From ozoneocean's post on the front page:
"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."
So - what do you think? Please let us know if you have any general suggestions or idea for rewards, etc.!
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Comic Talk and General Discussion *
No more spammy ads?! Patreon brainstorming thread!
The need to use an ad-blocker is a bad sign for the site.
1. It means we get no revenue from the ads.
2.
It also means we're just blinding ourselves to the terrible reality
faced by any first time visitors to this site who will likely leave and
never return because of the barrage of bad stuff they're assaulted with.
On the plus side with ads, they give us revenue (through Brian A) to run the site, with no effort or expense on our part.
On the negative:
- They discourage casual viewers away from the site.
- They discourage comic creators from hosting here.
- On mobile devices they will often hijack the browser and actively take people AWAY from this site.
-
Because of the malware they frequently link to through JavaScript DD
has been put on black lists and warning lists so many times people are
NOT able to view it on their networks at all.
-
The ad revenue gathered by our site does not even pay for our running
costs anyway and Brian has to substitute it from his own pocket.-
probably because it turns people away and the rest use ad blockers (as
any sensible person HAS to).
-
Because Brian has to pay for he site through his own money coupled with
the ad revenue we can not make financial decisions like changing
hosting to a cheaper site etc.
tupapayon: It's not set up yet. At this point we're just kind of scoping out ideas and seeing how much support there would be for the idea (seems like most people are favourable, which is awesome!). We'll be doing more concrete planning in the coming weeks.
Exclusive art is a great idea! I'm sure we could get some DD artists on board to help with that. :)
This is all very inspiring - count me in to do whatever I can to help. Personally I'm not a fan of premium accounts for the future. I like the notion of community owned and fully featured for all. The five dollar front page advertising spots are are great idea and I think a lot of people would sign up for that, especially as people realise what's going on here.
What would be good alongside patreon, would be a campaign to raise awareness of these changes across the webcomic community. I think a lot of people have written off this site somewhat and then there are the issues Ozone' mentioned that keep people away. Donations will be easier to find once people realise there's a truly community owned site, without all the ads, using those donations to build a better, more user friendly future. Climb aboard now and you can say you were there!
Good to know! A subscription model really isn't in the roster of things we're even thinking of planning at this point, and it definitely wouldn't work until we had a more functional site. But if we were ever thinking seriously about doing something like that we would for sure have a big community discussion about it first.
Also, good idea about promoting changes! Although I think we would definitely want to do that after or at the very soonest during the process of making things better, not before. Otherwise if things fall flat that could look pretty bad.
I can speak personally to the effectiveness of Patreon support. Especially if it's promoted and supported by the community. It would be worth it to make the Duck less of an intimidating website to navigate while still affording to maintain the site.
The question would be, though, outside of being able to keep the site up, what sort of goals and milestones would you set for patrons and The Duck? Like, at what milestone do you offer which fixes for the site?
I mean, I'll always have a fondness for this place, but even I'm frustrated by much of the lost functionality since I left. I no longer receive notifications if I get a PQ, for example, nor any idea if anyone's commenting (I suspect that's more just because I don't get comments). I also miss being able to edit the template more thoroughly, being able to establish the unique look of your webpage a lot more easily.
These are things that I'm not expecting to be thrown at me just because it would make my experience here easier, but perhaps they could be among things suggested for Milestones. Like, reach $200 a month, or something (I honestly don't know about the costs going into the site, my ignorance revealed!) and ads go, $400 and PQ/comment notifications are a thing, etc.
Individual rewards for patrons might be harder to establish. I offer early access to my uploads- both videos and comics- on my Patreon, as well as behind-the-scenes art, concept art, outtakes on my videos, and even (on the highest tier) chances to guest commentate with me on a video.
Behind-the-scenes stuff, videos of the people who work on the site, exclusive podcasts, things like that might work as individual rewards.
(and sorry if this post is a little rambly, I'm a bit brain-foggy tonight).
All and all, I think it's a good idea, especially if the community can help promote it.
Genejoke wrote:
I'm guessing it turned into the indiegogo campaign.
Yeah, it just kinda happened. We haven't thrown away the idea of Patreon but haven't discussed it too much either.
Edit: The other thing that happened, of course, is that we replaced the horribly spammy ads with PW ads.
HippieVan wrote:IMO, Patreon is still well worth considering. Indiegogo is great for one-off project type things like the site fix. Patreon is better suited to dealing with ongoing expenses - like keeping the site up and running after the initial fixes! :)Genejoke wrote:Yeah, it just kinda happened. We haven't thrown away the idea of Patreon but haven't discussed it too much either.
I'm guessing it turned into the indiegogo campaign.
The PW ads are more in keeping with the site theme and don't get us put on ban lists :)
The revenue isn't even and can go right down but generally it pays all hosting cost expenses, so we shouldn't need Patreon for that unless the image hosting cost goes up (there may be a solution to that though).
Where Patreon would be VERY useful is paying for more features and fixes to the site. Indiegogo is only going to pay for one more round of fixes. If we want more we have to get more donations- or I just pay myself.
So yeah, Patreon is still on the table.
what about a DD magazine? an ebook with comics from the site. People pay subscriptions to magazines all the time. and sometimes you get one for joining things like Gamestop, or even the Boyscouts. This might be too much work, I don't know, but I have seen a couple of things like this cropping up(Acesweekly, Off Life). even selling print editions.
We've done print before in the distant past- I wasn't involved in that at all.
I don't really know if it'd work. I would provide support but I couldn't help out with it. Printing comics is so far out of my comfort zone.
Ahahaha- as a graphic designer in my day job (currently sitting in the office right now) I hate layouts more than anything and dealing with printers.
SO yes, this could be viable but it'd have to be for others to manage.
I could see a magazine working as a quarterly publication. That way it's less stressful for anyone involved, allows writers time to really polish their material, and allows for a good selection of potential article material to build up on the site. If we included short, 1-3 page comics and strips, then it'd also give people ample time to make/choose them.
Bruno Harm wrote:
Duck Quarterly.. I like it.
If only Dairy Queen wasn't using the DQ
Quarter Duck? You know, like ordering a quarter chicken at a restaurant.
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