them, and ask them to write me, telling me they’d be willing to help. My email: [email protected].
I’ll update again next Friday.
I know I'd support, but didn't post my support previously. I'm sure there are others who would support but didn't have the time or opportunity to comment yet. It may be a lot of effort to crowdsource, but getting an idea of the benefits might encourage more people to get involved.
Also, some may have seen you're "we're not going to do it after all" post as an end to things and just haven't been back since. I would hope that's not true and some may be lurking and just not posting, nodding their heads, but not providing feedback. Such is the way of the internet.
Posted by: R L | February 08, 2014 at 11:06 AM
I want to echo the previous comment and argue that a lot of people might hesitate to use their personal emails to directly communicate about this issue but will actually be willing to contribute to a crowd-funding effort. Just like some people never RSVP to a party but will show up anyway. I'm in.
Posted by: Steve | February 10, 2014 at 03:24 AM
I'd support. Perhaps I didn't read the previous post closely enough as I was waiting for a link to use to send money to.
Posted by: TJ | February 10, 2014 at 02:25 PM