This was roughly the same time the idea of Sponsorware was brought to my attention (thanks Caleb Porzio!). This is where I started offering custom domains (and beta features) to sponsors of the project (grandfathering people with existing custom domains, of course).
I've mentioned before (most recently, I think, in a response to the Postcard creator) that it feels a little scummy to demand people pay to be able to use custom domains. It's like holding someone hostage and demanding ransom for their release.
I've thought about alternatives. I won't mention past ones here. Instead I'll sketch out a new one.
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Sell support billed at a realistic rate, considering the costs (e.g. a flat price of something like $125 for up to ~2 hours), where buyer pays upfront
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Maybe throw in a domain for "free" (i.e. included), so if the buyer isn't already bringing their own, they'll have one by the end
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Any unused balance (e.g. completion of support task only took half an hour) gets credited to the account
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Set up a wiki (a real wiki—not a GitHub-style anti-wiki) for the documentation; point out that it's in folks' best interests to help each other out and keep it up to date and even record their own notes for their own setup here if they want to avoid paying the support fee
The idea is to charge a high enough upfront fee for something that may not immediately consume up to its budget cap—such that you can, over time, recover own investment while making it feel like the buyer is getting all the value out of their payment.