- Joined
- Apr 15, 2009
- Messages
- 11,519
A lot of you support this forum with a membership to help this place keep going.
But what of the people who keep our bikes going and improving them?
Sure the traditional model is for someone to slave away and develop a product and may hope to find enough funds to make it to production. And then have to find a way to sell the product. That R&D may or may not be recovered. Most likely not.
But these days there are other options you may or may not be aware of to help fund, this are called crowdfunding. You may have heard of Kickstarter, which goes on the premise that you have a specific product you need help getting off the ground. These typically are past the prototyping stage and need the funding to get into production.
There is another model and that is called Patreon. https://www.patreon.com In this case you provide a monthly amount to the person that you want to support either for what they produce (perhaps it's a weekly video) or music or artwork, really it's anything. Or you just provide a monthly amount just to help them keep creating something you want to see made. This is similar but not exactly the same as supporting this forum.
We have a few people in the Norton community who develop products but do it more out of their generosity and curiosity and not to get rich.
Disclaimer: I'm not trying to put certain people on the spot but real world examples are probably the best way to explain this concept.
Let say a reputable person who does a lot of research in to either providing unobtainable parts or creating new solutions for the old bikes but doesn't want to go through the hassle of selling them wants to develop a new widget.
Most people have no idea of the time it takes to design and develop and test anything, even when you read the forum and watch the videos. This is all unpaid time and rarely is compensated for. Sure there may be a small royalty or return when the parts are eventually sold but that doesn't put food on the table in the meantime.
This is where crowdfunding might come into play. For a small fee, maybe as low as a dollar a month (maybe more) the Norton community would help support the R&D time. What do you get out of it for your dollar? You would be supporting the development of new products for your Norton. Products that may never get developed. Perhaps as a patron you would receive a nominal discount on the final product.
Or maybe there is crowdfunding to help continue the production of impossible to produce parts like heads and other parts?
So instead of hoping for a single source of funding (loans, investors or even vendors) the community could come together and if everyone chipped in a tiny amount it could add up to enough to keep these innovations and research going.
Maybe there wouldn't be enough patrons to make this work but I wanted to throw out the idea.
But what of the people who keep our bikes going and improving them?
Sure the traditional model is for someone to slave away and develop a product and may hope to find enough funds to make it to production. And then have to find a way to sell the product. That R&D may or may not be recovered. Most likely not.
But these days there are other options you may or may not be aware of to help fund, this are called crowdfunding. You may have heard of Kickstarter, which goes on the premise that you have a specific product you need help getting off the ground. These typically are past the prototyping stage and need the funding to get into production.
There is another model and that is called Patreon. https://www.patreon.com In this case you provide a monthly amount to the person that you want to support either for what they produce (perhaps it's a weekly video) or music or artwork, really it's anything. Or you just provide a monthly amount just to help them keep creating something you want to see made. This is similar but not exactly the same as supporting this forum.
We have a few people in the Norton community who develop products but do it more out of their generosity and curiosity and not to get rich.
Disclaimer: I'm not trying to put certain people on the spot but real world examples are probably the best way to explain this concept.
Let say a reputable person who does a lot of research in to either providing unobtainable parts or creating new solutions for the old bikes but doesn't want to go through the hassle of selling them wants to develop a new widget.
Most people have no idea of the time it takes to design and develop and test anything, even when you read the forum and watch the videos. This is all unpaid time and rarely is compensated for. Sure there may be a small royalty or return when the parts are eventually sold but that doesn't put food on the table in the meantime.
This is where crowdfunding might come into play. For a small fee, maybe as low as a dollar a month (maybe more) the Norton community would help support the R&D time. What do you get out of it for your dollar? You would be supporting the development of new products for your Norton. Products that may never get developed. Perhaps as a patron you would receive a nominal discount on the final product.
Or maybe there is crowdfunding to help continue the production of impossible to produce parts like heads and other parts?
So instead of hoping for a single source of funding (loans, investors or even vendors) the community could come together and if everyone chipped in a tiny amount it could add up to enough to keep these innovations and research going.
Maybe there wouldn't be enough patrons to make this work but I wanted to throw out the idea.