Important Read: Continuing the blog?

Posted on by Dream Team Tips

Really quick post on the future of this blog. After a successful World Cup campaign I called for support for the blog and included a donate button on the post. This is mainly to help with the running costs and the huge amount of time it takes to keep it up to date. Although I enjoy running it – all I currently get out of it is the satisfaction of seeing thousands of people coming to the site on a monthly basis with some engaging in the comments. This is great to see but with no financial support it’s difficult to justify investing too much time in it. The adverts you see on the site don’t generate enough income to make them worthwhile.

With regards to asking for support – I’ve only had 6 donations this year (2018). Thanks to those who have donated but based on the number of people who use the website this is a very small percentage. This leaves me with a couple of options:

Continue to simply ask for donations and accept the fact that very few people will donate. This options doesn’t inspire me to keep the site going.
Password protect certain posts and give out the password to people who are willing to donate a small fee (£1-£2 for the season)

I’d rather not password protect any content. However with very few people donating, I’m being left with very few options. I either invest a lot of time for no monetary reward, close the site or find a way to generate a small income.

To put this in perspective roughly 27,000 people came through the site during the World Cup. If everyone donated 50p (which is nothing based on the information that’s on offer) that would have generated £13,500 (which is way more than I’m even hoping to generate).

This post is a final call to arms to support the blog while it’s free. If I get enough people willing to do this the blog will remain the same with all of the content freely accessible to everyone. If there’s very little response, I may have to consider password protection on some posts for a very minimal fee.

If you would like to contribute, please use the button below. Contributions can be as little as £1 and payment is easy to make via PayPal.

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52 thoughts on “Important Read: Continuing the blog?”

  1. Just donated to you buddy. Happy to pay you a small subscription fee per season if you set it up.

    1. Thanks Tech, gratefully received. Really appreciate it. If there’s ever a subscription it would be free for you after making the donation.

  3. Just made a donation happy to do this you’re advice has helped me win mini leagues in the past (cash prize) and I appreciate all the time and effort u put in. Other sites do charge for information and also give extra information for a fee too members. Keep up the good work!

  4. I’m with Markas, all your effort and time deserves some appreciation. You helped me win my world cup league. So the way I look at it I owe you something. Will be donating tomorrow. As for password protected I’m all in favour, keep up the great work.

    1. Thanks Tom, appreciate the comment. If there’s ever a subscription/password protection it would be free for you anyway if you make a donation.

  6. Hi DTT,

    I have found the blog very useful and enjoy reading the articles and comments and sometimes posting myself.

    I also do FPL as well and fantasy football scout offer a subscription service. This is something I would recommend you do. There’s lots of great content on here and equally good debate. If you were to do a membership or subscription model, I would suggest some tinkering to format and usability. Unsure if you can do it on this type of blog (assuming it’s a word press site), but having features like FPL such as notifying of replies etc would really improve the experience. In addition to this having members ratings based on contributions would also be good.

    I think to help you as well, you could perhaps ask for guest bloggers to contribute to your posting approach. Whilst you should remain the lead, he would also be good to have different views and posts from others. This could perhaps lighten the demand on you.

    Obviously these are just thoughts and in no way a criticism.

    Lastly, just sent a small donation across. No loads but hopefully it helps.

    Keep up the good work

    1. Hi Dan, thanks for the donation and suggestions. They all sound good, the difficulty I have is that I work as a digital marketer which means my main expertise fall into driving traffic to a website. In terms of building and developing them, my knowledge is good enough to allow me to build basic sites but when things start to get a little complicated it falls outside of what I can do. Implementing a membership site would be challenging, as would member ratings and incorporating notifications although I think they are all great ideas. I’d probably have to pay someone (quite a lot) to develop this for me. This may come a little too soon for this season. But I am certainly interested in looking at how to password protect certain posts so that only people who have contributed can view them. If I took this approach for this season, it will give me the chance to test how many people are willing to subscribe to this – if interest is low, then I wouldn’t invest in a more complicated design. However if this proved a success it could give me to platform to create something better for next season. I like the idea of guest posts, who did you have in mind? People who contribute on here on a regular basis? I could see that working well.

  7. Just donated. Not been playing sun dreamteam that long but have managed to win a few mini leagues including the world cup one with 440 points and I’m pretty sure i wouldn’t of done so without following your blog. You must put a fair amount of time into it but i love coming on here, please keep up the great work!

    1. Thanks Atham, gratefully received. Really appreciate it – I do put a decent amount of time in but I find it quite rewarding to share my findings.

  8. I’ve made a small donation also, hope it helps. Now help me win my mini league this season please 😀

    1. Thanks Steve, gratefully received. I’ll certainly do my best as I’m hoping to have a good season.

  9. Just sent a donation to you. Keep up the good work and good luck to all for the new season

  11. Only recently come across your site but will definitely be a returning User – Donation on it’s way!

    1. I can’t say I’ve heard of this before but I’ll have a look over it tonight. Thanks for the suggestion.

  13. Happily donated to you. Found the site during the World Cup and was very helpful. Keep up the good work.

    1. Thanks, glad you’ve found the site useful. Really appreciate the donation.

  14. I have sent in a donation – I think it’s a great Blog and I have won 2 out of the last 3 mini leagues I have been in with guidance and help. I definately think for people who donate to the blogs and replies / comments should be password protected and not available to non paying individuals . keep up the good work

    1. Thanks, gratefully received. Really appreciate it. I’m certainly considering password protecting the most popular pieces of content. Obviously anyone who has already donated will instantly get the password and it seems most people are happy with this idea.

  16. Just about to donate, I find your site very useful. Cheers and keep up the good work

  17. Time to get pope out dtt? Did he come off injured? Also tarkowski out if they keep this performance up?

    1. He did come off injured. If they go out then I won’t be looking at their players as closely.

    1. Nope, there would be better options for teams who should finish higher in the league. Only drawn to Burnley for their extra fixtures.

  19. Just donated £5 to you
    I won the office competition, knowing nothing – and i mean nothing about football
    Hoping to do the same with the next one
    Keep up the good work
    Cheers
    S

  20. Donation made,
    without the advise on the site i wouldn’t have won my works worldcup mini league or indeed the D.T.T. worldcup league ( a few lucky guesses of my own, but majority was following D.T.T. plan) .

    I think that Password protecting certain info on the blog is a good idea to help with your running costs and time input, now if you can just micro manage my team this season and win my works league again that would be great!, cheers Dave

    1. Thanks Dave, greatly appreciated. I may password protect the initial starting team post a week or so before the season starts. Obviously I’ll send over the password as you’ve already sent more than enough over in donations.

    1. Haha I’m aiming to do the best I can but top 500 is not easy and a big chunk of it comes down to luck. I think there’s more than enough information on here to help people make their own decisions about who they might want to select – they will probably find just using the information available and reading other people’s comments will help with their own team selection and they will probably end up doing better than me. I don’t think the donation is linked with how well my team does – it’s more about the information that’s available and the platform for discussion to help people make their own choices.

    1. He was a player I was considering as an underdog but when prices came out I thought he was a little overpriced considering the team he’s playing in.

  23. DTT, just happily made a donation, enjoy the site, wld like to see it continue, mentioned earlier need to keep a close eye on Zaha.

        1. I’ll see them, but no one else will. I won’t be publishing any information about who’s contributed or not.

    1. I’ll see them, but no one else will. I won’t be publishing any information about who’s contributed or not.

    1. Hi James, thanks for the contribution. Did you pick up the password? All you need to do is enter it when prompted on certain posts.

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