If you think, website owner, that I am losing you money by refusing to be told to buy home insurance, then just give me a way to give you that money directly and stop nagging me about it.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
I will neither make the effort to click the "Donate" link on each site I visit, but what if we could dedicate a Flattr/Patreon-like monthly amount to supporting websites? It could be:
- Slowly drained during the month, or split at the end of the month in proportion of the visits.
- Done by the ISP? It would probably be the least privacy-invasive option, since they are already being trusted with knowing what my usage is. Imagine your ISP usage dashboard greeting you with "You're on a 2MB unlimited ADSL line, for 40 $/month. You are also choosing to pay 10 $/month for proportional website remuneration, which currently will go to these sites: <pie chart showing my money split>. Websites frequently visited but not appearing here might not be part of ProportionalMonetizationPlatform, or be paid apps that you remunerate directly."
---
I think I'd rather just let you visit with an ad blocker than try to convince anyone that that idea would work
You're effectively trying to take America's tipping system and apply it to your ISP and apply that to the world?
Do you know how many ISPs there are in the world? They can barely agree on where to route traffic sometimes much less a system that wouldn't benefit them in any way
I think you're proposing the impossible to put yourself in a morally good position. "I'll never view ads because <impossible request>" like the people that claim piracy is fine because they wouldn't have bought the content anyway so nobody loses out.
It's just a lie, it'd be more honest to just say "fuck content creators, I'm not watching adverts. Who cares if they can't make money" than this method of remuneration you've come up with
- Where do you see the slightest tentative to put "myself in a good position" ? I'm making a proposal and seeing what other members of this community think about it.
- Bravo for implying I'm saying "fuck to content creators" . Because, yes, I have both Patreon and Flattr accounts donating to a few of them. But like said elsewhere in this thread by another commenter, this fails to compensate "one-off websites" and am discussing what a solution could look like without the drawbacks of advertising.
- So because of some technicality (ISPs not agreeing) we are prohibited from even talking about changing anything?! Applause, nice approach to problem solving.
I'll leave the comment there for the sake of others being able to follow where this ended up but you are correct and to be frank it was a pretty terrible post on my part. The post only really needed the troubles of implementing it at the ISP level, if anything.
--
Regarding the ISP part, I fully agree it would be tough to implement; I was throwing this idea because I had never seen it being expressed and wanted to see if commenters could point to related "prior art" / similar experiments in some parts of the world.
Mainly, my own starting point for the idea is France's (and maybe other countries?) interrupted path to a "Global License" for music [1]. The idea, expressed as a law proposal in 2005 at a time of majors freaking out about P2P, was to (fr.wikipedia translation mine) "Authorize non-commercial access and sharing of cultural content, in exchange for a proportional artists remuneration."
It was interrupted in 2009 in favor of a repressive fine system (HADOPI, [2]). But if such a very much pie-in-the-sky idea can make its way to a law proposal (with assorted technical analysis) somewhere in the world, maybe something similar is worth discussing for ads.
[1] (french) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licence_globale
[2] (english) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HADOPI_law
Thinking further (or.. at all) the models that flattr but more successfully patreon provide do seem to work and would appear to be the best model if the community you're providing for is willing to use such a system - and they are, in many cases. I can think of a podcast or two that rather than use sponsored messages are funded by their community through patreon. In fact I can only imagine they're earning more and in a more stable fashion for doing so
I'm not sure if an ISP-level funding source would be feasible on the global scale but that may just be my own limits talking, something that definitely works in replacement of adverts is the product (in this example a podcast) being free but with perks for those that want to support the creator directly. The easiest added extras in this example would be behind the scenes, an additional private podcast, archives of episodes long gone by.
If micropayments will never work, via bitcoin or anything else, then another alternative is Google Contributor.
https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/
But there has to be a better way than trying to get me to buy shit I don't need. Our web browsing experience shouldn't be powering consummerism.