A fraction of $3/mo? From a company that abandons projects left and right? I'll stick to Patreon, thanks. I'm making about $800 on a productive month now despite there being a pretty small audience for comics about a lesbian robot with PKD problems. I set "no ads for anyone" as my goal for like $50/p, which was still making far more than I ever did from ad impressions. Most people only contribute a buck or so a page but the door is open for a few generous folks to give me more.
Horses for courses - for high volume sites this would be awesome. My immediate thought was "Great - at last Wikipedia can get rid of the annual begging bowl". It could also be a great solution to the news site paywall debate. I'd love to seamlessly reward the sites I visit often, and if Google can automate this, more power to their elbow.
Also, interesting that it is Google is doing this. It risks reducing their advertising revenue if it takes off too well - I wonder what their cut of revenue is like compared to their advertising business? This model pays them (and the content producer) per impression rather than per click.
In many countries, companies have a tax incentive to contribute to charities, up to 1% of their income. Billing this as a normal service to customers then transferring the money to charities after a tax-reduction scheme could be a way to fund the service cost-free. That said, it's extremely appreciable that companies help charities, whatever the scheme.
Wikipedia has no ads to make go away. Google Contributor is only for sites that use Google ads in the first place.
Google wants the power to tell sites that they have to use Google ads before they can get these Contributor donations. That's the whole point. So it will only hurt honorable sites like Wikipedia that forgo ads.
You can declare which ad networks you're willing to show ads from when you set up google ads. It should be entirely possible to include only Contributor.
Patreon really has been fantastic for individuals and small groups whom people actively want to support. From tons of small creators paying their rent to the bigger successes like Jim Sterling and RedLetterMedia.
This seems targeted at larger, semi-faceless websites which may only be able to survive with tiny contributions from a mass audience. Imgur is probably the best example of that; it's infrastructure that people appreciate, but few want to pay for.
Gratipay is a more community-centered and honorable site compared to Patreon (in that Patreon is a proprietary platform with mediocre terms of service). I do think Patreon does good work in many respects, but it's a shame that they get all the attention when other sites are more deserving.
What? Where are you reading that? The only thing I could find was that reddit invested a small amount in Imgur and most of the investments have come from A16Z.
Imgur is a stand-alone corporation, and is not owned by the same company that has a majority stake in Reddit.
Imgur has taken one round of VC, for $40 million, and most of that was made up of Andreessen Horowitz. Reddit did participate in that round, but they were a small minority share of it.
I could be missing something but this seems orthogonal to Patreon. Patreon is great specifically for things that aren't meant to generate lots of pageviews, and thus could never get by with ads.
This seems more like a "like ads but better" thing. Google appears to be saying, "Until now, you paid the advertiser by buying their products, they paid us, and we paid the websites. Let's keep doing that, except without the advertiser." Which is obviously great for Google, though I'm not sure how much it benefits anyone else.
This would benefit me, because I don't want to see ads, but I also want to support the sites I visit. At the moment I block ads but I feel bad about it.
Manually donating to each site isn't realistic given human psychology; people simply won't do it. Something more automatic is better, even if it's not perfect. So I really like the idea.
Downsides for me:
- only works for sites with Google ads on them, not for other ad networks or for sites that want to be ad-free
- tracking presumably still happens; it would be nicer if there was some sort of protocol to automatically pay sites anonymously
DO NOT FEEL BAD FOR BLOCKING ADS! Ads are not respectful to you, usually track you, and are generally deceptive, promote shit you shouldn't actually bother with usually…
Manually donating is indeed a problem, but if you want to send a subscription donation, you don't need Google Contributor. And anyway, you should donate to the sites that forgo ads in the first place — they are the ones that deserve it.
I've been interested in Patreon for a while. Do you think there is a space on it for people running websites? I've only ever seen it used by webcomic artists.
Patreon is mostly good if you're doing A/V production, to offset the time/opportunity cost involved.
In the context of HN, I do not think Patreon would be a good fit for programming. Mostly because programmers who have sufficient skill enough to receive a following probably make enough money in their day jobs such that the money earned in a Patreon would be a drop in the bucket. :P
Many websites have been funded through Kickstarter, though.
Exactly. This idea only needs to be moderately successful for a standalone company to stick with it. It needs to be hugely successful for Google to remain committed to it.
I'd go as far as saying Google are negligent (or malicious) for trying it. They might kill any startup doing the same thing, and then they will inevitably shut this down.
Sure, but what effect does that "experiment" have on the other companies that are dedicated to the idea? It doesn't matter what Google calls it. Google could crush those companies and still eventually consider this opportunity too small to be worth their while.
Hmm, then what can Google experiment with that doesn't carry the risk of harming a preexisting smaller company? I guess only things like self-driving cars that nobody else is doing?
I don't think the principle is that they shouldn't harm smaller companies. There is no problem with their current approach if they don't feel social responsibility, but if they do (and they claim to), then the current approach does seem a violation of that. I don't have all the answers as to how they should approach this, but it's not difficult to see that something is broken in how they are evaluating new products & services. It's not just that they end up abandoning a lot of them; it's what they do inbetween, as well. They seem to lack commitment to them.
Examples:
Could they really not have transformed Google Reader into something valuable?
Did they really promote Google Wallet for Digital Goods sufficiently to expect any sort of success from it? (I used it and the UX and fees were the best around; promotion was non-existent)
Did Google Helpouts get enough of a push, either?
This new thing is great if Google are going to get behind it and stick with it until it's successful. Their current track-record suggests that they will not.
