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  • Keep it FREE for everyone, $6.95 Monthly Subscription to read ahead & ad-free

Billdoor

2 millions users is not an utopia. It has not reach that yet but I don't see why it can't reach that goal in the future.

It's doable as long as QI continue to have free novels and translate more novels.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.qidian.Int.reader&hl=en
Installs
100,000 - 500,000

There is also Apple App Store to add to the total app downloaded.

Wuxiaworld has 2.6 million unique visitors so I don't see why QI can't get to 2 million users in the future.

https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wuxiaworld.com
Monthly Unique Visitors 2,650,902

Look at the size of other media sites:

Crunchyroll has 20 million users according to a news release it did back in Feb 2017. So QI just need 10% of CR size.

Crunchyroll
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.crunchyroll.crunchyroid&hl=en
Installs
10,000,000 - 50,000,000

webtoons.com has

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.naver.linewebtoon&hl=en
Installs
10,000,000 - 50,000,000

Tapas (also webtoons)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tapastic&hl=en
Installs
500,000 - 1,000,000

Lezhin Comics (webtoons)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lezhin.comics&hl=en
Installs
1,000,000 - 5,000,000

Wattpad (web novels)
Installs
100,000,000 - 500,000,000

    p.s. Wattpad has 60 million active monthly users.

    2 million users is just 3.3% of Wattpad size.

    Can QI get to be 3.3% as big as Wattpad in term of monthly users?

    https://publishingperspectives.com/2017/10/watpad-ya-trends-publishing-insights-millennials/

    Ashleigh Gardner: Wattpad is for everyone. With more than 60 million monthly users and more than 2.5 million monthly writers who have published more than 400 million story uploads, we reach people all over the planet with unique content that can’t be found anywhere else.

    “Our demographics are more than 70-percent female, and 80 percent of Wattpad users are millennials or Gen Z.”

      Wattpad also have a monthly subscription ($5.99 a month), launched last month according to this article

      https://publishingperspectives.com/2017/10/wattpad-premium-subscription-bookexpo-2018-submissions/
      Wattpad Opens a Paid Subscription

      Toronto-based Wattpad has announced its first subscription plan. Wattpad Premium, as it’s called, is being launched initially in the States and will give both US and Canadian users the option of no-ad use of the platform. Fees are $5.99 per month or $59.99 per year and should give both readers and writers more control over look and feel when on the system.

      While this is the first time the company has offered a paid subscription, it’s by no means Wattpad’s initial move in revenue generation, and with more than 60 million active users accessing the platform monthly, the potential for this modest subscription to create income could be enormous.

      Wattpad is now worth $400 million USD
      https://publishingperspectives.com/2017/10/watpad-ya-trends-publishing-insights-millennials/

      Shortly after the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Globe and Mail reported on a new US$40 million investment in Wattpad by China’s Tencent Holdings, “part of a $50 million venture capital deal that values Wattpad at $400 million including the new funding,” according to the Globe’s sources. And this, as the platform announced its first paid subscription program, Wattpad Premium, which gives users and ads-free experience.

        Buster

        You are fine with the way things are now. But what if the way things are now is not generating enough money to pay translators, editors and authors? And QI want to change how it operate.

        If you to have to choose between these 2 choices, which would you choose?

        Choice A: paywall per chapter

        Choice B: Free version with ads; Premium version costs $6.95 a month to read several chapters ahead, ad-free experience, lot of power stones per day to vote

            Question, why not add a choice with downloadable epubs at a fair price other then the $6.95 sub model you just seem to want to push as I don't read more than a few novels and have no wish to sub for a load of novels I don't want too or will never read and $6.95 isn't worth it for that in any way ,
            but I'm happy to buy finished books or arc's / parts
            also, the epubs are easy to make as the work would have already been done as the pages would/ should have been already finished when uploaded so no extra work is needed
            other than a cover that's not come from other peoples works (as some have you can visit NUF to see the thread with them listed )

              ssound5rs Soft power is definitely something China needs to spread its influence.

              • Pizz replied to this.

                  Ckcw23 they've been trying to do that for ages, oddly I have no basic problem with the idea, but a few companies from China don't seem to understand the market and they seem to have gone around the wrong way and in fact done the reverse of that ...and I wonder which ones did it

                      JWPark

                      They could always make it dependent on views. If said subscribers consistently reads novel xyz then they could get more of the split.

                      Also don't see why they could not do both Spirit Stones and a blanket all you can read subscription.

                          ssound5rs

                          Also a lot of times American's sign up for subscriptions on credit cards and never actually use the service after awhile (ie gyms or netflix etc) but they keep paying because it's a small amount like $7 or $5 a month etc.

                          Compared to spirit stones which require a user to make a purchasing decision over and over again.

                              Don't forget the parent company went IPO recently. They will need to show revenue results and increases over the years.

                                ChupChup

                                That's a great point and a huge advantage for the monthly subscription model.

                                I subscribe to Netflix but in some months I hardly even use the service but I don't want to cancel because I know I will use it in the near future.

                                    Pizz

                                    QI can do both. Have a $6.95 monthly subscription for premium experience for those that want it and also sell ebooks/epubs for those like yourself who don't want monthly subscription.

                                    I would recommend that QI sell the ebooks on Amazon. There are tens of millions of readers on Amazon that don't know about Chinese fantasy.

                                    Having the ebooks on Amazon will lead to discoverability and will generate more readers who would not otherwise know anything about Chinese fantasy.

                                        Revenue sources:

                                        1) Premium subscriber at $6.95 a month. If QI can get to 100,000 total subscribers, that's $8.34 million USD a year in revenue from subscription. 100,000 paid subscribers is less than 10% of Crunchyroll total paid subscribers. It will take many months to get there but doable in my opinion.

                                        2) Ads Revenue from free users. The New York Times digital ad revenue is something like $200 million a year. So for website, the number of users is very important. Paywall will decimate this type of revenue.

                                        3) Ebooks

                                        4) Donation to the authors via power stones (for example, users can buy 200 power stones for $10 to vote for their favorite authors; authors will get 80% of the paid power stones revenue)

                                        5) Merchandise when the site a few years old. Crunchyroll Store (http://www.crunchyroll.com/store) is making decent money from their online store selling merchandise.

                                          The problem with your idea is that $6.95 get split amongst everyone based on popularity of the novels. This benefits mostly the popular (by reader base) novels. What if I don't wan't to support the authors/translators of the novels I don't care for, and only want to support the less popular stories I like? I also noticed that you seem to have a lot of ideas to make the site a unuser-friendly as possible...

                                            Klepar

                                            That is how the world work. Popular novels make more money than unpopular novels.

                                            Spotify works the same way. Spotify pays about $0.005 per stream.

                                            A popular artist with 100 million monthly stream will get $500,000 and an unknown/not mainstream artist with 1 million monthly stream will get only $5000.

                                            If that less popular artist wants to make more money on Spotify, then he/she needs to make songs that more people listen to.

                                            It's fair for every authors since the pie is divided equally based on the number of chapters read. Let's assume that each chapter read, QI will paid the author $0.005.

                                            A popular author with 2 million chapters read in that month will be paid: 2 million x $0.005 = $10,000.

                                            An unpopular author with only 100,000 chapters read in that month will be paid: 100,000 x $0.005 = $500.

                                            Each chapter that you read from that unpopular author, the author will get paid. How much that authors will get paid depend on how many people read his/her novel and how many chapters are read in a given month.

                                            There is also the DONATION option where you can donate and support these unpopular author.

                                                Pizz wrote that: "sub's and VIP will, in fact, make more people use pirate sites to read."

                                                So even with Free reading with ads (and allow people the option to buy $6.95 monthly subscription for Premium service) will make more people use pirate sites, then when QI launch a paywall, it would be 10000 times worst right?

                                                Spirit stone is likely a precursor to a paywall. In China, Qidian use Qidian points and people can also earn several free Qidian points each day. Novels cost Qidian points to buy (about $0.02 per chapter).

                                                I hope QI changes its mind about paywall and use freemium instead (free + paid monthly for extra features)

                                                  I haven't read through the whole thread, so forgive me if I say something that has already been addressed.

                                                  I personally support a monthly subscription, and I've been crying for at least a way to purchase spirit stones ever since they rolled out that system. I think it's a great idea! I don't know if I'd be willing to pay ~$7 per month, but for half of that at around $3 I'd be happy to pay. Anything that removes the super buggy adwall is a good thing in my mind. This morning I used up all my SS because one of the ad servers was down and broke the whole thing for a while.

                                                  However, Qi isn't nearly as large as CR, and it likely never will be. Anime is just so much bigger compared to webnovels. It would be extremely hard for qi to hit 50k paid users, though I fully hope that such a day will come.

                                                  Anyway, just saying that I'm willing to fork over some cash.

                                                    PearPressure

                                                    If $6.95 is a bit high, QI can charge $5.99 a month for premium services like Wattpad is doing.

                                                    Even QI is only 10% the size of Crunchyroll in the future, that is 100,000+ paid subscribers with more and more paid subscribers joining in everyday. The thing about media subscription service, they tend to grow in numbers. Netflix, Hulu, Crunchyroll, Spotify, NY Times digital newspaper all growing in paid subscribers month by month.

                                                    Look at Crunchyroll paid subscribers:

                                                    2012: ~125,000 paid subscribers
                                                    2013: ~250,000 paid subscribers
                                                    2014: ~480,000 paid subscribers
                                                    2015: ~740,000 paid subscribers
                                                    2016: 1,000,000 paid subscribers

                                                    The trend is more and more paid subscribers.

                                                        JWPark so true, the popularity of the Novel is different and if the pay is not the same and biased or there are some unfavourable circumstances for the translator that could mess things up, right now if the readers want to read the advance chapter with add free they can go to Patreon which helps a lot to the Translator as well.

                                                          You can read Advance chapters and Add free in patrons, you want VIP because you just want to show your status here, simple thing make Qidian sell spirit stones and you can use that to skip add and read it, we don't need VIP, this type of privilege just divide the society, if you are so rich you can just hire somebody to translate for you or just donate them through patrons, this is like those cashers in the game who use their money to bully other people and happy about it, we are just commoners who love to read, rich people always have to ruin everything.

                                                            In case nobody has noticed, QI is gearing up to implement the paywall. Spirit stones look a lot like Qidian points in China where readers use to buy chapters and reward/tip the authors.

                                                            QI paywall will look something like this:

                                                            First 100 chapters will be free.
                                                            4 Spirit Stones for each chapter after that. The cost of each spirit stone is $0.01 USD. So basically $0.04 per chapter. $1 will get you 25 chapters.

                                                            Even if you earn some spirit stones daily, it will nowhere be enough so you have to pay.

                                                              Enlightened_Being

                                                              The rich ruin everything? It's the rich that subsidizing the poor in freemium business model.

                                                              For those that don't want to pay for music streaming, which is better?

                                                              Option A: $10 a month paywall (Apple Music) - no free music streaming
                                                              Option B: freemium service (Spotify) - free music streaming with ads. $10 a month for ad-free Spotify

                                                              What is better for the "commoners" / free users?

                                                              Option A: $0.04 per chapter Paywall that QI is about to implement
                                                              Option B: Free with ads and letting those that can afford it pay money to get advanced chapters, ad-free, lot of power stones

                                                              If you use Crunchyroll free version, do you want Crunchyroll to get rid of free ad-supported anime and start charging $0.49 per episode instead?

                                                                  If QI implement a $0.04 per chapter paywall in January 2018,

                                                                  what percentage of the readers will leave for pirate sites? (costing QI ad-revenue)
                                                                  what percentage of the readers will pay?

                                                                    ssound5rs I would say 80% will leave. I wouldn't stay here either, because why? There is no gain here, I can still support my favorite translator via patreon if I want

                                                                      Here is my problem with this whole discussion:

                                                                      Qidian seems determined to show user growth but neglects to setup a sustainable revenue model for that growth.

                                                                      Case in point:
                                                                      Qidian attempts to get everyone to use their mobile platforms like their Android app as the preferred method to read chapters. What is missing? A way to generate revenue. The android app is ad-free and doesn't cost anything to use. This isn't sustainable when you have all of the costs that are associated with a mobile app platform. Why not have ads in between chapters?

                                                                      Another Case:
                                                                      Qidian on their web platform uses infinite scrolling with a single ad between each chapter. That's great for a reader but a horrible idea if you want to actually make money through advertising. Getting rid of infinite scrolling would allow you to throw banner ads at the top & bottom of a page. This doubles your advertising revenue with minimal impact to the reader. It also increases your hit counts.

                                                                      Here is an article on the impact of infinite scrolling:
                                                                      https://digiday.com/media/publishers-see-finite-rewards-infinite-scroll/

                                                                      The fact that Qidian isn't leveraging ad revenue as efficiently as they should tells us that advertising isn't how they expect to make money in the future. It suggests that they are going to find a way to force their existing model in China at some point on the international market.

                                                                      To date Qidian has been pretty rigid in their thinking, ignoring, to their detriment, the dissatisfaction in the translation community.


                                                                        checkm8

                                                                        Nothing wrong with infinite scrolling.
                                                                        It's much better than having to click Next Chapter every time.

                                                                        Having banners ads at the top & bottom of a page will just clutter the page and make the reading experience worst.

                                                                        Ad-revenue is only generated when a user click on the ad. Would having banners ads at the top & bottom of a chapter drastically help improve the ad click rate compare to having the banner only at the bottom? Not worth the bad reading experience with having 2 banners ad

                                                                        There are ads on the app. Maybe you don't see it because QI is testing some issues.

                                                                        https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.qidian.Int.reader&hl=en

                                                                        Webnovel
                                                                        8,193
                                                                        Webnovel (Cloudary Holdings Limited) Entertainment
                                                                        Everyone Everyone
                                                                        Contains ads

                                                                            ssound5rs Only a few novels i enjoy enough to pay per chapter honestly, most of my reading is time-killing with novels i just find 'okay'

                                                                              ssound5rs Nothing wrong with infinite scrolling.
                                                                              It's much better than having to click Next Chapter every time.

                                                                              This is from the perspective of actually making a profitable website, not from the reader perspective.

                                                                              ssound5rs Ad-revenue is only generated when a user click on the ad. Would having banners ads at the top & bottom of a chapter drastically help improve the ad click rate compare to having the banner only at the bottom? Not worth the bad reading experience with having 2 banners ad

                                                                              This is incorrect, Ads also can generates revenue per 1000 views, Pay Per time frame and pay per click.

                                                                              ssound5rs Contains ads

                                                                              Just because it says it can doesn't mean that there are actual ads.

                                                                                      ssound5rs one thing I would say is that and this may sound very odd, but a better range of ads are needed for the site as i go ones for women's clothing and stuff that id never clicked on yes I get the odd gaming on but once again for game types id never play, whoever picked the ad company, made a huge screw up as once again it show's they have no idea of the demographics of people that would use the site , and this, in turn, brings in less money
                                                                                      also the comment about epubs i made, yes selling via amazon I can see the point ( but only put very well know books on as a backdoor way of getting people to the site) but to me I think it's a bad idea as they take a cut and means less money to the site once again, the main volume of books should be sold via here as it's not like qi dosen't have tencent behind them

                                                                                          Before QI implement the paywall strategy, how about trying out freemium service for 6 months as a trial/test?
                                                                                          $5.99 a month for premium services (ad-free, read ahead 5-10 chapters of every novels, 15 power stones daily to use as ranking votes)

                                                                                          Other novels site that charge monthly for premium:

                                                                                          https://j-novel.club/faq
                                                                                          J-Novel Club (for Japanese light novels/web novels): $4.95 a month for normal membership and $10.95 a month for Premium membership

                                                                                          https://royalroadl.com/premium
                                                                                          $2.99 a month for ad-free

                                                                                          https://premium.wattpad.com/
                                                                                          $5.99 a month for ad-free

                                                                                          Kindle Unlimited: $10 a month
                                                                                          Kindle Unlimited probably has about 5-7 million paying subscribers since they are paying about $500 million this year to authors/publishers for their ebook subscription service.

                                                                                          What do you, as the consumer, gain by a paywall? Nothing. Qidian-International has a HORRIBLE paywall on the mother site (Qidian) of like 1000 chapters unreadable without paying.

                                                                                          If you want to support the author and not the site or company you donate straight to the author, paying through anywhere else will make the author less than you gave. If ad-free is the only thing, you care about just download Ad-blocker free and straightforward.

                                                                                          If Qidian had deemed this profitable, they would have gone forward with this plan of a paywall already. The problem being they will lose more than they gain. If a paywall existed, I would leave that same day and go back to Wuxiaworld and Gravity Tales.

                                                                                          This plan (paywall/subscriptions), is likely already in the works and is also likely to be implemented soon (One to two years).

                                                                                          Much like every other subscription plan, it is a money grab at people who have too much of it. As I stated above if your first concern about this to support the authors donate to the author directly and not to the company and if ads are your problem use ad blocker.

                                                                                          I don't think it will be worth. lets say i'm only reading 1 novel(because i'm too picky) and the monthly chapters release is below than 50 chapters and there's too little plot advancement. The patreon is much a better idea. the translator can have the money(i think QI still pays the translator) he/she got in his/her patreon while the QI will keep the money they got from the ad revenue. and i think you do not need to think about this paywall or membership thing because QI have their own plans.

                                                                                          "Kindle Unlimited: $10 a month
                                                                                          Kindle Unlimited probably has about 5-7 million paying subscribers since they are paying about $500 million this year to authors/publishers for their ebook subscription service."
                                                                                          shouldn't be used in your post, the reason being, it has extra like audiobooks etc, so is a bigger service from a known western company and has more to offer to start with
                                                                                          ( btw i don't mean western/ eastern companies in a bad way, i just in the fact that they are more well known in the west over the east )

                                                                                          also, wattpad ad-free's only just started in oct 2017 , so once again I wouldn't add that in as they don't even know if it will work also the company's been running for 10 years +,
                                                                                          unlike qi in the west and no one knows about apart from the limited base of readers in most country's

                                                                                          anything over the 5.99 for an unknown company in the west would be seen as a joke also you picked Crunchyroll, they were a pirate website with followers before they signed deals, you've missed that huge point out ..ie they had been know about once again for a long time and had a following

                                                                                          i mean even youtube has just given up on it's paid for ad's free service

                                                                                          well, if you can't afford it?.. maybe it's time we stop to reading fiction..

                                                                                          • Pizz replied to this.

                                                                                            jinxsan i can afford it unlike others who need the ad model as they are college/uni/school or just plain broke not thru their choice, but like hell do I want to pay for a load of book's
                                                                                            I will never want to read, especially some of the over the top nationalistic and racist stuff that's been released on the main qi site in china in the past or still now and has been tl'd in the past on other sites in the west like GT with SW like when the mc visits japan in that part of the arc
                                                                                            that's why I've said even within this post why not release epubs or arc's (when finished) or whole books then you can buy what you want to read like I love Once Upon A Time, There Was A Spirit Sword Mountain ( which is one of the better ln's on this whole site and has a great tl team, but ranks a lot lower then it should do but thats my oppion ) give me a hardback or released arc's as epub's I'll be more than happy to by them and i think they shoulkd be sold on here so, in fact, the website makes more, but also on amazon as that can be used for free backdoor adversiment of the site by selling the top tem ln's etc on the site

                                                                                                Depending upon their goals in the long run, even 24$/per year or 2.33$/month subscriptions could be feasible for maintenance costs -- then adding additional optional tiers for those who wish to contribute more. The market for these English translated novels is still relatively small. It would not be smart to charge a large fee for premiums as of yet.
                                                                                                Ad impressions still average $1/1000, therefore there is still a large difference.

                                                                                                it so fascinating to read all these ideas,discussion and debates that i even forget to read latest novel chap..i like all these ideas and hope all can be implemented(i dont know anything pls dont cry at me) cuz i also have 2 3 novels i want to fully support as they are not popular in this site.hope u guys debate more cuz i want read these rather then some novels haha...

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