Gargoyle income generation

[ispyisail]

Hi Eric

I am working furiously on 1.0 though. There's so much I want to do and so little time.. so it seems inevitable some features will get cut. I'm trying to make it as good as possible though, focusing a lot of my effort on improving the quota system since it seems a lot of people like that feature and no other firmware has it.

I think you are correct about the quota system being highly requested and yes it is a point of difference.

I've been thinking how you can generate a little income while still keeping to the open source principles.

I think you should consider creating a quota management system for the ROBIN project. The difference between gargoyle and ROBIN is ROBIN members are trying to generate income as WISP's while Gargoyle users i suspect are home users managing their bandwidth. WISP's require support and i think this is where you could generate income.

To do this i think you need a more powerful router. I would suggest ubiquiti Powerstation.

Performance Featuring a fast 680MHz MIPS 24K CPU, 64MB RAM, and 16MB Flash; RouterStation provides a excellent horsepower for a variety of processor intensive multi-radio system applications.

You could keep download free and open source but charge say $10 to be able to view the forum and maybe $50 a year to be able to add messages to the forum. If you are an WISP and want premium support you could charge $25 a month.

Just my thoughts

Don't tell my wife but i made a donation and i don't even use gargoyle

[Eric]

You're right that I've been thinking about ways to generate some income from Gargoyle, while still keeping it open-source. However, I don't think selling support is the right way to go. Requiring users to pay to access the forum (where they may make useful suggestions and report bugs, which will allow me to make the firmware better) would be shooting myself in the foot. User feedback is as, if not more, useful to me than to users.

In order to serve WISPs as you suggest I'll need to integrate the quota system with captive portal. Being able to integrate the captive portal will be more important than the mesh networking (which is what ROBIN is focused on), though mesh networking certainly couldn't hurt. I'm going in this direction but won't be there for some time.

I suspect the best way to make money, though, is to sell hardware with Gargoyle pre-installed. The software stays free, and anyone who doesn't want to mess with installation can purchase a solution that just works out of the box. Being able to advertise a solution that has quotas that work simply, right out of the box, may be rather attractive. The trick is finding the right platform(s) to sell and making arrangements with the hardware manufacturers which will be a pain. The firmware isn't quite ready for this yet.. but it's getting there pretty quickly, so it may be a reality within 6 months to a year, if everything continues to go well.

[Gargoyle87]

What makes Gargoyle the best firmware are two things:

-First, because it is simply the best firmware.

-Second, although it is the best, it is still totally free!

I think that routers manufacturers should supply there routers with Gargoyle instead of their useless firmware.

[ispyisail]

What makes Gargoyle the best firmware are two things:

-First, because it is simply the best firmware.

-Second, although it is the best, it is still totally free!

I think that routers manufacturers should supply there routers with Gargoyle instead of their useless firmware.

That might be true but it doesn't put bread on the table

@Gargoyle87 i hope you have made a donation

[ispyisail]

I suspect the best way to make money, though, is to sell hardware with Gargoyle pre-installed. The software stays free, and anyone who doesn't want to mess with installation can purchase a solution that just works out of the box. Being able to advertise a solution that has quotas that work simply, right out of the box, may be rather attractive. The trick is finding the right platform(s) to sell and making arrangements with the hardware manufacturers which will be a pain. The firmware isn't quite ready for this yet.. but it's getting there pretty quickly, so it may be a reality within 6 months to a year, if everything continues to go well.

I would suggest Engenius or ubiquiti equipment

If you want a point of difference i would try EOC-5610 or EOR7550

I would also suggest not make the same mistake as Meraki. Come up with a plan and stick with it. DD_WRT also have a business model you could consider. High power devices would need unlocking?

[Eric]

Meraki made the mistake of locking down their devices, closing out open source alternatives. DD-WRT has a proprietary GUI. I have no intention whatsoever of closing the Gargoyle source let alone locking down the device it runs on. I think the benefits of keeping the source open vastly outweigh the benefits of closing it. I've been considering not releasing binaries for higher-power devices, but make it straightforward for someone to compile the source (which does, however, require some technical expertise), but I haven't come to a decision yet.

However, I think you're close when you mention DD-WRT's business model, even though I have no intention of closing the source. They have an online store where they sell devices that are running DD-WRT as well as accessories. It can be confusing and intimidating for someone, especially someone not familiar with third party firmware, to know what devices which firmware will work with and to know how to install it. Having a device where it's already installed may provide significant value to someone in those circumstances.

[ispyisail]

I think you are heading in the right direction

I just hope enough people make donations so you will keep interested in the project.

[Gargoyle87]

I have a sugestion related to this subject.
I think that using Google AdSense on this website would generate some income (not too much but better than nothing). If there were Google advertisements for routers, wireless devices, and other related products on this website... Many visitors will be interested, and knowing that many people are visiting this site before even buying a router, I think that there will be a lot of clicks on the advertisements...

[Eric]

Uh, no. The problem is that Gargoyle is something people just download and use. Once it is working they don't come back to the site unless something is broken and they want to complain on the forum. This means that the site isn't going to develop a huge following that visits every day, which is what is necessary to make an ad-based revenue system work. Ads really don't generate much revenue.

Also, the only thing visitors would likely buy is hardware for Gargoyle to run on. Since this demand is so targeted, much better to just meet that demand directly and have a store that sells exactly that hardware, instead of running ads for routers. This also allows me more control over the site's appearance. It looks more professional without ads, which is good for attracting more users. If I sell hardware directly, the ad/store portions will be seamlessly integrated so that it is clearly a part of the site and not something someone else has put there.

[sticky]

you could look at the model used by webgauge.
http://www.webgauge.co.nz/

S