Monetization Idea

[rand0m]

Quick shower thought regarding the monetization of TB after reading the comments to rubben1985's thread.

What made us go with prestashop back in the day instead of magento for example was that it was relatively simple and it was free to use. I think that a lot of the PS/TB communtiy consists of merchant that are simply too small to pay big time for some solution. Thats why I don't think a paid version like magento would be a good solution.

What I also really dislike about PS monetization solution consisting of the marketplace is that you can never be really sure about the modules that you buy there because there are no real quality standards and we had pretty bad luck especially with themes. Thats why I don't think a marketplace is a good solution.

What I really like however is the module system of PS/TB and I love the modules that have been made by the TB staff because I know I can trust that they know what they're doing. So why not use that . The Idea is that PS has a lot of features that are nice to have but not necessary for small merchants and often times they are pretty buggy. So why not remove them from the core, revision those and make them available as paid modules maintained by TB or trusted partners. Like when we started we didn't necessarily need a blog, or extended stats, or stock management, or elasticsearch. And if we would have I'm pretty sure we would have more than happily paid a bit more for a module we could trust. Also you could make the incentive stronger to participate in crowdfunding if you give a free version of your module to the funders. Plus you could think of an incentive for developpers by giving them free access to the modules if they already have contributed to TB and are willing to contribute to those modules.

Actually I also think that it would be easier to pick up thirtybees if the core would be a little less packed but you could expect everything to work as intended and in the end if you'd own all of the modules you would have something like a paid version but you could still start out without any cost.

Also it might be useful for the devs if the core would be split in some modules because you could prioritize according to the usage of those modules.

I know this is all way too early, I just wanted to make the post before I forget it and I thought the idea might have some worth. Anyway, thank you so much for all the work you have been putting in this piece of software!

[rand0m]

Actually just saw that PS is pretty much doing that, but I think that if the core would be cleaned up into bigger modules and the crowdfunding module thing would continue as paid module could be nice

[Tomik]

I think this is exactly what TB didn't want todo. rather have crowdfunding modules

[rand0m]

Honestly I'm sorry about starting a discussion about this again. I also must admit I haven't been following the forum for quite some time. Do you know the reasons why they don't want to use paid modules? I think crowdfunding is a great way to get a module started but it doesn't generate a continuous source of income.

[rand0m]

Also to clarify, what I was thinking of was more like stock management, customer service, stats all those things that are great in theory but aren't that well thought through right now and you don't need to have available in the back end when starting out. Also crowdfunding those would probably make their development possible and it would be more rewarding to participate since you would get the module at a discount.

As I said this isn't really thought through and it probably is nothing new I just wanted to get it of my chest.

[DaoKakao]

Folks, let the TB team go their way. They know what to do. If someone think he can/will do better - then nobody stops him/her from doing this. Everything else is just self-brainf...k