How Collr pays for itself

The honest answer is that right now, it doesn't. Collr is paid for out of Lyall Pup's own pocket. Optional Premium subscriptions don't cover any of it yet, though the aim is for them to one day, but there are no ads, no ticket fees, no commission and no selling data — and there won't be. This post shows where the money comes from, where it goes, and what we'll never charge for.

When something is free, it's fair to ask how. Plenty of free sites make their money from your attention or your data, and for a site about kink, that would be a disaster. So here's the whole picture, as plainly as we can put it.

Where the money comes from

Today, all of it comes from Lyall Pup, who built Collr and pays to keep it running. Members can choose to pay for extras on their own page, but today that brings in nothing towards the running costs. Growing it is the plan for Collr to stand on its own feet eventually. Payments go through Stripe, so Collr never sees or stores your card details.

One subscription covers all three of your accounts. And none of it changes whose events are listed or in what order: paying members don't get their events moved up, and nobody's visibility depends on what they pay.

What we'll never charge for, and the money we turn down

Always free:

• Browsing events, with no account needed
• Adding an event, whether it's yours or not
• Making a page, claiming a handle and sharing it
• Organisers listing events, claiming their pages and using the organiser tools
• Verified, Trusted and Partner badges — a badge is earned, never bought

Money we turn down:

• Ticket fees and commission. Collr sells no tickets. If an event sells them, the link goes to the organiser's own box office and every penny goes to them.
• Advertising. No ads, no advertising cookies, no trackers.
• Selling or sharing your data. Not to advertisers, not to data brokers, not to anyone.
• Paid placement. No organiser can pay to be listed first, or to get a badge.
• Charging partners. Partnerships come with no fee. If anything, it goes the other way: Partners can give away Premium codes at their events.

Each of those would bring in money. Each would also mean Collr working for someone other than the people using it.

Where the money goes

Collr is a small, independent project run from the UK, with no company, investors or sponsors behind it. Every one of these costs is paid by Lyall Pup:

• The server. Collr runs on its own dedicated server in the Netherlands, so your data stays in the EU and no big cloud company sits in the middle.
• Email. Collr runs its own mail server, with Amazon SES in Frankfurt as backup for the emails that go to many members at once.
• Keeping it working. Error tracking, so we hear about problems before you do, plus card fees on every subscription.
• The rest. Domains, design tools and the day-to-day costs of running a website.

All in, Collr costs around £120 a month to run, before yearly bills like domains. That's roughly the price of a couple of nights out, every month, paid by one person so the rest of the scene doesn't have to.

Premium covers none of that yet. Every pound of it currently comes from Lyall Pup.

Marketing costs nothing, because there isn't a budget for it. Collr grows by word of mouth: people handing out their pages, and organisers telling each other.

Why do it this way?

Because the alternatives would change what Collr is. Ads would mean tracking you. Ticket fees would put Collr between organisers and their money. Investors would eventually want a return. A site that hosts your kink profile and knows which nights you go to should never be tempted to treat that as something to sell.

Self-funding means Collr only has to answer to the people who use it. The trade-off is that it grows at the pace one person can afford, and that it needs Premium to take on more of the costs over time so it doesn't depend on one pocket forever.

Why tell you all this?

Most sites never say what they cost or who pays. We think Collr should, for a few reasons.

You're trusting it with something personal. Your page, your scenes, the nights you go to. It's fair to want to know what's behind a site before you hand it that, and the money is usually where the catch is hiding. If we tell you exactly where it comes from, you can check there isn't one.

Promises are easier to keep in public. Writing down what we'll never charge for, and the money we turn down, means you can hold us to it. If any of it ever changes, you'll be able to see that it has.

And the scene deserves straight answers. Plenty of kink spaces have been run on goodwill and then quietly sold, shut down or filled with ads. Being open about the costs, and about the fact that one person is covering them, is the best way we know to show Collr isn't heading the same way, and to be honest about what it needs to last.

How you can help

• Go Premium if the extras appeal — it's the most direct way to keep Collr going.
• Hand out your page and tell people about it. Word of mouth is the whole marketing plan.
• Add the events you know about, so Collr is worth coming back to.
• Organisers: claim your page and keep your listings right. It costs nothing, and it makes Collr better for everyone.

And if Collr ever has to change how it pays for itself, we'll say so here first, in plain English.

— Lyall Pup