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Penny Arcade Sells Out

kickstarter.com

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Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out

#21

Post by saraid216 »

girasquid wrote: post #20
jerf wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

With a somewhat large number of people, PayPal has a bad reputation as being somewhat unscrupulous, especially when the person being screwed over isn't famous. You could find horror stories fairly easily with the Google.

Myself, I use it because people use it, and stick to the practice of never keeping any money in my account, or never expecting that money to actually make it to my bank account.

Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out

#22

Post by freehunter »

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.

Yeah, for $10,000 they'll buy you lunch, but not fly you to Seattle. What's up with that?

Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out

#23

Post by eupharis »

ben0x539 wrote: post #13
adventureful wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I lol'ed ;)

But in seriousness, an internet without ads is about way more than just not seeing banner ads. Penny Arcade puts it very well:

"Not having ads would create a chain reaction that would lead to a bunch of other interesting stuff. Without the almighty 'pageview' to consider, why not populate the RSS with full comics and posts? Why not enable and even encourage apps, first and third party, for people to read it however they damn well please?"

Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out

#24

Post by scott_s »

ben0x539 wrote: post #13
adventureful wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I want the online content I like to be able to pull revenue.

Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out

#25

Post by ben0x539 »

eupharis wrote: post #23
ben0x539 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll link you to adblock for $44 billion and 50 cent. In fact, let me write up a kickstarter proposal.

I lol'ed ;) But in seriousness, an internet without ads is about way more than just not seeing banner ads. Penny Arcade puts it very well: "Not having ads would create a chain reaction that would lead to a bunch of other interesting stuff. Without the almighty 'pageview' to consider, why not populate the RSS with full comics and posts? Why not enable and even encourage apps, first and third party, for people to read…

I recognize that and I think it's an interesting question (and translates well to all the "twitter is screwing its app ecosystem again" drama), but the way Penny Arcade are going at it is a kickstarter project where they're effectively selling the privilege of not seeing ads for $250k a year. There is competition for that niche, and I think PA would have done well to actually over a product for what they're asking.

Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out

#26

Post by scott_s »

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.

I recently went through the comics archive from about 2004 until now. The comics still resonated, and I found myself frequently checking the blog posts to see what Tycho had said that day. While it was often about old events, it certainly wasn't stale or irrelevant to me.

Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out

#27

Post by jerf »

girasquid wrote: post #20
jerf wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm not interested in using PayPal again, and my desire to support the comics does not rise past that threshold. Wouldn't call myself "adamant" about either, but I definitely do not wish to use PayPal.

Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out

#28

Post by girasquid »

jerf wrote: post #27
girasquid wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm not interested in using PayPal again, and my desire to support the comics does not rise past that threshold. Wouldn't call myself "adamant" about either, but I definitely do not wish to use PayPal.

Fair enough - I appreciate the explanation. Thanks.

Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out

#29

Post by ebertx »

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?

If they say that's what they need to fund the site, then fine. From my own selfish consumer perspective, though, the amount of money they're asking for and what I would gain from it just aren't proportionate.

Re: Penny Arcade Sells Out

#30

Post by debacle »

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.

On the contrary, PA is one of the few sites that maintains an ad quality that means I actually do click on a large percentage of the ads there.
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