Webnovel.Forum

Ok, lets just cut to the chase. No one here is against QI making money. The question is how to make it so that money is not overcharging massivly for content + ensuring survival and growth.

There are Two alternative paying methods thats been mentioned here. First Increased Ad Reventue, Second a Subscription model. Lets face the facts. QI SS is to expensive, some will argue but the point becomes this: I can get WAY MORE content ALMOST ANYWHERE for the same price. QI is going internasjonal, and as such wants to enter the market where online entertainment is already very filled with other altneratives that charge way way less. This is a problem!

I will use myself. With other entertainments etc I do I got a total entertainment budget a month of a about 100usd roughly I think. Now QI gets maybe 10 of those tops, more likely 5. If QI wants a bigger share of those funds, they need to provide a deal that is lucrative enough for me to REMOVE an other form of entertainment. First, watching adds for me does not cost me money directly but it costs a little time, for my "favorite" novels etc thats a steal to me and im happy to watch adds, providing the adds CAN MUTE sound as some are badly done and hurt the ears and you get tired hearing the same one 100 times. This is revenue that I believe is being pointed out for QI, it does not matter about dependancy or anything, its revenue you would get that you DONT today, resulting in higher profit margings, keep last 50-100 Chapters of a series premium. Or create a counter when you have unlocked 100 Premium chapters then you are done paying for that novel but keep the adds only there are loads of ways to make Ads valuable, Im not saying base your operating budget on it, but you can aim for profitmargin from it.

Then you have a subscription model. The key question here is how it would work, and how much should it cost and what content should it give. My suggested model would be this: Pay a monthly subscription of X amount, you can probably make several options here. And in return you get X amount of a new stone each day. We already get power stones and energy stones based on our level on QI to use, why not just add a third that is renewed daily just like these but only works for subscribers, this new stone becomes an alternative way to unlock chapters equall to SS stones except 1 of this new stone unlocks the chapter regardless of its lenght or ss cost. Since it would renvew daily this would mean even on a subscription model SS stones would have value. My baseline would probably be 10 Stones for 10usd a day. 25 for 20.

This would ont be ad dependant, it does not allow unlimited reading, but would take a larger share of alot of free readers pockets. As lets face it, alot of novels are great and we do get hooked, being able to read some of those stabily for a subscription fee? alot of us would providing its not unreasonable.

Zhevons The TLs were probably offered more money. Patreon already use the subscription thing, but they still switched here. A lot of TLs apologized and probably suspended their donation pages.

The Ad revenue thing could be worked out. However that still depends if they actually could pull products through their company. Most of their Ads were all about just local apps so that probably don't pay much. AD agencies might not be comfortable enough to try reading sites and apps. Also there's youtube that has a pot of gold when it came to advertising. Even I won't choose a reading app as an Ad medium.

The important thing for QI heads, is that their reaping profits from spirit stones sales so they won't be changing their buisness tactic anytime soon. Unless someone boycott this addiction mechanic, it will go on.

bachingchung

Perhaps. But its not sustainable, thats the problem. The price is to high. People overall are greedy with their money, if they can avoid paying they will. Its the same problem as online piracy and more. But people are willing to pay for good products. LN's here have a few big flaws that over time add up to prevent current system to be able to survive long term.

Problem nr 1: Price for content compared to other forms of online media.
Problem nr 2: Being unable to continue to read favorite LN's after going premium and stay up to date.
Problem nr 3: The amount of "filler" chapters. Chapters where story does not advance or is relevant is high.
Problem nr 4: They came in with a bad reputation in first place and current practices is not helping.

So yes, it may be going profit now, but I know that QI is making LESS money from me now then before. ALOT less, by Interest in LN's has gone down significantly and I love reading it. Before I used to be on the site and probably read over 100-200 chapters a day, now its in single digits mostly. This means that even for me, who has a high interest in general for this medium, is getting "turned off" by the site at present time. Alot more people care alot less, this does not build pupulairty, it does the opposite. That is negative growth.

The key here, is that people like me WANT to continue to read, find the site a great place to do so, but feel we are hit by a unrealistic paywall to continue to do so. Some say its a sellers market, sure. But when your selling something for 20usd (1250 SS) And that gives me perhaps 100 Chapters total. Far less then for me atleast previous daily quota (yes I read alot.) For 10USD I get kindle unlimited, I get netflix, game subscriptions etc that gives me way more CONTENT for the same value. This is why I state SS is to expensive, combine that with daily free SS count being so low. Its impossible for people to get their addicted fed and that leads people to find other addictions instead.

These reasons stated above just makes it obvious that current models are flawed if growth is the goal. If the goal is to continue to milk current base further It will only last so long. I have stoped picking up novels to read because I know I can not afford to invest the amount required to stay up to date for the amount of novels I want to read. It becomes a matter of price. This is why I advokate for a subscription model. So im asking whats the breaking point. WHAT MONTHLY SUM would QI consider it profitable to allow for this. Its not like it would be hard to add a subscription model where you pay say 20 USD, you get 20 new type stones a day, can read 20 chapters a day. That allows you to roughly follow 2-3 Novels at a time and stay up to date, it feeds an addiction enough that when those novels eventualy end, other novels will be picked up. Add various subscription values and you can tailor it so its possible to get more. The resetting of the stones a day is trivial considering they got power stones and energy stones already.

So the key point I guess im stating is this. PLEASE OFFER a deal that allows for one to keep up with atleast 3 novels . Considering the amount of novels on the site and its growth in content, there is no way for people today to keep up. Does anyone really believe people will spend 50USD pluss monthly over and over for this ? To finish current series maybe, but you think they will pick up MORE after ? A huge drop off rate there atleast. This is why im saying current model is flawed. I want QI to keep running, I like their release speed, I like that they keep adding more content, I like that it offers something "fresh" but that freshness only lasts so long.

Zhevons the sales on spirit stones will decline sooner or later, that's for sure. But the readers won't stop. Once you get the feel of that high, you just can't stop.
You don't have to be a premium user to read other novels. You'll still get your chapters daily. So if you can't handle the spirit stones to unlock chapters, then you could read a hundred novels so you could read a hundred chapters daily.

bachingchung The readers will go elsewhere. That's the problem. We live in a world of free entertainment. Trying to compete with free means you either have to have a huge quality difference or you have to have a huge quantity difference. Qidian is selling average quality products individually. They can't continue this way; it's just not economically viable.

Pizz just wait for a month and you could get free epubs. Why squander when you can easily plunder?

Krazyguy75 if you find a site that have the premium chapters unlocked notify me too.

bachingchung I can already get epubs if I wished too, in fact, I probably know of more ways then most as I've read ln's for over 20 yrs + i can even find older works and releases from group's long gone,
but you seem to be missing the point,
if you don't, in fact, show some request to the writer by buying their work,
why would they bother writing more...
in that case, we, in fact, lose in the long run and also the epubs are only £2.00 ish an epub in the UK,
which is still cheaper than the stones etc
I don't 100% like QI due to the way they work, but should that mean I hate or not respect the writer and the "good" tl'er groups

Krazyguy75 QI is selling what in the USA would have been classed as old 50's dime novels, but qi seems to have the mindset they are selling happy potter level books and unhappily 99% of the releases are no way even close to that type of level, they only have a 2-3 novels close to that level ,
also, it dosesn't help that we as readers get no real choice still as to what should be worked on yet it's being enforced on us by a few people,
if qi think about that a bit more it would help a lot, like getting qi to in fact tl a full list of the novels they have and we could make some real requests on the next releases to be worked one, then vote for the works to be picked up

Pizz That's only part of the problem. They are selling low quality goods, yes, and they are selling it for too much, yes, but the main problem is in the method of release.

Say I sell you a burger for $5. You'll be like "that's expensive", but if you are very hungry, you'll eat it. But if I give you some breadcrumbs and a dot of ground beef for 1 cent and say "Here's your burger", no one would be happy.

Qidian are trying to sell an uncompleted low quality novel with no assurance as to completion time or rate as if it were a completed high quality novel. Those are very different things.

Krazyguy75 I like your way of putting it:) , this is one of the reasons I keep saying they should release a full list works that qi own and we can say pick a cheaper burger or one with all the works and pay a little more, but I do find the idea of using the word count a bit of a joke to work out the cost of a chapter as it really doesn't work outside China and some releases are bumping the count , and i can still never understand in the digtal age the idea that qi don't release finished epubs as thats easy money , that would bring down site running costs and even novel costs , I've just oredered 3 novels from GT who are 90% owned by qi and 600 chapters have cost about £8.00 uk is inc vat and they've already made moeny on the daily releases and now on the released arc's to me that a win/win idea

This site seemed interesting at first, but then I saw the locked chapters, and saw that some novels have hundreds of locked chapters. Just one I looked at had 170 locked, and the price to unlock all of those, not counting new ones that would surely be locked, would be $20 or more. Thats not worth it when I can buy a full novel for like $8-$10 and thats buying it in a bookstore new. They have to actually produce a physical copy which takes resources and costs money. An online option like this does not require those resources so it should be cheaper not more expensive.

And yes, I am aware that hosting content can be expensive, but I am also aware that I could do the same thing just from my home computer right now.

And I know that checking in daily gives you some of what it takes to unlock chapters, however at best its only enough for 1 chapter a day. When someone like me can read an entire paperback novel in a day, its just not enough and buying the stuff to unlock isnt worth it as I mentioned since its more expensive than just buying an actual book. Not only that, but most novels in paperback are already finished, so you dont have to worry that the author (or the translator) will get tired of it and drop it. So off to other sites I guess.

Zanaria you could just wait for all the chapters to unlock themselves like you would wait for a paperback novel to be completed.