Thanks to Fretman for Pitching In, We Can Use Your Help Too

[LinkedMusicians]

When I shared that my deal posting days were coming to an end, but I might start doing a weekly 10 best deals of the week, @Fretman stepped up and volunteered to take on the role. So let’s show our appreciation. But the reality is, we can’t put that responsibility on one person’s shoulders, and when you count the beta period, I had done it for around 1 1/2 years.

We can use more people involved in curating deals. What I’ve done for Fretman is create an interface that pulls in hundreds of great deals each day and he chooses the ones he feels are best and the best fit for the community. If anyone else is interested in helping by doing the same, it can really make a difference.

Now here’s a reality check. The affiliate links are gone and this site costs more than $100 for the server plus the maintenance contract for various scripts for important functions, because it’s very demanding. That contract ends in January, when I’ll be looking for a much lower cost hosting because this will no longer be a social media platform. In the meantime, the costs are still high and contributions in posting and monetary contributions would be greatly appreciated.  The affiliate commissions were helping pay for around half the operating costs of the site, but since I’m no longer posting, we no longer have affiliate revenue coming in. Personally, I didn’t even want to ask Fretman to bother putting on the affiliate codes after he’s already posting the deals, so I never have. I’ve never told him what deals to post or not to post. It’s his call. I don’t operate LinkedMusicians like a business because it’s a passion project. If I were to have paid the development of what we have instead of building it myself, it easily would have cost upwards of $50,000. But by doing it myself and getting Katchi’s development as a volunteer, I’ve kept costs at a little over $3,000.We’ve raised around $80 in contributions since our public launch, so we really don’t have any income to help with site costs anymore. (For those who mistakenly think advertising could pay for our expenses, at our traffic rate, it would amount to around $20 per month).

If you can pitch in by even posting several deals a few times a week, it would greatly help. I will set up any members who want to pitch in with a custom deals dashboard and show you how to use it (okay, it only takes a few minutes to understand it). Just post here or PM me to let me know if you’re interested.

LinkedMusicians reflects ideals more than deals, but deals are very important to most of our visitors.

There’s nothing else like LinkedMusicians in this industry. It’s not another developer marketing site, it’s not an e-commerce site, or driven by ad revenue. It counts on the community to succeed. If you can help volunteer to post deals, or if you can make a contribution it will keep us moving forward.

Thanks,
Peter

CURATED BEST FREE LISTS: Kontakt Libraries, Sample Libraries, Virtual Synths, Effects
POWERSEARCH TOOLS: Synth Presets, Loops & Sound FX, Gear Reviews 
FREE TOOLS: Mixing Problem Solver, Songwriter's Toolbox, QuickGuides, Scale, Mode & Chord Finder
READ/WATCH: Mag Articles / Podcasts, Audio Production & Songwriter's Dictionaries

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[LinkedMusicians]

A little insight on our traffic. Yesterday was one of the highest traffic days that LinkedMusicians has ever seen. It was driven by (1) our Deals Forum, and (2) our curated lists of best free sample libraries, and (3) best free synths. In fact, the single day of traffic was what the subforum our Early Adopters came from sees in the average week — one day, for a community that’s only been public for one year. However, even if our registration was open, those type of visitors are very transactional and tend to not register. That will very likely be different on our subreddit (r/LinkedMusicians) where there is a faster paced format and a format that is sure to result in far more conversations that this format. Mark my words. With the same level of deal posting and going beyond deals — and with things like our games — we’ll grow a lot faster and the community will be a lot more fun.

CURATED BEST FREE LISTS: Kontakt Libraries, Sample Libraries, Virtual Synths, Effects
POWERSEARCH TOOLS: Synth Presets, Loops & Sound FX, Gear Reviews 
FREE TOOLS: Mixing Problem Solver, Songwriter's Toolbox, QuickGuides, Scale, Mode & Chord Finder
READ/WATCH: Mag Articles / Podcasts, Audio Production & Songwriter's Dictionaries

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