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If the site offered functionality I needed, or liked the answer is yes. Services like Patreon are great for this model. Where I can just throw $2-3 USD per mont

If the site offered functionality I needed, or liked the answer is yes. Services like Patreon are great for this model. Where I can just throw $2-3 USD per month at artists or projects I want to continue making new things. The challenge is you the creator needs to make a service or tool that I actually want, need, or of such exemplary quality that I feel obligated to help see it continue existing. This isn't a new daring model of funding, NPR/PBS/FSF have done this for decades.

corobo 11y ago
Ok so let's say you are having trouble with your wifi on windows 8. It mysteriously keeps dropping out You search google for "windows 8 wifi keeps dropping out" and you hit my site. My site tells you it's likely windows disabling the adapter to save power and how to stop it from doing that. Your issue is resolved and your life is that much easier for it. But you'll never be back to that site that fixed your wifi You're going to pay monthly for that one time? I'll stick with ads in the hopes that not everyone uses an ad blocker. Ads are the only viable revenue for drive-by sites like this. Ones that help a multitude of single specific issues that aren't related enough for many to subscribe for long periods of time
- jordigh 11y ago
  Okay, fine. I visited your website, refused to be told to buy a subscription to a dating website, and now after you've served me the page and saw that my browser isn't rendering something that is telling me about that subscripton, you then decide to tell my web browser to not show anything at all. From here I am supposed to feel guilty for not wanting to hear about that new car model, and thus after hearing about about that new magazine I should buy, I shall be allowed to hear how to fix my computer problems. Thus I learn how to fix things, you get some fractions of a penny off me, and hopefully I will some day go on to buy some great new self-help book. This sucks. I don't want to be told to buy anything. If you want money, just take my money. Don't tell me to give other people money.
  - corobo 11y ago
    You do make a fair point and to be completely honest I think I was only really picturing the non-obtrusive CPM forms of advertising where a view is enough to get however many fractions of a penny it's worth rather than clicks. I guess in that sense really thinking about it I also believe ads are worthless too.. Just to clarify my post was not the best written at all, I've got no real problem with ad blockers and I do use one myself in a blacklist fashion for those really terrible ads that (in the case of my local newspaper's site) rip the page in half and really try to get in the way so you'll pay attention to them. In the ideal world something like flattr would be the best model for current ad-based revenue sites, easily better would be selling something directly that people actually want as a service or product
- valarauca1 11y ago
  Okay lets say you actually make a website's who entire job is to answer simple tech support questions via a user friendly question/answer interface that is self indexed by itself. Not just indexed by google. Then you'd actually be providing a service. Otherwise your just a single reference, no valuable or critical then any other. I can just grab the next result. What you described is inherently worthless in this day and age. That one fact may exist on hundreds of different websites, yours generates no value to myself, its existence is irrelevant due to its ease of replacement. Why should I support you? What do I need you for? All you are doing is taxing my access to information, not assisting me in acquiring it.

corobo 11y ago

Ok so let's say you are having trouble with your wifi on windows 8. It mysteriously keeps dropping out You search google for "windows 8 wifi keeps dropping out" and you hit my site. My site tells you it's likely windows disabling the adapter to save power and how to stop it from doing that. Your issue is resolved and your life is that much easier for it. But you'll never be back to that site that fixed your wifi You're going to pay monthly for that one time? I'll stick with ads in the hopes that not everyone uses an ad blocker. Ads are the only viable revenue for drive-by sites like this. Ones that help a multitude of single specific issues that aren't related enough for many to subscribe for long periods of time

jordigh 11y ago
Okay, fine. I visited your website, refused to be told to buy a subscription to a dating website, and now after you've served me the page and saw that my browser isn't rendering something that is telling me about that subscripton, you then decide to tell my web browser to not show anything at all. From here I am supposed to feel guilty for not wanting to hear about that new car model, and thus after hearing about about that new magazine I should buy, I shall be allowed to hear how to fix my computer problems. Thus I learn how to fix things, you get some fractions of a penny off me, and hopefully I will some day go on to buy some great new self-help book. This sucks. I don't want to be told to buy anything. If you want money, just take my money. Don't tell me to give other people money.
- corobo 11y ago
  You do make a fair point and to be completely honest I think I was only really picturing the non-obtrusive CPM forms of advertising where a view is enough to get however many fractions of a penny it's worth rather than clicks. I guess in that sense really thinking about it I also believe ads are worthless too.. Just to clarify my post was not the best written at all, I've got no real problem with ad blockers and I do use one myself in a blacklist fashion for those really terrible ads that (in the case of my local newspaper's site) rip the page in half and really try to get in the way so you'll pay attention to them. In the ideal world something like flattr would be the best model for current ad-based revenue sites, easily better would be selling something directly that people actually want as a service or product
valarauca1 11y ago
Okay lets say you actually make a website's who entire job is to answer simple tech support questions via a user friendly question/answer interface that is self indexed by itself. Not just indexed by google. Then you'd actually be providing a service. Otherwise your just a single reference, no valuable or critical then any other. I can just grab the next result. What you described is inherently worthless in this day and age. That one fact may exist on hundreds of different websites, yours generates no value to myself, its existence is irrelevant due to its ease of replacement. Why should I support you? What do I need you for? All you are doing is taxing my access to information, not assisting me in acquiring it.