A monthly subscription would be impossible for me because I am under 18 and live in EU.
SURVEY: $0.04/ch. paywall vs. free with ads, $5.99/month to skip ads,read ahead
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You can always use the free version. Which is identical to what it is now.
And even if you are under 18 and in the EU, you can use Spotify Premium or Crunchyroll Premium or Wattpad Premium as long as your parent pay for it with their credit/debit card.
Result so far
74% in favor of Freemium (all novels free with ads; $5.99 a month to skip ads, read ahead several chapters of free readers)
26% in favor of Paywall ($0.04 per chapter)
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Having no free option will kill the community, using crunchyroll as an example is terrible since the anime community is far larger and had much longer to grow before corporate companies came into the picture, so the second choice would be only viable one imho.
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deikatsuo I think the current www.webnovel.com ads system was much better than Freemium.
but ads system only generates a lot less revenue....compare to ads system + paid extra to skip ads
If readers want more novels translated and authors get paid more, freemium is superior.
Look at the New York Times freemium:
DIGITAL AD REVENUE: $49 million for the quarter x 4 quarters a year = $196 million a year
DIGITAL-ONLY SUBSCRIPTIONS: $86 million for the quarter x 4 quarters a year = $344 million a year
Having just ads and no freemium would mean digital revenue for the New York Times would only be $196 million a year instead of $540 mil a year.
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Ranking from best to worst (looking at a hypothetical free leecher who don't like ads and won't ever pay)
1) All Novels Free with no ads
2) All Novels Free with ads
3) All Novels Free with ads + paid monthly premium to skip ads, read ahead
4) Paywall ($0.04 per chapter) after first 100 free chapters
5) Subscription paywall only (similar to J-Novel Club $4.95 a month for Club Member and $10.95 for Premium Membership)
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We live in a world where the authors/translators/publishers have to make money in order to create (translate) more novels for readers to read.
I believe freemium is the best choice because it generates a lot of revenue while at the same time allow for free reading for everyone. Paywall is bad because 80-90% of the readers will turn to pirate sites. It's much better to monetize these free readers with ads than losing them to pirate sites.
Freemium also allow www.webnovel.com to grow much faster and attract many new users. Paywall will cripple this growth.
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For revenue generation with freemium, Qidian International will have
1) Ad Revenue from free users
2) Subscription revenue from Premium members who want to skip ads and read ahead
3) Ebook Revenue sales on Amazon (King of Gods, Demon's Diary ebook are selling very well on Amazon Kindle and generating significant revenue).
4) Maybe merchandise someday down the road similar to what Crunchyroll Merchandise is doing.
So I sincerely hope that Qidian executives don't go with their initial plan of a per chapter paywall for Qidian International like they do for Qidian Chinese site.
Give freemium a chance to succeed. You will be surprised how well Western audience like monthly subscription. I will subscribe and be a paying member to skip ads and to support the site, the author and translator.
You do realize that there are countless aggregators out there, right? People can just choose to go there if things changes, don't forget that QI is a newcomer and I doubt they'd introduce either a paywall or an ad-free plan anytime time soon if they're smart.
We're a leecher community you see (well unless those of us who like to support TLers by donating), so neither of those propositions look appealing as either of them might be the harbinger of the even more dreadful pay-per-chapter system.
please dude, make one post and don't split it into 50 million things, you start again with bullshitting the whole forum with something no one reads... no wonder people can't take you serious anymore... need to find the "unfollow" button for this fuckin thread
Elawn You do realize that there are countless aggregators out there, right? People can just choose to go there if things changes, don't forget that QI is a newcomer and I doubt they'd introduce either a paywall or an ad-free plan anytime time soon if they're smart.
We're a leecher community you see (well unless those of us who like to support TLers by donating), so neither of those propositions look appealing as either of them might be the harbinger of the even more dreadful pay-per-chapter system.
Yup. I realize there are many pirate sites out there. That's why Freemium is superior over the paywall.
Freemium means all the novels on www.webnovel.com will be free so readers have no reason to go to pirate sites.
Freemium is a great way to attract users and get a portion of these users to pay for monthly Premium membership. Spotify wouldn't be where it is today if it wasn't freemium from day 1.
Readers who can afford an extra $5.99 a month like myself will support the author, translator, the site by paying for Premium. The extra perks of skipping ads/reading ahead several chapters are also nice and give more incentive for people to support.
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Elawn You do realize that there are countless aggregators out there, right? People can just choose to go there if things changes, don't forget that QI is a newcomer and I doubt they'd introduce either a paywall or an ad-free plan anytime time soon if they're smart.
We're a leecher community you see (well unless those of us who like to support TLers by donating), so neither of those propositions look appealing as either of them might be the harbinger of the even more dreadful pay-per-chapter system.
There are some people like yourself who believe a paywall isn't coming in the next few years or if ever.
I guess I'm not that optimistic. I believe it is coming and pretty soon in fact.
Spirit Stones is pretty much a precursor to a paywall. Buy spirit stone for $0.01 each. 4 Spirit Stones per chapter.
Qidian in China use a paywall. What make you think Qidian International will be a special snowflake?
How would they justify to their paying readers in China if the international version is free while readers in China have to pay?
Last but not least, Qidian International never said that it will be FREE FOR a LONG TIME....it would be great publicity to come out and say that but they didn't. Which mean they intend for some kind of paywall some day down the road.
If you like www.webnovel.com to continue to be FREE, you should hope that QI implement FREEMIUM.
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Hypothetical question:
Netflix charges $9.99 a month for users in the USA.
If Netflix is free in "international markets," how would Netflix justify that to their paying customers in the United States? And how long could that "Netflix International" be free before they start charging like they do in the United States?
Is it realistic to expect "Netflix International" to be free for many years?
Qidian could justify it to their paying readers in China if Qidian International is Freemium since there is a paying element of it. And Qidian authors benefit from this freemium.
I'm sorry, but are you dumb?
If someone is giving you something free just shup up and take it. Stopping being a douch and trying to do something that isn't needed.
1) Qidian isn't losing money right now, in fact they are making money, or else they wouldn't have done this site and would have made a different kinda of deal with the translator and wouldn't have being so agressive with those others site, no one is losing money here.
2)To offer paypall they do have to much work to do. First they have to get the translation because if i'm not mistake althought they have the right to the novel they do not have the translation rights. So i doubt that they will just hire all translators and pay them for their translation.
3) You are trying to compare Netflix with Qidian? C'mon are you dumb? Netflix have to pay for the series and movies that they stream, so it's normal that it's a paid service. But does qidian need to pay for the novels? It's their novel.
Stop doing thing that are useless.
and most important.
4) when they put a pay sistem here i bet you that this site will die. The view rate will drop to the floor and they will lose money, simple because putting a pay system = taxes.
So it isn't so simple as you think.
Well, let's see if Qidian International will change it or not.
And, if they change it, it's okay... for me. As long as they do not make it hard for Poor User (Like Me) to read the novel.
Like, Must pay to be able to read, or have to buy Qidian Point (Or whatever it is)... If so, I really will not agree. *
Thanks.
(I hope Qidian made the right decision)
I’ll only resort to paying if there are no more free alternatives available. I do support those novels that I like though through Patreon. So option 2 for me. And I don’t think that option 1 is viable, customer base is not that much. Qidian should focus more on gaining international readers, retaining its current service and only try paywall when numbers are enough to gain profits.
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Qidian should never compare themselves with Netflix or Crunchyroll, movies, series or animation cost a lot of money in production, story to scriptwriters, screenwriters, directors, actors with many staffs, the whole package for producing movies, series or animation cost a lot of work, money and time and to release in the market cost money and platform, it's very complicated industry while Qidian or Wuxia World is a free platform like Youtube where content writers or creator just use these websites as a platform to earn money and nothing is guranteed whether they will be good or not, so readers are at risk when choosing their specific preference novels like we only have selective numbers of channel which we watch and prefer but that too doesn't gurantee us or the consumers, it's just made up of fanbase and popularity, these type of platform is similar to Amazon, the only difference is that both parties don't cost any money which is writers just writes their story without any production cost and just need a platform to publish and earn money and readers use their time to read and generate number, popularity and fame and also it's like a social mdia where readers spread their work like an advertisement and when writers get more popular they bring more people into the industry and the website earns more, in actual truth we are spreading their good work and gaining them more attention and they should treat readers better and sincere, too much greed is no good for long term plan, you give us something and we give you back more, you can't survive without us but we can, we can just ignore or switch sites and this is not a mandatory.