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MDN Plus

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Re: MDN Plus

#141

Post by throwanem »

tempest_ wrote: post #137
dfabulich wrote: post #133

MDN Plus's plan to sell access to technical "deep dive" articles is not the right approach. (Can you think of anybody who makes real money selling deep dives on the web?) We know how to do this "correctly." MDN Plus should be a VIP pass to access to the MDN team, via a private forum and/or chat room. Talk to (survey) the paying users for what new material they're interested in, and provide that. This is how basically…

Yeah, except didnt they just get rid of most of the team. "Deep Dives" can be farmed out to contractors and you dont have to worry about paying employees.

Or keeping the free content up to date, since you're concerned about revenue streams now and that isn't one of them. "Nothing is changing," indeed...

Re: MDN Plus

#142

Post by gilrain »

abraham wrote: post #136
gilrain wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are naming different prices for different people. You walk into a bar and the guy in front of you orders a beer for $5. Looks good, so you order the same thing. The bartender says, "For you it's $10." Do you feel fairly treated?

They aren't charging people different amounts, they're testing waitlist signup interest at different amounts. Presumably once they gauge interest a single level will be applied to everyone.

In the mean time, people are being charged different amounts. They are literally charging different people different amounts. You might think that isn't a big deal, but how can you insist it isn't the case?

Re: MDN Plus

#143

Post by agumonkey »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #26

At first glance, this feels a little distasteful. I've always thought of the MDN docs like Wikipedia; a non-profit public resource. Attempting to monetize it feels... wrong somehow. So long as the docs themselves remain under CC-BY-SA though guess it's not really a problem. The premium features they currently offer seem reasonable, and if things ever get too out of hand the community could always just move to another…

yeah a bit the same but if they need money to keep valuable operations like MDN going then making a way to get some cash this way doesn't bother me more than that

Re: MDN Plus

#144

Post by arcturus17 »

ArcFeind wrote: post #138

Honestly blown away by all the comments being upset that a service with real costs is charging money to cover those costs. And the weak as shit excuses about why they won't pay money for this. It's like complaining that OnlyFans exists because pornhub is free. It's $5/mo or $10/mo if you don't want to pay for it, there's the whole rest of the internet to get free web dev content from, not to mention the rest of MDN w…

One of the depressing realities of software and the internet. It’s especially depressing that people that likely build and sell technology for a living think like this.

I’ve been thinking about donating to Mozilla for a while - even though I don’t use their browser, I think they’re an indispensable force of good on the internet -, but haven’t gotten around to it. This could prove like an excellent value proposition for me and if it’s any good they can count on my money.

Re: MDN Plus

#145

Post by JohnBooty »

dfabulich wrote: post #133

MDN Plus's plan to sell access to technical "deep dive" articles is not the right approach. (Can you think of anybody who makes real money selling deep dives on the web?) We know how to do this "correctly." MDN Plus should be a VIP pass to access to the MDN team, via a private forum and/or chat room. Talk to (survey) the paying users for what new material they're interested in, and provide that. This is how basically…

Depends on what you mean by "real money."

On the fully indie side of things Michael Hartl has been doing it for a while with Ruby, front-end technologies, and seems to be doing OK for himself. I don't know what kind of profit we're talking about but it seems that it's enough to keep at it. https://www.learnenough.com/

Then there's Udemy. Max S. has 1.4 million "students" which I believe means his courses have been purchased a combined 1.4 million times. If we assume an average selling price of about $10 that's a lot of money even when we subtract Udemy's cut of the money. https://www.udemy.com/user/maximilian-schwarzmuller/

In general, be thoughtful when considering what you think "makes money" on the web. While not easy to achieve, there are a lot of folks making very good livings selling things on the web. But of course it's not going to make headlines if they are "only" making $100K or $500K. The press is only really interested in gaudy public stock offerings worth billions.

In the specific case of MDN, it certainly seems like they could sustain themselves using this model. If 10,000 people sign up and pay $10 a month that's $1.2 million/year in revenue. Certainly enough to pay for a rack of servers, some dedicated staff, and a rotating cast of outside contributors to write the articles.

Re: MDN Plus

#147

Post by whelming_wave »

gilrain wrote: post #142
abraham wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't charging people different amounts, they're testing waitlist signup interest at different amounts. Presumably once they gauge interest a single level will be applied to everyone.

In the mean time, people are being charged different amounts. They are literally charging different people different amounts. You might think that isn't a big deal, but how can you insist it isn't the case?

How can I sign up for a subscription, then? I seem to have missed it on the page.

Re: MDN Plus

#148

Post by qbasic_forever »

mileycyrusXOXO wrote: post #106

Mozilla just let me donate directly to fund the projects I love. instead of creating all these services that I’m not really sure if the money is going to the whole company or actually supporting development of these product I use I would donate to MDN, I would donate to Firefox development

Nobody would donate to the CEO and board's salary though, and that's the unfortunate problem.

Re: MDN Plus

#149

Post by dfabulich »

JohnBooty wrote: post #145
dfabulich wrote: post #133

MDN Plus's plan to sell access to technical "deep dive" articles is not the right approach. (Can you think of anybody who makes real money selling deep dives on the web?) We know how to do this "correctly." MDN Plus should be a VIP pass to access to the MDN team, via a private forum and/or chat room. Talk to (survey) the paying users for what new material they're interested in, and provide that. This is how basically…

Depends on what you mean by "real money." On the fully indie side of things Michael Hartl has been doing it for a while with Ruby, front-end technologies, and seems to be doing OK for himself. I don't know what kind of profit we're talking about but it seems that it's enough to keep at it. https://www.learnenough.com/ Then there's Udemy. Max S. has 1.4 million "students" which I believe means his courses have been pu…

Hartl sells books, not articles, which he sells as "tutorials" (classes). You're not meant to read and enjoy just one chapter of his book "Learn Enough Git to Be Dangerous" in isolation; he doesn't just send out a "deep dive" article each month on whatever he wants.

It is absolutely possible to make money selling classes/tutorials (e.g. via Udemy or any of a variety of other online class platform), but MDN is already committed to making its classes/tutorials available for free https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Tutorials

It's an essential component of MDN Plus that they have to say exactly what they say in TFA: "Nothing is changing with the existing MDN Web Docs content — this content will continue to be free and available to everyone."

As a result, MDN can't practically sell books OR classes. What's left? VIP access.

Re: MDN Plus

#150

Post by qbasic_forever »

Imagine a dystopian future where you google something like "document queryselector API" and now have to ignore both of the top two hits from W3Schools _and_ MDN as useless spam-filled low content sites.

shudder

I hope we don't go down that road...

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