Mudlet Sponsorship Plan

Funding Goal Ideas

Priority	Cost (yearly)	Cost (total)	Description
1	100 $	100 $	Apple code signing certificate
2a	500 $	600 $	Windows code signing certificate from digicert for 1 year
2b	475 $	575 $	Alternatively: Windows code signing certificate from digicert for 2 years
2c	400 $	500 $	There are more vendors listed, for example Certum at 360 € for 1 year
3	300 $	900 $	Additional windows CI job (would possibly allow us to create 64-bit windows binaries without delay, appveyor charges $25 per additional job per month)
4	?	?	Additional travis (macOS?) CI jobs (we'd need to contact travis support for a quote)
?	100 $	1000 $	Steam store listing? Cost seems to be one-time only. This may make obsolete the Windows and Apple store investments.
?	20 - 100 $	1100 $	Windows store listing? Cost seems to be one-time only. Cheaper price is for individual persons, higher for organisations. Not sure which fits. Guessing the latter.
?	?	?	Apple store listing?
?	?	?	Bounties for complicated projects?
?	?	?	UX critique from a professional? For example, let the connections screen become more "game like" instead of looking like a business app. Give Mudlet a fresher user experience after all these years :)
?	?	?	macOS is about to make it harder to publish there, as you have to [submit your software to their servers] to be scanned and notarized. This will be required by default for all software beginning in macOs 10.15
?	300 $	?	Mudlet server costs like hosting and domain, currently not as high priority as the more important certificates
?	?	?	Hosting inside China for better download speed from inside their firewall
?	?	?	Give some to other upstream projects that we've built Mudlet upon
?	?	?	Remote macOS in cloud - so Vadi and SlySven can fix macOS-specific issues in Mudlet
?	?	?	(enter new ideas here)

Contributor Tier Ideas

First proposal

1. $1: Discord role
2. $5: Private Q&A channel with devs. Participate in polls
3. $10: Stickers (we'd need to design and order them first)
4. $15: Coding livestreams topic selection (regularly, different topics, livestreams open to all)
5. $25: Discord cool role
6. $50: Mentioning on about page. Demonnic will turn you a pen on his lathe.

An alternative progression

1. 2 $
   • Discord supporter role
   • Access private Q&A channel
2. 4 $
   • Get listed on "About tab" (and Mudlet website both?)
   • Participate in polls
3. 8 $
   • Suggest small topic for livestream
   • Get listed on "About tab" in bold
4. 16 $
   • Discord advanced supporter role
   • Ability to join and speak in livestream
   • Get listed on "About tab" in bold with additional message in a tool-tip (need to ponder advertisements though)
   • Mudlet pen (limited offer only)
5. 32 $
   • Request large topic for extensive tutorial video
   • Get listed on "About tab" in bold with tool-tip and listed above lower supporters

Another joint proposal

• 1 $ - Discord title & user name colored (starting here, have them at every tier)
• 2 $ - Access to exclusive patreon content
• 3 $ - Shout out on twitter
• 5 $ - Participate in polls
• 8 $ - Private discord channel
• 13 $ - Improved Discord user name color
• 21 $ - Topic suggestion
• 34 $ - About page mention
• 55 $ - Pen (start lower as exclusive offer at the beginning)

Points from other creators

• Publicize it regularly
• Create a Discord role
• Have the $1 tier
• stickers :D
• Coding livestreams
• Coding Q&A videos
• Live coding sessions of Mudlet scripts

Come up with reward ideas

Interesting ideas:

• Discord role (or multiple tiered)
• Private Q&A channel with devs
  • Alternatively a half-public channel, in that all can read answers, but not all can write
• Stickers (we'd need to design and order them first)
• livestreams
  • regularly
  • different topics
    • Coding
    • Mudlet
    • scripts
• Mentioning on about page
  • Have this tiered as well? For example like this
  • Mention name
  • Mention name and image
  • Mention name, image and tool-tip shown on mouse-over
  • Mention name, image, tool-tip and be clickable/link somewhere (no 18+)
• Posters (same caveat as stickers above)

Anti-ideas we are not implementing:

• Getting your game listed
• Putting advertising on mudlet.org

Investigate other platforms

• Keneanung checked out other platforms that Github supports - none are all that popular and Patreon had the lowest fees.
  • which ones were checked? --> The ones mentioned in https://help.github.com/en/articles/displaying-a-sponsor-button-in-your-repository#about-funding-files - That is: CommunityBridge, GitHub Sponsors, IssueHunt, Ko-fi, Liberapay, Open Collective, Otechie, Patreon, Tidelift

Be mindful of doing it wrong

• don't want anyone to feel left out - Mudlet is gonna be free, and we're not doing this to make people without money feel bad (practically speaking the amount that'll care will not be high, but still!)