Sustainability Update Summer 2016
I want to start this post by giving a big thank you to the community! Last I wrote, I asked for some space so we could make dedicated progress on the sustainability front. I also asked for patience as items that help generate revenue would need to be prioritized above items that do not generate revenue. You all honored those requests. Thank you!
I had spelled out 3 potential scenarios:
1. Ideal Scenario - we make more progress on revenue, keep the team intact, add more people to help, and make faster progress towards our goals.
--If we earn more than $65K+ / month in income, or more than $780K+ / year
2. Positive Scenario - we make more progress on revenue, keep the team intact, and continue mostly how things are now with a prioritized list of site and service improvements.
--This would require a revenue of $65K / month, or $780K / year
3. Reduced Team Scenario - we continue with similar revenue levels and have to lay off people from our team. We are less effective, but 7 Cups continues on without making major improvements to the site or its services going forward.
--This would require a revenue of at least $20K / month, or $240K / year
Well, the good news is in July we finally reached the reduced team scenario in that we brought in around $21,000. This is up from $5,500 in February. The vast majority of this is from upgraded paths. You can see that we are making progress, but we have not yet made enough progress to reach the positive or the ideal scenario.
We still have a lot of work to do. I remain very confident that well get to the positive scenario, but it will continue to take focus, energy, and more experimentation. One thing we recently did is update how people start and are referred to therapy. It is too early to tell what kind of impact this is going to have, but I do believe itll end up being a key factor in helping us reach sustainability.
We also continue to do the work with support systems and we are exploring partnerships with different organizations that may come to fruition later down the line. It is likely that both of these will end up being significant contributors to sustainability, but we have not focused as much here and still have a number of things to figure out.
Thank you again for the encouragement as we make progress towards being sustainable. We are not yet out of the woods, so I need to ask for your continued support. We are going to stay heads down until we reach the positive scenario. Ill keep you updated as we learn more. Thank you!
This is a wonderful service you offer not just to the members and guests, but to us listeners as well. I've learned a lot.
Best of luck to reaching the positive/ideal scenarios! 
@gingerfluff Thank you! Appreciate the support! :)
Have you considered adding a live video therapy option. This would certainly generate far greater revenue than the text based option provide you can afford to put in place the required technology.
@WayneBarnstoneLCSW, thanks Wayne! We have considered it and it is a possiblity down the road.
@WayneBarnstoneLCSW as much as I can see how this benefits people does this not destroy the privacy and the anonymous between the listener and the member?
Another issue I would have of it would be that I rely a lot on the text due to my deafness and after a hard day of lip reading in real life, it would be really difficult for deaf people like myself who wouldn't be able to commit so many hours if there was a video option
But those are just my two cents and if there is a video service on the way then I wouldn't complain but I certainly wouldn't be using that service.
The app is too hard to navigate and it glitches all the time and way too much. Will you update the app to make it less confusing? And also create international resources for those who live outside the united states.
@Truthaboutlife, thanks for the feedback on the app. We are actually in the process now of making it less confusing. Look for some updates on that front soon.
And, yes, we definitely want to continue to extend and expand international resources. We are in the initial stages of rolling out communities for specific countries, we also now have the app available in 12 languages, and we are beginning to work more closely with organizations in all of thse different countries. Lots and lots and lots of work to do here, but we are steadily making progress.
@GlenM Thank you. I also need to mention that when I need the exercises or hotlines when using the app, I can never find them. I usually have to go onto the website and find them. Plus, I have no access to my calendar and profile page within the app, and that can be a bit of a problem. The calendar can help me to put down times I will be available, and also be able to make appointments (if you bring that feature back). The profile page will help me keep track of my profile, my impact and and my feed. It will enable me to have access to any errors on my profile, as well as put down important updates for our new and return members to know.
Also I have come to notice that I have no access to app settings, to set special notification sounds so that I will know when it is someone in distress when I am not available.
If it isn't too much trouble can you please take those into consideration as well.
@Truthaboutlife Also for the android app, the link should be opened with a chrome powered tab in-app, so that links and web addresses can be better handled.
@Truthaboutlife Chrome custom tabs it is called.
@Truthaboutlife I agree with you here. International resources are becoming quite a necessity on 7 cups as more and more people from around the world are being introduced to the site. Which all in all is a fantastic thing!
@Skyash
Absolutely. Expanding international resources would also increase the potential income stream, through better engagement of non-US members.
Keep charging forward @GlenM ! This was meant to be.
@MikeMadrid thank you Mike! Appreciate the support!!!
@GlenM I'm sure this has been an idea in the pipeline, food for thought none the less. Examples like snapchat make money off of advertising feeds in the stories section. I'm near positive that bloggers or some other mainstream media would love some advertising space since members are clicking into very precise needs or interests. Seems like there may be some ad streams avaliable. Obviously there's no desire to make things more difficult for members or bombard them. However it could be tailored to their interest.
By chance, is there an appetite to open-source non-proprietary parts of the 7 Cups software stack? In theory, that move offers potential to lighten the load on the core development team, allowing them to concentrate their focus on key (proprietary) features/advancements, while bug-fixes, minor revisions, etc. are offloaded to the community.
@GlenM @KrinkTheMellowUnicorn
@ehChihuahua -we have some tentative plans to enable people to fix bugs (as product mentors or agents) or propose patches, etc., via github, but tbh there is a management overhead effort in making that work that we are not fully geared up for yet.
@GlenM, this is a really cool community. It has taught me much. I hope you find the monies needed to keep it going. Thank you for what you have done here.
Personally I'm not comfortable with some of the ways 7 Cups is encouraging members towards paid therapy - I've made a post about it here.
The free options on this site do give people a suggestion as to the quality they may encounter if paying.
I had considered backing up 7 cups and making use of the individualized paths, but with the way certain things are being handled I'm not convinced of the quality.
- We are told the site is ad-free, but when I brought up the fact there are advertisements this was the response I got:
https://www.7cups.com/forum/QuestionsFeedbackIdeasFun_33/Feedback_37/RemoveAds_32065/ Instead of removing the videos that are clearly advertisements. If GlenM can't control the quality of the videos and we are expected to watch advertisements that are a few minutes long to move on the progress path, what type of control is there over the therapists? Are their advertisements on the individualized paths as well?
- The Q & A was changed to give the appearance of support to certain areas that paid sections seemed to cover. This was done just by slapping on a new heading for an existing category. I don't want to read about rape Q&As unrelated to disabilities when I go to the disability section, but that's what I get. I brought this up a long time ago and I was told it's difficult to change. If it's so difficult, why was this change made in the first place?
- The calendar is horribly out of date and it frequently has people's social media accounts, some of which are inappropriate. There are also other discussions listed on the site, but frequently do not occur without notice. Sometimes a leader shows up and feels that the people who are there are not worth it. I specifically come for discussions sometimes. I see that my time is not valued this way, is my money more valued and I'll actually get messages from therapists as expected if I pay for that?
- The information about the paid options is lacking. One has no idea what they are really getting into until they sign up. Why the lack of transparency? It's leading to issues such as this: https://www.7cups.com/forum/QuestionsFeedbackIdeasFun_33/Questions_36/Personalemergencyregarding3daytiral_47034/