No more Spammy Ads?
We are going to remove those awful ads from the site. ALL of them! All those pop-ups, videos, shaking, talking scrolling, blinking, hijacking, spammy, malware, viral evil, insidious horrible ads!
HOW?
Well the site still has to be paid for and we can't afford to pay that all by ourselves without ads, SO what we want to do try is opening up a https://www.patreon.com/ page where people can donate to directly support DD, helping out the artists who host their stuff here and the creators who keep the place running every week.
The Duck, or Drunk Duck as we still fondly call it, currently costs about $350 to $400 a month to host, give or take a bit. Optimistically we'd like to be able to supply that with donations. The current awful ad spots on the site would be replaced with NICE looking notes asking for donations to our Patreon page. Doners will receive various benefits… we're not sure what yet! Something like being mentioned and linked to in newsposts, maybe a doner list on the front page?
We're also thinking of opening up the top ad spot on the site to web comics from DD and elsewhere. We could rotate 2 or 3 comic ads a day at the cost of $5 for the whole day. :)
If on the chance that this actually works, you'll have a site with NONE of those shitty ads! A site you won't have to approach with rubber gloves, 10 adblockers, disinfectant and penicillin, a site you can safely recommend to friends and family, within reason :D
AND, if we get MORE cash than we need to run the site, that will go into paying for fixes.
So that's it, let me know stuff.
This is NOT a done deal yet! If you want it, then it will happen.
It won't just all be about donations either- you'll get rewards like links on the front page, custom artwork, prominent links to your stuff on the front page. etc.
And the more we get the more we can add actual code fixes to the site: like more customisation of your comic pages.
NO MORE SPAMMY ADS?? O_o
Ozoneocean at 12:46AM, April 14, 2015
6 likes!
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Ozoneocean at 8:39PM, April 16, 2015
These are fantastic suggestions :)
irrevenant at 7:46PM, April 16, 2015
Sounds good to me, I'd sign up for a monthly donation. I suggest making the donation banner double as something else, like a graphical banner for a donor's comic: "Tales of the Unpredictable Chaos donated to keep this site running and all they got was this lousy banner. And some other neat stuff". Have click targets for both the comic and the donation page, and rotate the banner regularly (frequency based on how much was donated?). It'd be good to integrate it into every comics page in a not too obtrusive way too. Lots of ppl go straight to the page of the title they're following and aren't necessarily paying attention to the front page or banners. A nice bonus for reader donors would be Web badges - NaNoWriMo gives you a little halo icon next to all your posts if you're a donor and that feels pretty good.
Skullbie at 4:32PM, April 16, 2015
@CDmalcolm I think patreon is better than paid subscriptions. I mean subscription sites more or less go belly up in 2-3 years unless its porn comics and they'd be hard to manage. Patreon has an easy and trusted payment center... one that doesnt require managing or more coding. Thats a good point on cash spillover though. DD would likely need tiers on Patreon unless it just wants running fees covered.
cdmalcolm1 at 10:45AM, April 16, 2015
Sorry for the Clogging. Start reading from the bottom up. It makes more sense in that order. oh and for the record... you can still do all the other things you have planned for bringing in money for extra money. IF a programmer can make any of my suggestions come true, it would help DD a lot.
cdmalcolm1 at 10:30AM, April 16, 2015
Another option is internal sponsorship. You should make this for paid subscribers only. Create an option for creators to sponsor an active webcomic here on the duck. (what I mean by active: An active creator is a person that is active with comic updates, or active with paying for a monthly service for a comic, or anything that shows activity for that comic series, not a yearly memberships. It works like gifts. Make it at a value of just a $1 donation. What is does is place a small ad or the same size thumb like on the home page, on the donors edit page and all their comics pages as a supporter. give 50% to the comic creator and you keep %50 for placements of the sponsorship. NOW what this may mean is that a creator must have means for $$$ transfer like Paypal options or other online means when the creator wants to cash in. this should also be a way to pay for a service here as with a normal Credit Card Options. Inactive comics should not be given as an option on any level of payments.
cdmalcolm1 at 9:53AM, April 16, 2015
IF you make it $5 a month, $5 x 240 slots = $1200 a month. If that is too much, make it $3 a month. $3 x 240 slots = $720 a month. if thats too high. make it no less that $2 a month. $2 x 240 Slot = $480 a month. NOW, once the creator as bought a slot for that ONE comic. the creator CANNOT buy any more slots for THAT comic. They can, however, buy a slot for EACH comic they have made. This will keep things Fair for all active creator. Another thing. Don't make slots for more than a month. This will also prevent lock ups for the next month. In addition, the date of Buy slot expire 30 days later.
cdmalcolm1 at 9:43AM, April 16, 2015
I do hate the pop ups on my phone and iPad. Plus, If there are ways to make money on site if there are things like contests for winning things that the creators may want. Like for instants, say there is a spillover of cash to buy something like an iPad or an Android Tablet. run a quarterly Contest or summer and winter contest for those items. Again, the iPad and Android are examples...it could be for a Cintiq Companion 2 or full of traditional items for those who still don't like or want to go digital. another option, rotating paid top ten. It runs every hour different comics from paid active creators. Say a creator paid a month for their comic to show up on the top ten paid. Their comic will rotate at least once a day for a month. Even if they don't update. a time slot will be an option for the creators of the remaining slots that are open. So, ten slots per hour. In the beginning, there will be 240 slots. the creator picks the slot, it shows up everyday of that hour for a month.
cdmalcolm1 at 9:21AM, April 16, 2015
I didn't want to mention this or even make it like this "OTHER" site called DA. Why not run it like the way they run it ONLY with webcomic options that they are so desperately need for years. it is an art community for all kinds of art; comics even....However, they are missing the very widget for Comic Book Creators...some have argued that it is there BUT I think it is crappy and you can easily click away from the comic. What I'm saying is, kind of keep everything as is, only run your subscription for paid creators with no Ads and keep your ads for none paying members. Plus, run ad options for creators like DA does. Not every ad they run are from Big Companies. some revenue comes from: Subscriptions, Ads from Artist, Ads from Big Companies, A monthly Premium to a 2 year Premium. (discounts the more months you buy.)
HippieVan at 4:48PM, April 15, 2015
Interesting! I didn't know that was a problem that existed, strix. As far as I know Patreon only has monthly subscriptions, but if we at some point set up our own subscription system separate from that we could do yearly? That's unlikely to happen in the near future though, I think.
strixvanallen at 2:59PM, April 15, 2015
I would like to ask if we can have some kind of yearly subscription thingy together with Patreon. Patreon is very convenient, sure, but I'm foreign and every time I pay for something in dollars, I have to pay a fee to my government. At the end of the year, I'll end up paying around 20 dollars to the government, opposed to the 2 or so dollars that I would pay for one single payment. I don't know if other foreigners suffer the same problem or if just me.
Ozoneocean at 3:35AM, April 15, 2015
Also, the argument that goes "just use ad-blocker" can't work: 1. It prevents us from getting any revenue. 2. It just hides the awful reality of the ad from us that all the newcomers to the site see constantly, and which turns many of them away never to return again.
Ozoneocean at 9:21PM, April 14, 2015
A kickstarter will be great for generating cash for a big fix. And if you have the experience Skull that would be a great help. Patreon for running costs though and if we really could have cheaper hosting that would make it SO much easier.
cyberdog at 7:17PM, April 14, 2015
I've been on here since 2009. I'm to the point were I would rather pay DD rent to keep the site up. Honestly, $10-20 a month, to keep my site up and keep the community is a great option for me. Some kinda Gold Duck deal. Of course it would have to let me do things a free user can't do. One option would be to actually see how many hits I get like we all used to be able to do back in the day. Anyway, just an idea. CyberDog out.
Skullbie at 1:48PM, April 14, 2015
Did the kickstarter idea get canned? I'm way more interested in putting money towards gathering 1-2k and some volunteers to reprogram the site. You can have both that and the patreon, of course. Honestly after a month of tedious research on running KS I could probably whip up a mean campaign if you ever wanted it. The demand for a community focused webcomic site is still out there.
Niccea at 12:39PM, April 14, 2015
I'm glad we are finally going though with this. I remember when it was just an idea when we seized control of the site. Looking forward to it. Please note at this time I can only donate positive energy. But I look forward to the day that I can participate.
HippieVan at 12:23PM, April 14, 2015
Cool! Well we should probably wait until oz wakes up (silly Australian time) and see what he thinks about all this.
JustNoPoint at 12:13PM, April 14, 2015
Hippie: Right! I know about all the bugs and stuff. But I didn't know if that was the extent of the fixing or not. Because with us having total control and getting rid of ads we could probably fix and improve MANY things to help the site's direction into this new self sustaining donation driven scheme. That's why I was talking about a lump sum to just overhaul the site again. If we can just get bug fixes for less than $100 that'd be fantastic too. But it also meant me and HoM was on a different wavelength LOL So now that I'm on this NEW wavelength of just fixing bugs for super cheap I'm all aboard the Phil Train too haha
HippieVan at 12:06PM, April 14, 2015
Also, the giant list of bugs: http://theduckwebcomics.com/forum/topic/176583/
HippieVan at 12:05PM, April 14, 2015
@JNP: I think getting stats working again would be my personal #1 priority.
HippieVan at 12:03PM, April 14, 2015
Thanks, houseofmuses! I didn't mean to downplay the solution you're putting forward, I truly appreciate it. :) I was just skeptical that fixing things would be so simple after having been told how wonky the coding is for this site so many times!
JustNoPoint at 12:02PM, April 14, 2015
It's not that crazy. I'm just not that good with Python :P It's pretty well coded from what I can tell. If Phil thinks it'd be easy and he's a pro that's different. But what are we considering "fixing" too? To note I hadn't approached Phil or anyone yet because I wanted to make sure to present a gameplan for what we are asking for. What are we asking him to do? :P
houseofmuses at 12:01PM, April 14, 2015
Phil knows how to fix this. I can't reiterate that I've put out a solution three or four times. I will leave you all to mull this over.
HippieVan at 11:52AM, April 14, 2015
That would be awesome if he could fix it! But I'm not so sure it would be easy...from what I've heard the coding is a little bit crazy. JNP could probably speak more to that?
houseofmuses at 11:46AM, April 14, 2015
I just had a brief talk with Phil. He says this site would be easy-peasy to fix. There you have it.
Genejoke at 11:37AM, April 14, 2015
ads are fine... in moderation... strong moderation.