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Subscription Hell

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Re: Subscription Hell

#601

Post by tallanvor »

carapace wrote: post #569
tallanvor wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how should Patreon pay for their staff, infrastructure, and other costs if taking a percentage is unjustifiable?

They could add up all their expenses, divide by the number of users, and charge that? My point is they should charge in proportion to the service/value they provide, not in proportion to the size of donation/patronage. It doesn't cost them twice as much to process a donation twice as large, so: "unjustifiable". Can you justify that? (Not rationalize it, justify it?)

Yes, it's justifiable.

Larger donations have a higher risk of fraud and chargebacks, so on average it will cost Patreon more to handle this. Additionally, it's not uncommon for credit card companies to charge a fee, even if Patreon wins the chargeback request. If a user donates $10 to a specific creator and initiates a chargeback, who should end up paying the chargeback fee and the donation amount (if the chargeback is successfull?)

You can't charge the user who initiated the chargeback, especially if they were successful. The only thing you can really do is ban them from the service in the future. So, do you take those fees from the creators who received the donation, or do you spread the cost among other creators/donors?

You can't realistically charge the donors. If I were to go to Patreon to try and give someone $5 but was told, thanks for donating, but we're going to charge you an extra $2 because that's the average cost per donor to provide the service, develop new products, advertise, etc., I'm not going to donate. Most people won't.

So do you charge the creators? Let's say the cost per creator is $20/month. If a creator only earns $10, do they then actually owe $10? What creator is going to use the service if they might end up owing money?

The answer, of course, is you figure out the average percentage of a transaction you need to take. You do this because it provides both donors and creators clear information on how much money goes to the creator, what goes to the payment processor/credit card provider, and what percentage goes to Patreon.

But I mean, if you really think that's not a good justification, why not start your own competing option with a business model you think is more fair.

Re: Subscription Hell

#602

Post by heavenlyblue »

mehrdadn wrote: post #393
thechao wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the sublime folk offered a “bug fix only” monthly subscription, I’d buy that. My grandfather went through a half day’s paycheck of tooling a month on his own dime. I figure bug fixes are the software equivalent of sharpening chisels, buying new bits, surfacing a mill, etc.

> If the sublime folk offered a “bug fix only” monthly subscription, I’d buy that. My grandfather went through a half day’s paycheck of tooling a month on his own dime. I figure bug fixes are the software equivalent of sharpening chisels, buying new bits, surfacing a mill, etc. Except bits don't rot?

They don't rot but they get rusty.

Re: Subscription Hell

#603

Post by fuscy »

Prices should be based on the 5Ws and the current models that are now used seem similar to what was in the 2000s at the age of "we didn't know better".

What is being sold? If it's news, is it sold by category? Is the news sold or is it the critical analysis that actually matters? Maybe news should be free, the analysis paid.

When is it sold? Is today's news sold or all the news since the beginning of time? Maybe today is paid but yesterday is free and then paid again?

Where is it sold? USA has a GDP, Hungary has another. Maybe Hungary should be cheaper, tier the country, tier the price.

Why is it sold? Is it to make money or to improve quality? Slapping a price on a product without making the proper changes hurts long term success.

Who is the seller and who is the buyer? Is the seller a B2B company, then buyers should be businesses. Are intended buyers, investors, then target them.

How are you selling? Subscription is tried and tested. Perhaps using micro-payments could also be a solution.

Without applying these questions, the future is segregating services between those who can afford to pay and those who can't but need/want it. It can lead to a virtuous cycle for the wealthy and a vicious cycle for the poor.

Re: Subscription Hell

#604

Post by sli »

mkirklions wrote: post #517
BonesJustice wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also drop the subscription rate after the first and second years. And even at the outset, the “everything JetBrains” license is cheaper than any two individually licensed products. If you do, say, Java and C# or Python and C++, this makes it a pretty sweet deal. I wasn’t aware that the perpetual fallback license only covered the latest version at the time of subscription/renewal. That’s less than ideal, but apar…

JetBrains made me super salty at how expensive their package is. I graduated from college and to see their lowest cost package was ~300 USD IIRC was infuriating. I went full Netbeans for PHP. It does the job, the debugger works, and it doesnt cost me a yearly fee.

It's gone up since then to $500/yr. It takes you two years before you get the $300/yr price again. By then you've already spent nearly $900, with the third year making it $1200.

Android Studio is free.

Re: Subscription Hell

#605

Post by dbuder »

gkya wrote: post #318
Reedx wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they say they researched it: "Yet, all of our research shows people want high-definition images with their stories, instant loading of articles on the site, and interactivity." They understand how much more expensive an image and JS heavy site is to develop and host, so they must have good reason to go through the trouble?

Very often institutions decide stupidly, when the decision is made by people that are not domain experts. Also, numbers may lie. If they did not study the same content with interactive and plain presentation, for example. I recall an article on a murder in Iceland on BBC IIRC, it was overtly interactive, every movement on the touch pad causing unpredictable changes to the page, but the content was so interesting that…

An example of this is when news sites started demanding you don't run adblock, I spoke to a couple of people in the industry and they all said it was great, I pressed one and they said no one left the site without disabling ad block and reading the article, which I took to mean that they intentionally ignored this metric.

Re: Subscription Hell

#606

Post by BonesJustice »

sli wrote: post #604
mkirklions wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JetBrains made me super salty at how expensive their package is. I graduated from college and to see their lowest cost package was ~300 USD IIRC was infuriating. I went full Netbeans for PHP. It does the job, the debugger works, and it doesnt cost me a yearly fee.

It's gone up since then to $500/yr. It takes you two years before you get the $300/yr price again. By then you've already spent nearly $900, with the third year making it $1200. Android Studio is free.

I think you're looking at the pricing for Businesses and Organizations (the prices displayed by default). Those are floating licenses. Most individual developers would buy an individual license. Individual licenses for the All Products Pack start at $249 for the first year, $199 for the second year, and then $149 for the third year onward.

Individual licenses can be used for commercial purposes just like a business license. AFAICT, the only difference is that a business license can be used by any single developer within an organization at a time, while the individual license can only be used by the named licensee.

There's also a 25% discount for new/recent graduates, which eases the sticker shock a little bit for new graduates.

Re: Subscription Hell

#607

Post by jackgolding »

technofiend wrote: post #504
jackgolding wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really annoying for me, how can I work for a full financial year (and get my shares allocated), receive my performance review but not get a bonus because I quit before October where they pay the bonuses on the last FY?

Hence the wave of resignations the week of bonus payouts. People play the game and wait to get paid, knowing if they prematurely signal their departure, the company will reallocate money to those who choose to stay. I'm not saying it's right but it happens.

And then you only get half a bonus at your new role if you are lucky (my last job I joined 3 days too late to be eligible)

Re: Subscription Hell

#609

Post by BlackFly »

philwelch wrote: post #594
BlackFly wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A/B testing is a form of markov-chain-monte-carlo experimentation that makes certain assumptions about the landscape it is trying to find the maximum likelihood in. Specifically, it makes the assumption of monotonicity of the likelihood or that the lack of monotonicity is of the same scale as the changes they are likely to make. A/B testing cannot break out of a local maximum of the likelihood function if the assumpt…

Sure, but you’re implying something super weird, namely that there’s a global maximum of engagement at the “text and CSS” extreme end of the spectrum, but as soon as you add any multimedia at all, even a single img tag, there’s a discontinuous drop and then the metrics improve the more and more you add even more multimedia.

I don't think I am saying that. I am saying that the radius of curvature of a peak is potentially greater than the typical step size used in A/B testing. No discontinuity is needed, the landscape could be completely smooth.

I'm not suggesting that the extreme of text + css only is what epitomizes a good minimalist page either. I'm just pointing out that it is absolutely not a given that A/B testing has shown that the global maxima is not near it.

Re: Subscription Hell

#610

Post by haglin »

twblalock wrote: post #578
haglin wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is built into the browser, it will not be harder than say cookies. When it comes to US dollars, you have to pay transaction fees and it can take days before the transaction is completed. The user doesn't need to know what a cryptocurrency is, the dialog will be displayed in dollar, or whatever currency you happen to use in your country. Today's system is more complicated. You have to create an account, confirm…

But the user needs a wallet at some point, and the user needs to put money into the wallet so it can be spent. How can that part be hidden from the user? Today's system may be complicated, but users understand it and are used to it.

You need ONE wallet and then you can use it for all sites. It's much, much easier.

Setting up the wallet doesn't need to be more complicated than setting up a card with Apple Pay. You don't need to understand the underlying technology to use it in millions of stores.

Today's system is like setting up Apple Pay every time you need to buy something in a store you have not visited before. It's a horrible user experience.

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