Klepar

Readers do have some influence about the direction of the site.

There are only 2 realistic options so that why I only pick 2.

Paywall similar to what Qidian is doing in China.
Freemium, which a lot of content services in the West are doing (Crunchyroll, Spotify, Hulu, Funimation, Viki, Dramafever, NY Times, Wattpad, Royalroadl etc...)

Paywall: $0.04 per chapter seem about right. 4 spirit stones kinda gives that away. In China, it is about $0.02 per chapter so internationally, it will be a bit more expensive. Munpia in South Korea charges $0.09 per chapter. So my best educated guess with a potential paywall is $0.04 per chapter.

Freemium: $5.99 seem about right. Wattpad charges $5.99 a month to skip ad. Crunchyroll charges $6.95 a month to skip ad; watch 1 week ahead. So my best educated guess for a potential premium service for www.webnovel.com will be $5.99 to skip ads, read several chapters ahead of ad-supported free users, get more power stones.

not possible, unless Qidian claim every novel rights and only allowed to publish in Qidian International, there are many translators and their own private website where they earn a decent amount of money with sponsor chapters and patron and also there are many other websites which occupy readers and their time not to mention Qidian can't hog all the popular novels and afford all the writers from China, Korea and Japan, writers are already earning a good amount of money in their countries, it's not over-popular yet around the world so their first main goal is to spread their popularity around the world instead cramping into tiny circle of readers, advertisement company want is numbers, either Qidian limit their readers into limited readers and make it a subscribtion or generate more numbers of readers and earn through adds and contract adds, WuxiaWorld became succesfull base on numbers and fan base, also watching and reading is a whole new different experience, Crunchyroll and others are similar to Netflix, getting the story and making a good video from a good entertainment industries and also advertising cost a lot of money while for stories unless readers read it the story will never get popular, only earning popularity through readers can make the writer and his stories famous and become more valuable and also publish more books and chance to get his story in movies or animation, If I were a writer I won't want my stories to be a subscribtion with limited amount of readers, I would want more people to read it and get popularity and more fan, there is no production cost for writers accept for their time, so earning alot of money is good but ripping of for some uncertain stories which we can never guess is just BS, we might never know the story will turn out good or bad, ongoing stories are just a budding sprout and you can never put stake on it, if those readers want to read without adds while spending money they can do that, but there are even more people who just came here to read, relax and pass their time so it's fine with adds, either put adds make it free and if some hardcore readers want to spend more money on add free it's their call, but options should be available for both parties, you can't force people to pay just because you want to pay.

I would imagine it would be like this for www.webnovel.com

www.webnovel.com: all novels are free for users (ad supported)
www.webnovel.com Premium: $5.99 a month to skip ads, read ahead several chapters, extra power stones to vote

If you are among the 200 millions + users of Spotify, you would know that Spotify use an identical business model

Spotify Free: free for users (ad supported)
Spotify Premium: $9.99 a month to skip ads

As of July 2017, Spotify had 60 million paying subscribers worldwide, up from 30 million paying subscribers in March 2016.

AtIndo23

Then vote for Option 2

Free with ads
$5.99 a month to skip ads, read several chapters ahead of free users, extra power stones for voting

Readers do have some influence about the direction of www.webnovel.com
Otherwise, they will go with a paywall after the first 100 chapters. Likely $0.04 per chapter. (4 spirit stones per chapter with each spirit stone = $0.01)

Qidian in China: Qidian points to buy a chapter (about $0.02 per chapter)
Munpia in South Korea: 100 Gold Coins (about $0.09 per chapter)

Qidian International will likely be between these 2 price points. Most likely 4 spirit stones ($0.04) per chapter.

Enlightened_Being

So you want to see the paywall happen because freemium is bad because it gives extra benefits to those who willing to pay? That is like Spotify free users complaining that those paying $9.99 a month to Spotify can skip ads and have offline listening.

If you are in favor of paywall over freemium......Don't start complain when Qidian International next year start charging 4 spirit stones ($0.04) per chapter after the first free 100 chapters.

It's very likely to happen unless those in charge change their mind.

UntaintedByPurity

It's not free stuff. Someone has to pay for it. It's pretty obvious that free reading with ads is not generating enough revenue to offset the cost. Qidian International will implement a change. It has two realistic options. 1) Paywall 2) Freemium service where all novels are read to read with ads; $5.99/month to skip ads, read ahead several chapters, extra power stones to vote.

And when did I ever advocate for a paywall?

I want www.webnovel.com to have freemium services like Wattpad, Spotify, Crunchyroll, Viki, Dramafever etc...
Free novels to read for everyone (ad-supported).
Those who want to skip ads, read ahead several chapters, get extra power stones to vote can pay $5.99 a month for this Premium membership.

Billdoor

You wrote that you "want to leech as long as possible without paying anything" yet you don't want freemium to happen?

Isn't that hypocrisy?

You want free novels. Freemium that I advocate gives you free novels to read. But you seem to hate it.