Penny Arcade Sells Out • Hacker News Board

Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out

#11

Post by gilrain » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 6:03 PM UTC

Zimahl wrote: post #6

ChuckMcM wrote: post #4

Interesting take on the crowd funding issue. I expect to see more of these sorts of creative things. Advertising debt is annoying. And sadly people like PA with their 2 ads get nailed because people have been so massively inundated with ads all day that even one more is painful. Another experiment they haven't tried, but would be good to run, would be to make the site subscriber only with the long tail free. So imagi…

Unfortunately for PA, their content is probably 90% games/pop culture topical. After a month it'd be completely stale and irrelevant (with exceptions of course). I think the better move would be to have pay users not have to see any ads. Simple web re-design to remove that for pay users, otherwise free users still have to look at the ads. There are a ton of sites that do this and are quite successful.

Their goal is to redirect the people they have handling advertisers into projects for creating new content. Also, Mike tweeted (http://twitter.com/cwgabriel/status/222718794798350336) "I don't want to spoil some of the un-lockables but if we aren't making projects for advertisers we are free to make projects for you."

They clearly want to stop spending effort on ads altogether and spend it on new content for their readers, instead.

Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out

#12

Post by ascendant » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 6:10 PM UTC

gfosco wrote: post #10

wkdown wrote: post #3

For $500, they will retweet one of your tweets "within reason". Wow, put me down for TWO!

The rewards are totally lame, and insanely priced. I love the comic, and really it's not worth a dollar of mine to remove the ads I don't even look at. The Kickstarter goal doesn't even remove the ad from the Comic page.

Most people are going to donate less than $200 and the people that will donate will do it because they love the site, not because they're looking for swag. I've been reading PA since 2001 and aside from buying a t-shirt, have been entertained 3 times a week for over a decade for free, aside from the inherent value of my eyeballs. If I toss them some cash it will be because I love the site and because I want to support what I regard as a really awesome company, not because I demand they give me more stuff.

Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out

#13

Post by ben0x539 » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 6:10 PM UTC

adventureful wrote: post #8

thatusertwo wrote: post #2

An internet without ads would be amazing.

A $45 billion kickstarter for 2013 should do the trick for the US market.

I'll link you to adblock for $44 billion and 50 cent.

In fact, let me write up a kickstarter proposal.

Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out

#14

Post by jerf » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 6:13 PM UTC

gfosco wrote: post #10

wkdown wrote: post #3

For $500, they will retweet one of your tweets "within reason". Wow, put me down for TWO!

The rewards are totally lame, and insanely priced. I love the comic, and really it's not worth a dollar of mine to remove the ads I don't even look at. The Kickstarter goal doesn't even remove the ad from the Comic page.

You aren't really paying to remove the ads.

There's a couple of comics I'd like to see on Kickstarter this way, because I wouldn't mind tossing them some bucks, but all they have are merchandise (which I've already bought) and PayPal links. Sorry, no, no PayPal. I wouldn't really care about the rewards, I've already received them.

Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out

#15

Post by InclinedPlane » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 6:15 PM UTC

Zimahl wrote: post #5

I enjoy Penny Arcade. That said, it seems like an awful lot of money for an ad-free website. Aren't they making enough off of merchandise, their expo, their games, etc., to make the site ad free? From what I understand they are wildly successful (monetarily as well as publicly) so why do they need the public to literally give them money?

They have over a dozen employees, do the math it doesn't work out to a killing for them to have this kickstarter succeed at 250k a year. They could survive without any ad revenue at all just on their other sources of revenue alone, but that's a hard sell when they have so many visitors and doing so might limit what they could do. Make no mistake, almost certainly they are potentially leaving a lot of money on the table by doing this campaign.

This is an experiment. Ultimately the money changes hands the same way regardless, this is just a test to see if it's possible to do it without all the indirection and middle men. Also, for PA this is a fairly low risk activity, but if they prove the model works it could open things up for a lot of smaller web comics and art sites.

Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out

#16

Post by Zimahl » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 6:16 PM UTC

portmanteaufu wrote: post #9

Zimahl wrote: post #5

I enjoy Penny Arcade. That said, it seems like an awful lot of money for an ad-free website. Aren't they making enough off of merchandise, their expo, their games, etc., to make the site ad free? From what I understand they are wildly successful (monetarily as well as publicly) so why do they need the public to literally give them money?

From the FAQ: Advertising paid for rent, wages, health insurance, utilities, all the normal stuff that you pay for when you have fourteen souls working together. That money keeps the lights on while we do the things people expect from us: thrice weekly content drops, two annual shows, the scholarships, Child's Play, etc.

> two annual shows, the scholarships, Child's Play

The shows make money, otherwise they wouldn't do them. By most accounts they make a lot of money. PAX Prime 2011 had 70k attendees (according to Wikipedia) and at $65 a pop that's a hefty (~$4.5 million) in revenue not to mention what exhibitors pay (which can't be cheap for the target audience). They make more than enough money off of this to go ad free.

The scholarships are their problem, the comic reader gets nothing out of those except warm fuzzies.

Child's Play should be able to maintain itself on low overhead and a non-profit status. It should cost them a minimal amount of money and any it does the company can directly write off.

Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out

#17

Post by jere » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 6:33 PM UTC

portmanteaufu wrote: post #9

Zimahl wrote: post #5

I enjoy Penny Arcade. That said, it seems like an awful lot of money for an ad-free website. Aren't they making enough off of merchandise, their expo, their games, etc., to make the site ad free? From what I understand they are wildly successful (monetarily as well as publicly) so why do they need the public to literally give them money?

From the FAQ: Advertising paid for rent, wages, health insurance, utilities, all the normal stuff that you pay for when you have fourteen souls working together. That money keeps the lights on while we do the things people expect from us: thrice weekly content drops, two annual shows, the scholarships, Child's Play, etc.

At the risk of sounding like Scrooge: I would assume most people think of Penny Arcade as the thrice weekly "content drops" (while viewing the rest as peripheral) and it certainly doesn't take 14 people to draw a comic.

Asking the community for $1 million every single year to draw a comic seems a bit steep.

I'm not saying it's not worth it. I probably will contribute, but it feels like a lot of for a small thing.

Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out

#18

Post by scott_s » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 6:38 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #4

Interesting take on the crowd funding issue. I expect to see more of these sorts of creative things. Advertising debt is annoying. And sadly people like PA with their 2 ads get nailed because people have been so massively inundated with ads all day that even one more is painful. Another experiment they haven't tried, but would be good to run, would be to make the site subscriber only with the long tail free. So imagi…

Judging by everything I have read, listened to, and watched of them over the past decade, I think they would have zero interest in any model where people only get content if they pay.

Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out

#19

Post by mkaltenecker » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 6:40 PM UTC

Zimahl wrote: post #16

portmanteaufu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the FAQ: Advertising paid for rent, wages, health insurance, utilities, all the normal stuff that you pay for when you have fourteen souls working together. That money keeps the lights on while we do the things people expect from us: thrice weekly content drops, two annual shows, the scholarships, Child's Play, etc.

> two annual shows, the scholarships, Child's Play The shows make money, otherwise they wouldn't do them. By most accounts they make a lot of money. PAX Prime 2011 had 70k attendees (according to Wikipedia) and at $65 a pop that's a hefty (~$4.5 million) in revenue not to mention what exhibitors pay (which can't be cheap for the target audience). They make more than enough money off of this to go ad free. The scholar…

Tim Schafer said “That much money for Pax Prime?” when discussing the budget (more specifically, which non-wage stuff to cut or leave in) for the Double Fine Adventure in the latest episode of the documentary.

Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out

#20

Post by girasquid » Tue, Jul 10, 2012, 6:47 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #14

gfosco wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rewards are totally lame, and insanely priced. I love the comic, and really it's not worth a dollar of mine to remove the ads I don't even look at. The Kickstarter goal doesn't even remove the ad from the Comic page.

You aren't really paying to remove the ads. There's a couple of comics I'd like to see on Kickstarter this way, because I wouldn't mind tossing them some bucks, but all they have are merchandise (which I've already bought) and PayPal links. Sorry, no, no PayPal. I wouldn't really care about the rewards, I've already received them.

I'm curious: why no PayPal? Unless I'm misreading your tone it sounds like you're pretty adamant about NOT supporting a comic through PayPal. Why?