Webnovel.Forum

If we observe that:
1. Premium chapter's cost range is about 7-13 spirit stones
2. We can watch 1 video daily and get around 7-12 spirit stones.

Thus, from readers/users point of view, we can say that 1 Premium Chapter costs 1 advertisement (to be watched).

Hence, it brings a question: why there's no 'watching ads' option in Premium Chapter?

If, from the perspective of QI as a business entity, the profit from ads is indeed less than the profit from selling spirit stones, why not adding more ads? E.g. 1 Premium Chapter may costs 2 or 3 ads.

No, an ad is not worth 7-12 SS. It's just one of the various 'benefits' the site gives. For instance, voting gets you 10 SS for almost nothing. Same for checking in.

My rough calculation is that 20 ads cost 1 premium chapter but ads is not something very sustainable in the long run.

CKtalon why doesn't Qidian allow more ads but offer 1SS each then?

KoraL It's being generous? It doesn't want to affect the reading experience negatively. It's quite silly if a person has to work so hard to earn a few SS.

CKtalon How about in addition to the current methods then? I mean if people want to be misers, let them work for it and realized that paying outright is a lot easier.

CKtalon Well, in my honest opinion, yes, they should. And they should have also subdivided the bonus from paid SS so that translators could be paid out from that pool as well.
Has any translator gotten SS compensation so far? If so, is it at least a double digit number?
I think it's in your best interest that bonus SS can provide compensation since the paid SS aren't used until after the bonus SS. What happens if readers consistently do their daily check-ins before reading your translations first, then move on to spend the paid SS elsewhere? Sure that effect should even out over several thousands of users, but that's in an unbiased population. Real people tend to have patterns in their behavior such as starting with the first/last novel listed in their library (which is currently chronological by add date, so if they read last first, older novels are at a much greater disadvantage). The most unfortunate case is likely the first novels to update after the daily reset.

KoraL Then, the video ads are giving too many SS, and that means the SS has to be reduced. Doubt readers will be happy with that.

Don't think so yet. Just too many free SS out there. It will take some time before the content creators can earn more than what they can earn from the fixed payment (which is already reasonably high) also. Probably in the next few months.

That actually happened in China. Authors didn't like to post chapters near midnight (when new bonus points are obtained from checking in), and would often ask readers to spend it on another book before they purchase their chapters.

Since everything is still very much in beta, I guess we will see it more streamlined in the future too.

CKtalon Why ads is not sustainable? Don't forget that a big chunk of Google's business model (for example) depends heavily on ads.

On the matter of the amount of ads to cover cost per chapter (putting the economic calculation aside, for now): if the readers are happy to watch ads to unlock the chapter, what can we do about it?

CKtalon Why not leave Video Ads up until the Chapters are "paid" for? some of the chapters only have ads up for a half a day or less. It's no wonder they don't get any income from ads..

I sent this recommendation to webnovel , they have a lot more room to add ads both video and non to the chapters. They can do that and then setup a Premium Ad Free accounts.

ChupChup Ads also kind of break the reader immersion if it's all the chapters. Imagine if you are going to read a 100 chapters. And you have to watch 15-30 sec ads. That will be nearly an hour worth of ads...

Also, even so, each user only watches the ad once and they no longer have to watch it again. If they are forced to keep watching the ads every time they access the chapter, that's also quite a terrible experience.

So to balance reader enjoyment and profit, the current advanced chapters/Premium model is used.

CKtalon But the price for premium chapter or SS unreasonable. How much you got from $50 ? 2500-3000 ss.. around 300-400 chapter. i would say it just half of physical book from other novel, with same price. Half content, same price and richer than J.K Rowling. Congrate !!

Emm… I guess people can find translation mistakes to earn SS. Is that better?

Anqring You mean something like https://forum.webnovel.com/d/2944-crowd-source-editing-with-ss-bounties/21

It seems they aren't interested. So we only have the current non-productive methods of gaining SS.

I think the business model QI decide to use is only effective to some people that couldn't let it go, could not drop the novel they like to read, but still have some very little bit extra fund to spend on SS.....

GegeSadewa That's what I'm aiming at with this discussion. For the people who are able to pay, there's no problem at all. However, what about people, say, in third world country (minus Switzerland, of course)? What about them that 'economically marginalised' but still want to support QI as a business and community? When there's a middle way of capitalising on ads to get spirit stones, why don't we optimised it?

CKtalon In the spirit of discourse, allow me to sum up your arguments, as well as my, or other people's responses:

1. The real cost of a Premium Chapter is more than 1 ads
2. Ads is not sustainable for business in the long term
3. Too much ads will break reading immersion.

While the responses are as follows:
R1. Regarding point 3. As far as I know, there's no survey to users about the impact of watching multiple ads to their reading immersion. Therefore, I can only safely categorised this statement as opinion or assumption, instead of fact. Ergo, point 3 is not a valid reason.
R2. Regarding point 2. Google's business model depends heavily on ads since its inception until now. Thus, point 2 is not a valid reason.
R3. Regarding point 1. I have included the possibility of higher real cost of spirit stones in the first post. However, what about user's willingness to watch ads in order to get spirit stones? Indeed, such study hasn't been made (AFAIK), and only after we grasp the reality that this proposed question can even be taken seriously.

Ergo, I would like to propose to QI to make a survey about users' willingness to watch multiple ads in order to unlock the Premium Chapter. Alternatively, we can also survey users' willingness to watch multiple ads to get spirit stones (extension to the current program)

KoraL
They are prioritizing inkstone and some other stuff rn... I know other ways of earning ss will be added in the future :3

Voids
Google is the distributor of ads, so it takes a cut from all ads it delivers on Adsense to third parties (in this case Webnovel). How much it is willing to pay the third parties is determined by it and other market forces, but obviously they have tuned it to be optimal for their business after being in the business for more than a decade.

I have done the calculations, and it will require about 20 ads per user per chapter to match SS costs. To watch 20 video ads of at least 15 seconds is 5 minutes. Are people willing to watch 5 minutes of ads just to read a chapter that they will take less than 10 minutes to read?

That we do not know, but ad revenue has been falling over the years. If this business wants to be sustainable, would people have to watch 30 ads in a few years time per chapter?

Olivia oooh? Do you know any specifics about what kinds of things they're planning on giving SS for?
Anywho, that thread was more of trying to get a better means of reporting translation/editing errors and encouraging more reader feedback.

Voids That's also assuming that watching 20-30 ads in one sitting will still pay the same amount as just watching 1 ad. (it doesn't).

Reason: Companies want their products/services to be bought by paying for these advertisements. Google then shows it to the users through third parties like Webnovel. If there are only 3 ads that are suitable for the user (due to demographic patterns, etc which Google knows about users, as well as the requirements the paying companies impose), they will only show those 3 ads. When a user watches the ads repeatedly, the amount of money earned per ad actually decreases, because it's unlikely watching the same ad 10 times will actually push you into buying the product/service. The entire online advertising industry is very sophisticated in this area, so it will actually penalize after repeated watching (which is already happening with the current unlocking a chapter with 1 ad), which is why not much is earned from ads.

CKtalon
That's a good point. Thanks for bringing it up. Also, it closed the 'ads is not sustainable for business in the long run' argument brilliantly.

With that being said, I guess the only option left for users that want to support the community but have no money, is to earn spirit stones. Of how users may be able to earn them with watching ads, or any other alternative, is of course out of the scope of this discourse, and best leave for another time.

Thanks for the discussion, lad!

You guys should keep in mind that premium books do indeed still give us 1 free chapter a day. From your free Spirit stones, you can easily buy another chapter or two depending on their price, which is also quote good. So yes, you might after to wait a little long to read if you cannot support the translator by purchasing ss, but I do not think that is unreasonable. There's a ton of nonpremium content and if you're caught up with the premium book, keeping up should pose almost no problem.

Gilreygar
But if you had 2 follow the "free buffers" and get 1 free chapter + the premium chapter you bought... then you would catch up to the premium... and the translation team have 2 translate more... or is there something I am missing?

@WEBNOVEL_OFFICIAL you could try to implement a system where the newer chapters are cheaper or buying multiple chapters from the same novel in a specific timeframe would give a small discount. Just like buying the 1 year option in a subscription plan often gives you a discount

Lomacris You have a couple of choices in this case. First off, let me make it clear that I agree with Olivia; older chapters should be cheaper than newer chapters in order to make it easier to catch up. Your first choice is to just read a couple of chapters a day using your ss, and the daily free chapter that comes with premium novels. This is a valid choice for new users too. The second choice is to support the translators and purchase their premium chapters with bought ss (considering you are a new user with no ss banked). I don't think this is unfair at all, you can read your favorite premium book as fast as it releases in most cases, and if you want to, you can support them by purchasing spirit stones (in the case you do not have enough to stayed caught up or catch up). Regardless, you're still getting a free daily service of one chapter, around 20-25 free currency a day if you complete all the tasks which can easily afford two premium chapters.

litarius what happens if you are reading more than 1 novel and suddenly stop paying ?

Lerynia You are not supposed to be able to unlock all premium novel chapters without paying, that's the point of the premium system. Qidian, like any other company, wants to make a profit. What would be the point of premium you could unlock every chapter of every novel with the free daily SS? My recommendation is to focus your free ss on one novel as to stayed caught up with it and not have to wait for the free chapters to catch up.

litarius that is fine but i still think u should not be punished for paying after all the people that pay should get the same treatment as people who dont ontop of paying. ergo 1 free unlock a day for lets use RtW as an example that way you still get the 1 free chapter that free users get. There should be some way to implement some type of system like this and overall would increase profits since it would make buying SS not as unappealing to people that only have moderate income to spend on hobbies. I can say for sure that after I run out of the $10 of SS that i bought before the promotion ended I wont be buying anymore unless this problem gets fixed cause I just feel like why bother.

Sphiinnx I agree that everybody, regardless if they've bought chapters and are ahead, should get one free chapter a day. Apart from that, what I've previously said holds.

I should add that until that system (If ever) is implemented, your free ss should be focused on one book in order to not run into this problem.

Sphiinnx I get what you mean, there are lots some amazing books that are premium, and it sucks having to pick between them, but it can't be helped. Like I said, they can't give it all to you for free, which is why myself and many others purchase spirit stones. Also, I'm sure quality will improve as they start making adequate amounts of money, as money is the best incentive.

litarius yea which as I said I will probably buy more SS once my complaint has been fixed which I hope it will. :)

GegeSadewa Many people like that will just go to some third-party site to find the chapters mirrored (kinda like what they do to WW). They have to be losing out on potential revenue on this, I can't see how the suckers who buy SS could outweigh the income from the people who would have watched an ad but will go to a rip-off site before they will actually spend money.

Gilreygar

You dont live long enough my friend. I try to say it from second day premium introduced and you know what? Nobody cares. For qi everything is about money