How should web content & services be funded?

[Sporkman]

Well??

[alphaniner]

Bakesales.

[mivo]

Well??

I didn't vote, because I feel it depends on the nature of the content and the purpose of the site (and its intent).

Cultural and educational non-profit sites should receive sponsorships or money awards, sites of companies should pay their content from the marketing or support budget, sites of political organizations or individuals should be paid for by their owner(s), community sites should use a donation system, sites intended to make money with the offered web content should use the premium approach, etc.

I see few cases where I think ads are a good idea. They are annoying, cost bandwidth, cause slow-downs and delays, distract from the content, and so on. I, and probably many here, use Adblock+ and NoScript, so no money comes from us anyway. If a site uses ads to a degree where they screw up the layout (as they are filtered), I will just stop going there.

[RiceMonster]

bakesales.

+1

[ice60]

i don't think a thread at ubuntuforums is going to work this out. i could be wrong though... lol.

[Hwæt]

+1

÷0

[starcraft.man]

The answer is none of the above. People don't want to pay for things on the net. Just look at how pitiful the sales were for "pay what you want products" like World of Goo sale (great game) and albums from famous folks putting em under CC (say like NiN latest offering). >60% paid less than a dollar, the majority for World of Goo was 1 cent, and folks claimed it was all they could afford. They equally don't want to be taxed (like Canadian levy tax), and no corporation would ever accept a tax on them for services, they have lobbyists for a reason.

Course this is part of a larger pattern of cheap price/low quality spiral we been in for decades as with companies refusing to pay people a living wage. Topics more complicated then you probably thought, but people saying they can only pay a nickel for great game like World of Goo is wrong.

/end_rant

[phrostbyte]

I would say all of those options are applicable.

[mivo]

I don't know how significant the World of Goo situation is, though. It seems fairly natural and expected that if you tell people "Here, I have this commercial product and you can have it for as little as you want to pay, even if it's only a cent!", they will pay the minimum price. Those wanting to support the game most likely already bought it before at the full price. The game/site also got a lot of free press coverage and community attention for doing this, which is a huge benefit and, under normal conditions, a big cost factor.

It's like free food samples in supermarkets - most people who eat them have no intention of buying the product, but the samples do generate attention, and some people who may never have heard of the brand may end up buying the food.

Everything considered, World of Goo probably ended up making more money than they would have without this offer, and it may also affect sales of future games of theirs.