Webnovel.Forum

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.

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.

CKtalon
Let's focus on your last question: are people willing to watch 20-30 ads for 5 minutes or more?
To be honest, you said it yourself: that, we don't know :)
So why don't we ask the readers?
(If you ask me, I will say "Hell, yeah". I've played games that force me to watch ads every so often. This can't be that bad)

Also, the initial suggestions is simply to give options to reader; to either unlock Premium Chapter with the easy way (Spirit Stones, preferably the ones that they buy), or the hard way (watch a shitload of ads). I would argue that this is more preferable than only giving 1 option to unlock, as we have now.

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!