Tomoyuki And no, no matter how many more "free users" you get to browse the site, you still won't get enough revenue from ads alone to cover the costs. Even Royal Road knows this and they offer premium membership monthly subscription. People overestimate the amount of revenue that ads can bring.
I am an active reader on Royal road and belive me when i say that they will not block certain content if you do not pay premium, but if you want to help the site it is a great way to do it, on the other hand Quidian does it (block content)
Tomoyuki No one is forcing you to pay anything or cornering you.
before you could have read all your fav light novels now u jungle betwen wich one seems more important for you with the amount of spirit stones they give you and if you do not like it, just pull the money baby. "this is cornering you to buy btw"
Tomoyuki But sure, go ahead and pirate stories from free sites, and gloat over how you have the moral high ground, how Qidian deserves to be stolen from because it's greedy, while whining about not getting free stuff and benefiting off other people's hard work for free
Royal Road is a great example of how everybody profits, some authors almost get 10k per month from patreon giving fresh ch to the theyr patreons, and the free users can read for free even thogh they are 5 or 10 ch behind + the ones who want more chapters and want to donate can became a patreon.
and about
Tomoyuki by the way, if you're pirating stories, you're not stealing from Qidian, you're stealing from the authors, the content creators and the translators
If the authors are any good, they dont rely on the part of people who read theyr stories on the pirating sites.
An example would be how i bought a book even though i have read that book online, but it was soo good i had to have it in my house, it is realy special knowing i have an original book.
I would imagine it being the same on the internet, read some pirated shit and if u liked it and finished reading it, donate some money to the author showing some gratitude for they'r effort, if the book is not good, then what the hell are you doing reading it from a pirating site?