People who think donors shouldn’t see ads: Are you opposed to non-donors being able to opt-out of ads?
Well, my thinking about “donors don’t have to see ads” was that it would be a nice little spiff for those who donate, and possibly get a few people to donate who might not otherwise.
But what I think you’re getting at is that if we allow non-donors to opt out, then that removes that incentive to donate. So there is some tension there.
I honestly don’t know how to resolve that. After mulling it over for a few minutes, I kind of like the idea of enabling opt-outs for everyone, regardless of donor status.
- People who don’t care would still see ads, so there would still be a flow of ad impressions and some income.
- People who do care can opt out, so they’ll stick around and, in a few cases, stop crying about it (SA).
- Donors can choose to “double-support” the site by donating and leaving the ads on if they want.
This approach isn’t perfect in every way for everybody, but maybe it could work?
Another thought I have is that we could agree to go with a plan of some sort for some finite period: maybe based on time (e.g., until the end of the year), or based on income total or rate (e.g.,when we reach $500 in the bank or $25/week). Then at that point we see how it worked and reassess.
I think that might help us move forward, because a stumbling block seems to be projecting any proposed policy forward into infinity, when where we are now and where we might be later might well be very different. Thoughts?
I agree with that. It’s basically just you get to choose whether you get ads or not, which I think is optimal. Having to opt-out for everyone, donor or not, is what I’d prefer, but if donors are opted out by default and then have to opt-in if they want ads, it doesn’t much matter to me.
And fwiw, I’ve disabled adblock for this site on my PC.
We could disable ads for TL3 and above. That’s a status most regs will start hitting soon and limits ad-free status to those who are regular contributors.
Yes, if donors automatically get no ads I would be opposed to a voluntary opt-out for non-donors as a site-administered function. However, non-donors always have the ability to opt-out manually by installing an adblocker.
I get the point there and I don’t think ads are a really good way to earn money here. The max was like $5 in a day, but it’s probably more like $1/day for the whole site for everyone. Ads are basically only worthwhile if there’s a lot more traffic and, as I’ve said before, I don’t think this site will really work with a lot more traffic. But, I just don’t see the harm in having them if people can opt-out. At the very least it gets some contribution from lurkers, who don’t even contribute content.
I don’t quite get why zikzak is especially reluctant to put donated money in his pocket as opposed to ad revenue, but he is, so at least taking a shot at raising money by ads seems reasonable. And donations have greatly eclipsed ad revenue despite how we’ve kinda discouraged donating at this point.
Anyway, Johnny, maybe think of it as an experiment - gathering information. None of us even had a good idea what ad revenue would be when we started - not within an order of magnitude. It’s still a work in progress. It’s also been educational at least for me. It’s the first time I’ve set up AdSense or Patreon and it probably won’t be the last. We’re also learning more about how ads are targeted. Just playing around with this stuff is a good thing.
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Yea this is a good point.
To tie in to ZZ’s last post, I’d vote for something like:
- Donors never see ads
- Non-donors always see ads, unless they reach TL3 or above (i.e., are big content creators)
- All posters can use adblockers whenever they please
Because of the integration here between donor revenue and ad revenue, I’d also propose that admins be compensated from both donations and ad revenue. Ads would just be treated as donations from lurkers.
ZZ,
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I get that and while most of us have some feeling that the world is over-commercialized, I get that you, partly because of your work experience, feel that with a bit more fire than most. I see you are on the “ok with status quo, but prefer ads for stuff that doesn’t suck” list, which has grown. My hope, and preference here, has been to try to sell ads (outside or to users here) for stuff we can support. There has been a counter that this would require a lot of work from an “ad manager”, but I think it could be open for anyone to bring in an advertiser and have them pay the treasurer.
My strategic (and entrepreneurial, I really put the syndicalist in anarcho-syndicalist) thought is that we could run with the status quo and try to sell some ad space and gradually displace any AdSense kind of ad provider. And, as I mentioned in the business thread, I have an idea for a start-up selling stuff from workers coops, so this is something that I would consider as dovetailing with that. I (and I’m open to other people being involved with this) could approach such businesses about advertising here (ad revenue to go to the site - but might create a good relationship for me - cue I’m devious and always plotting to make money off the people here).
Can you elaborate why not?
Do you agree that zikzak should be compensated for his work? How do you suggest this should be done?
I don’t mean the software, I just don’t think what we are doing works with many more people. It’s a site where people talk to other people who they at least sort of recognize. How does that just transition to a place where mostly strangers post at each other? Do we want that? I don’t think I do. I’ve almost never posted on twitter, youtube comments, reddit or the like. Maybe twice as many people would be fine, but 10 times as many people? I don’t think so.
We’ve averaging about 1 new account registration every 2 days, so I don’t think this is something we’re going to have to worry about anytime soon.
If we’re going to have further votes on any of this I would prefer they be very narrowly focused and lead to a clear result that can be acted on. Some of these could easily be turned into polls like that.
As for the adblocker thing, there’s no need to bother. As long as I’m an admin on this site there will never be an adblocker nag.
You and everyone else have been invited lots of times. What anyone gets is probably less than $1/hr, but maybe some shot at making more. $60/hr is almost impossible, but sure, maybe 1 in ten thousand that happens. Still signing up?
And I’ve said this before, but will again, the only payment scheme that zikzak has ever suggested really screws over people who did a lot of early work in favor of people who join up later. It’s very backwards as far as getting paid for taking any risk.
I actually think setting a rate would be good for everyone including zikzak, gregorio, etc. The rate could be set at something reasonable for compensation, but not like full market rates, something like $30/hr or $35/hr and all work sunk in early when there’s not enough money to pay could be considered a loan to the site to be paid back if there are ever enough funds available. That would almost certainly be better for zikzak than his idea of valuing work based on revenue for only the month it comes in and also eliminate anyone’s ridiculous griping that someone who “owns” the site is angling to make millions of dollars or something.
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I don’t care about ads. I just care that we don’t use a shady adserver like 2+2 did that kept hijacking my fucking browser. That was so fucking obnoxious.
What do you think is a fair rate? Where will the money come from to pay this rate?
I think this would be pretty funny to do. We’d easily rack up thousands in billable hours that could never be paid, even at some laughably low rate.
But I again want to point out that any change in terms for any of this would be the community reneging on an preexisting agreement. I offered to help do X in return for Y. I did X. Now people are trying to workshop all the different ways I don’t get to do Y. That’s really not sitting right with me, at all.
How much do you want?
I want the terms of the agreement that got us here to be honored.
That’s really it, but it would also be kinda cool if some of ya’ll could stop acting like I’m trying to embezzle tens of thousands of dollars when it’s actually a couple hundred bucks a month that I want to share among a dozen different people.
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