Premium accounts as an incentive for donations

[AB2000]

Hi!
After the recent brainstorming about how to fund MD, I suggest this as an alternative way to bring money: making premium accounts.

Such accounts could for example give more functionalities (more emojis for comments, more rating options, etc), or loosen some limits (for example getting a bit more bandwidth, or having the right post more comments per amount of time before being limited as a flood mitigation).

Of course, lots of other stuffs are possible (customizable skins for the reader, waifu chatbots, download buttons for chapters, etc).

Additionally, if MD is ever to rely on ads someday, premium accounts could have no ads.

People who already donated money could benefit from the premium functionalities for a timespan proportionnal to the donations.

On one hand it means more things to maintain for the dev team. On the other hand it can reward donors and acts as an incentive for donating money. So it's sort of a possible trade-off.

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

Got potential but needs refinement. I agree with Abyssal, stick with cosmetics. Tho what cosmetics, I guess we should wait after v5. That way we won't suggests things that have already been planned to be added.

 

[AB2000]

@AbyssalMonkey MD's staff are clever enough not to put MD behind a paywall.
Moreover, the money earned through premium accounts could help MD paying for more available bandwidth if it becomes necessary.
What's wrong with zip download?

Cosmetics are fine, but I'm not sure it's enough alone to motivate many people to give money.

 

[panzerkampfwagyu]

Yeah, Cosmetics should be enough.

 

[AB2000]

@AbyssalMonkey
The download button I suggested for premium accounts would be just a matter of convenience. You can still download chapters on a computer without it, there are workarounds.

Premium accounts doesn't mean MD would restrict things for the base users compared to the current situation, but could offer more to the premium users.

MD could very well offer only the cosmetics in premium accounts, but they'd probably not be able to charge much money for it. But well, maybe that'd still be better than nothing, after all.

 

[MrIncognito]

@AB2000
so the problem with adding new features for premium users is that you're adding new features to the site and then restricting their use for non-premium users

 

[MavB_Ver]

but they'd probably not be able to charge much money for it

Seriously, no please. MD can't charge anything for things they don't own.

 

[MavB_Ver]

@AbyssalMonkey I'm well aware that it was referring to the cosmetic, but don't carelessly use the words that make MD sounds like they are ass putting the restrictions to squeezing out money from the users.

 

[AB2000]

@AbyssalMonkey I agree with you it's a useless pain to have to log in to just search a title in the database.

About paying or not for reading, let me remind you that you can read on MD for free because other people have donated money to MD. The money to run MD has to come from somewhere. No money = no MD.
Would you prefer if Mangadex were funded by ads? Some users don't mind. Others see this as heresy.
Having premium accounts would first and foremost mean that most users would keep the right to read on MD for free, and possibly without ads. You may see this as heresy. I say it's a possible trade-off.

@MavB_Ver Of course MD can't legally charge what they don't own. But they can charge the service of accessing the MD's content (although I think only a premium service would be good to charge).

 

[MavB_Ver]

@AB2000 And what is MD's content? If it has something to do with the experience of reading (more bandwidth for premium users only) or downloading (certainly they do not own) then it is a big no.

 

[negavamas]

Charging for accessing the site or use certain functions would be announcing to all governments and corporations where to shoot you. There's a good reason all aggregator sites use shady ads and not subscriptions, it's way harder to track the money and you can't say they are selling copyrighted material. This is not pixiv, you can't paywall anything, look at what happened to mangarock.

 

[AB2000]

Content & service are very different things.

You can read MD's content on various other websites. If MD were not here, scanlators would find other means to provide it for free.
But MD's not just about the content. MD is a service. It's sort of an environment, where lots of people can not only access the content, but also upload your own releases, chat, comment, rate series, search the database, and have no ads.

Even if MD made people pay for the content, it wouldn't really be a problem: we'd just read & upload for free elsewhere. We have not only free content, but also free service. I suggested charging premium service, not charging content (just like YouTube: anyone can watch all of their content for free. But they have a premium offer. And it's not a problem).

 

[MavB_Ver]

It's not MD's content on other websites, it's the illegal translations from various scanlation teams that MD has nothing to do with them. MD only serve as a host, they do not have any rights to charge anything for them, not for providing the service either. Uploading mangas for people to read them for free itself is illegal enough. The best they can do is asking for donations, offerring "premium service" for the illegal contents will only invite troubles from the governments.

MD is not like Youtube, or Mangaplus or whatever you may compare them to. They do not own these contents, so they have no rights to charge people for providing the service. I'm sure if MD go down MR's route, most groups will pull out the content they offer the service for, which only make the situation worse.

 

[Pleppie]

I think in these cases, sometimes, just changing the wording of things can go a long way.

People are saying that if premium stuff was only small cosmetics, they wouldn't be able to charge much for it. Well, a system of achievements sounds better in that aspect. Put some cosmetic perks as milestones in donations. The contribution being called a donation has a lot of impact in its meaning.

Also, i don't see much sense in calling it a premium account if it really doesn't add much to it, it just sounds like i'd have a more snobbish account (honestly, i'd rather just contribute and get some nice emoticons and stuff and not have a special account)

 

[Plykiya]

@AB2000 The core functionality of the site will always be free (like reading manga, searching for shit, following shit, etc)
I dunno about "premium accounts" but supporters do have... one... feature so far that normal users don't, which is the ability to add notes to a user. Cosmetics would probably be another thing. Less of a "premium" and more of a side benefit of donating to the site

 

[Pleppie]

@AbyssalMonkey
I completely agree that the ideal case is for all monetary needs to be supplemented by donations made out of good will. But i also don't think that necessarily has to be the only way.
If handled with transparency (and sure, assuming there's no embezzlement from mangadex financial administration), i see no problem with having some extra incentives for donations. Now let's just apply common sense here, none of those incentives could have real impact in the access to the content available here, since mangadex doesn't actually own any of it. That's why simply cosmetics and such are a good middle ground. Having access to some exclusive emotes in comments and stuff isn't really selling more a meaningful advantage to donators. It's different to money walling essential or qol features (a=or stuff mangadex has no business providing like direct download for the content ). In a online game it'd be equivalent to selling only skins with no functionality other then look pretty.

Now i talk about transparency because the idea being that the site must be a non-profitable organization has to stand, all of the funds from donations have to be converted into benefits for maintaining the service up.

I do agree as well, that ads are not a solution to be considered. The reason i use mangadex currently is because i align with the idea of respecting the work of the groups working hard and sharing their work for free.

 

[dynewind]

Let's stop calling it 'premium' and start calling it 'supporter' instead? Much better spin on the root cause - supporting the site for server expansion. Any 'perks' are not essential and should not be expected because hey, it's a donation not a money-to-service exchange.

 

[Moonshift13]

Just saying, I would be all for a "supporter" account. Pay a monthly amount that you, the user, decides. No benefits. Just a simple and easy way to donate and help keep MD running smoothly.