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[–] Stavon 0 points 113 points (+113|-0) ago 

I agree that spamming users is not a valid business model. A freemium model is a lot more honest to the user. Instead of monthly payments, I'd prefere yearly ones, or for several years; that would also keep down the percentage paid for transaction fees.

[–] j_ 2 points 68 points (+70|-2) ago 

I don’t think yearly makes sense. $2 is accessible to everyone, from a student to my grandma to a person in a lower income region. $20 (let’s say) for a year appears prohibitive to new users, and let’s be honest, things change so fast you don’t know if you will be using this site in a year.

[–] Stavon 0 points 48 points (+48|-0) ago 

Yearly doesn't have to be the only option. I personally hate monthly bills I pay anyway, they are wasting my time. If I had to enter my credit card details every month for Voat Premium I'd hate it, not for the 2$ but for the inconveniance.

[–] lukipela 1 points 29 points (+30|-1) ago 

heh, you haven't really been in a lower income region if you think $2 is not much.

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[–] elfgoose 0 points 9 points (+9|-0) ago 

I like the idea of the yearly fee, particularly if you could pay for a code or something and have it credit your account when entered thus keeping your Voat account and your identity/payment details separate easier to do that once a year than monthly. (this is my first post by the way and I was thinking exactly the same thing: How can I contribute to make this place better. I was looking for the Voat gold option)

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[–] Ex-Redditor 0 points 54 points (+54|-0) ago  (edited ago)

Why not have both? Paying subscribers not only get added bonuses, but also don't get to see any adds, unless they want to. Non subscribers have to put up with annoying adds. An incentive to subscribe. That way Voat gets a cash flow from the adds and a cash flow from subscibers, that dont want adds. P.S. If a subscriber gets banned for what ever reason, and they have paid for a year. Do they get a refund?

[–] Atko [S] 1 points 88 points (+89|-1) ago 

Why not both? Having ads would imply having good relationships with corporations which want to advertize on voat. Freedom of expression and good corporate relations don't work well together. Here's an example:

Corporation GreedyBastards LLC pays voat $500.000 for a few months worth of site-wide ads. Voat users for whatever reason start posting any dirt they can dig up about GreedyBastards LLC. The marketing manager of GreedyBastards LLC contacts us and threatens to stop all business with voat unless we delete/censor content they deem harmful to their company.

By complying with GreedyBastards LLC request, we ensure voat survives and people get their salaries. By not complying, voat gets shut down due to lack of funding.

I would stay away from building relations with other corporations and rather keep the independence by solely relying on users.

[–] DanielFlamino 0 points 14 points (+14|-0) ago 

Semi-related, this reminded me of the whole Amazon deal. Except the bit where no one even criticized Amazon.

[–] Mokum 0 points 13 points (+13|-0) ago 

If you do you'd end up like 4chan, which is steadily losing money because no one wants to be associated with them :)

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[–] laancelot 0 points 7 points (+7|-0) ago 

I like that. Also, the "reddit gold" equivalent could be useful here if it's months of subscription.

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[–] T0m 0 points 37 points (+37|-0) ago 

One thing Reddit did fine was the ads, they weren't obtrusive. I think that that is acceptable. It could also be used by new voats to gain attention.

[–] FJHUAI 0 points 16 points (+16|-0) ago 

The problem with being a friend to ads, is that you are a slave to ads. Shills come in and ruin your day. Eventually you start getting forced to delete old shitposts targetting your advertisers, and then your users lash out.

[–] Danbear 1 points 16 points (+17|-1) ago 

IMO this is also in large part to what is causing reddit to crash and burn right now.

The whole reason a SJW like Pao was chosen to CEO is because Corporate wanted to clean up the Reddit image to gather a broader and more valuable advertiser base. Plus "tend the garden" to foster paid for AMAs and such from clients who fear the "freedom of speech" crowd.

[–] CPA 0 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago 

How does the presence of ads have any impact on the presence of shills though? The motivations for shill accounts are unchanged with regard to the presence of ads, no?

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[–] travis 0 points 5 points (+5|-0) ago 

Reddit's ads are nice. There is a caveat to AdBlock where you actually manually opt-out of seeing the ads, since they support the site while being classified as "non-obtrusive advertising"

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[–] Deathstalker 0 points 29 points (+29|-0) ago 

I think you may be over estimating the % of people that will pay. That's why you should also offer larger packages for the ones that are willing to pay more than 2$ a mo.

[–] SamHH 0 points 4 points (+4|-0) ago 

I think for a start if you pay say $10/month+ you should be optionally included in the footer in some way, even if only in a linked "thanks!" page. People seem to like that (see: Kickstarter).

[–] Bend_the_Knee 1 points 23 points (+24|-1) ago  (edited ago)

I think any long-term successful site needs a diverse range of income, just relying on one model is usually a bad idea. Also a third of uniques being paid subscribers doesn't sound normal, 1/10 is idealistic.

Whilst I think 95% of ads are terrible, the other 5% can be useful, it depends on what ads they are, if the site was really popular, you could be really picky with the advertisers if you also had a subscription model alongside it, you could have users opt in/out of ads, having ad-block is an automatic opt-out obviously.

Having them opt-in for ads would release more functions with the site, and let users decide what genre of ads they'd be bothered by seeing, "Gaming", "Fitness" etc, in that respect something like Amazon Affiliates would be better. Just 1 ad square on the site isn't that intrusive, and I doubt it would push away "droves" of users at all. It's just most companies get lazy when the $ starts rolling, and they'll accept any old advertiser who's willing to drop the big bucks.

As a donate you'd just have like Voat Diamond, and make it better than Reddit Gold.


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