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Code Sponsor is shutting down on December 8

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Re: Code Sponsor is shutting down on December 8

#51

Post by aetherspawn »

cavneb wrote: post #12
aetherspawn wrote: post #6

Right, this is disappointing. But it doesn’t mean that Codesponsor needs to shut down. They could easily check the referrer and show the ads only on npm, dockerhub, gitlab, hackage etc and they would still get good coverage.

60% of all traffic through Code Sponsor came from Github. 15% came from ad blocked traffic (I have no idea the referer). About 15% came from websites and then the remainder came from different repository websites (dockerhub, npm, etc). I agree that this is a good idea, but open source exists on Github. Without their support, it just won’t happen.

Nevertheless, couldn't you just leave it running without GitHub' approval (perhaps, block requests with referrer from GitHub) and see if it gains further traction?

Re: Code Sponsor is shutting down on December 8

#52

Post by cavneb »

aetherspawn wrote: post #51
cavneb wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

60% of all traffic through Code Sponsor came from Github. 15% came from ad blocked traffic (I have no idea the referer). About 15% came from websites and then the remainder came from different repository websites (dockerhub, npm, etc). I agree that this is a good idea, but open source exists on Github. Without their support, it just won’t happen.

Nevertheless, couldn't you just leave it running without GitHub' approval (perhaps, block requests with referrer from GitHub) and see if it gains further traction?

The personal cost it would be for me (time from family) to continue to grow Code Sponsor on the side is not an option. I love open source and want to see it be sustainable for developers, however, I can't do so anymore at the expense of my family.

Re: Code Sponsor is shutting down on December 8

#53

Post by styfle »

cavneb wrote: post #42
jlukic wrote: post #39

Just my two cents here. When Eric is describing having to wake up at 5 am and work weekends to make Code Sponsor work even with the proceeds of 60% of all OS projects his ad network funded, it should be pretty clear the other 40% divided among many OS coders couldn’t be enough for their project’s development to feel sustainable. As much as I commend Eric on trying to find a solution to OS maintainability, I think he…

Carbon Ads is a wonderful company. They provide an excellent service. However, per Rollbar, Code Sponsor performed better than they did at about 1/3 the cost. What does this mean for the developer? Scaling. Rollbar was able to scale their budget because Code Sponsor provided more interested developers to their product along at a much lower rate. What Code Sponsor is is a mashup of Carbon Ads, Open Collective and Read…

As a dev, that was my favorite part of Code Sponsor: being able to see which repos were doing well and on what days impressions/clicks increased.

I could see a correlation between posting to Hacker News and the amount of impressions/clicks for that day.

Re: Code Sponsor is shutting down on December 8

#54

Post by andreliem »

cavneb wrote: post #15
andreliem wrote: post #13

What about the repos which have documentation off github and do sponsorships. Would code sponsor work in that space? Sorry I don't know the details of how code sponsor works but I do see lots of sponsorships on the main docs for lots of solid open source projects.

This was a manual process, but we do have several projects like this sponsored.

Ah got it, so in respects to your business github's value was as a channel of distribution... and without it your costs of marketing and user acquisition sky rocket?
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