Have you seen all the great things that are in store for Drupal.org next year? For example here are just a few mentioned in the 2014 Leadership Plan: a Drupal.org Tech Team to provide feature development, more servers and hardware to improve speed and security, and new persona-centric landing pages to grow Drupal adoption. It is going to be an awesome 2014!
The Drupal Association is excited to drive these Drupal.org investments and improvements next year and as you can imagine, it’s not a small price tag! Even though our revenue has grown year over year, the cost to fund these improvements and other programs is greater than our current income. We see Drupal.org costs continuing to grow into 2015, so revenue must grow quickly to outpace these costs and put us into a revenue neutral or positve position by 2015. We wanted to share part of our plan to do that with you.
We need more power, Captain!
For our revenue to make this big jump up, The Drupal Association needs to expand its revenue programs. By working with the community, we have successfully generated over $4M in 2013 through advertising and other programs:
- DrupalCon ticket sales and sponsorship,
- Drupal.org web hosting listings and web advertising,
- Memberships, the Supporting Partner Program,
- and the Drupal Technology Partner Program.
We’ve been anticipating this need for some time. So, early in 2013, we began to explore ways to generate revenue for the project in ways that feel right to the community. You gave me lots of ideas, but the number one message was “Don’t sell us out”. And, we won’t. We are here to serve you, and as we create new revenue programs, these are the values that guide us:
- Serve the Community First
- Don't Sell Out the Community
- Offer Services that Meet Needs
Through these surveys you gave us many ideas for generating revenue ranging from hosting more DrupalCons, promoting Membership more, posting a donation button on Drupal.org, expanding the drupal.org adveritising inventory on select pages, to creating a job board.
In February 2013, during a board retreat, the Board evaluated opportunities that both serve the community and generate revenue to fund Drupal.org improvements. Two initiatives were identified and communicated to the community in this blog post: Drupal.org persona-centric Landing Pages and a Drupal Job Board. We started this work in 2013 and in early 2014, both programs will go live.
Persona-Centric Landing Pages
The Drupal.org persona-centric landing pages will grow Drupal adoption by attracting and supporting developers, site builders, CMS evaluators and other personas. Landing pages will be monetized with sponsored content including relevant and contextual web advertising. The Content Working Group is driving this initiative and has already launched a Drupal 8 landing page which is currently the top-ranked result for “Drupal 8” searches.
Additionally, the Content Working Group and staff will launch a Site Builder Landing Page in January that supports this audience’s life-cycle from evaluator to advanced builder. The Drupal Association will sell web advertising that promote relevant and contextual messages like Drupal 8 Training, hosting, and other services that help the target audience. Additional persona-centric landing pages will be added mid-year 2014.
Drupal Jobs Board
The second initiative is a Drupal Job Board that supports the global talent marketplace with search tools and features that make it easier for employers and job seekers to find each other. Employers can buy single job listings, discounted bundles as well as featured listings. Plus they can purchase and set up a branded company page that highlights their company culture and opportunities through customizable content and videos. The Drupal Association is posting an RFP in January for the Drupal Job Board to be built on the Drupal Association website.
So, this blog post takes you on the long journey that I call “fund the future”. It’s important that we fund Drupal.org improvements. It’s important that we do it in a way that serves the community. and it’s important that we do it in a way that doesn’t sell out the community. And just as important, we want to hear about this plan from you. Tell us your thoughts!
