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Rated: 13+ · Message Forum · Writing.Com · #303715
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Mar 13, 2018 at 12:12am
#3171451
Edited: March 13, 2018 at 2:42am
Re: Sustainable, Feasible Interactives
Greets,

I appreciate the sentiments as well as your help with the miner issue. Following up that thread... there's been very little money in that for the site and I've left it around for folks that enjoyed adding a few GPs to their accounts. You can purchase anything on the site with Gift Points. That includes paid memberships that get you past the "gate"... even journals, t-shirts, pens and more in "The Writing.Com Shop. The problem, of course, is more that the yield from mining for most people is way low making it take a year to build up enough points for a membership to get through the gate.

It was next on the chopping block to remove from the interactive pages themselves in replacement for the miner link we have to opt-in. But the anti-virus folks pushed that along a little faster. *Wink*


All the same, I've addressed a lot of this in previous replies. Yes, it is definitely easy to open a free site... It's very hard to have that site still running 18 years later. Outright free doesn't give anyone a whole lot of incentive to work for it or pay for the resources it needs. Facebook's kind of free exploits the data of its users.

Our history, of course, goes back to 2000 when Writing.Com was opened as "Stories.Com"... as a completely free interactive story site. Our goal was to be a sustainable free venture, supported by advertising only. *Angelic* The history as it were, we realized that was not feasible or sustainable. We changed to offer memberships and more while plenty of other sites came and went, attempting a free model of some kind or another...

With the advent of ad blockers, many content sites are moving to outright paywalls. But there's a variety of models for this which are sustainable. We've adopted a mix of that; free to a limit, then paywall after -- and only for the interactive stories segment of Writing.Com.

I absolutely do appreciate your concern for the site and I don't see your post as malicious. Most of the posts addressing this issue are not, while a handful definitely are. I'm watching all of our statistics and have a long 18 year history to model and chart against.

I think, in the longer term, those people who decide to invest their time and creativity into a site where the plan is to just be free or ad supported... Well, I think those people will be disappointed when the owner decides it's just not worth the bills, efforts or aggravation (like the kind brought on by those actual malicious posts). At that point, the site either gets sold to someone who will exploit the content in a nasty way... or it just gets shut down and disappears. In 18 years, we've seen it so many times. Folks are left wondering what happened.

Our 18 years of making decisions for sustainability, and demonstrating those in practice, should give us a little extra-credit.

Best,
~~SM


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MESSAGE THREAD
Sustainable, Feasible Interactives · 03-12-18 8:32pm
by Peri
*Star* Re: Sustainable, Feasible Interactives · 03-13-18 12:12am
by The StoryMaster
Re: Re: Sustainable, Feasible Interactives · 03-13-18 2:03am
by Whata SpoonStealer
Re: Re: Re: Sustainable, Feasible Interactives · 03-13-18 2:35am
by The StoryMaster
Re: Re: Re: Re: Sustainable, Feasible Interactives · 03-13-18 6:00am
by Whata SpoonStealer
Re: Re: Sustainable, Feasible Interactives · 03-13-18 4:10pm
by Peri
Re: Sustainable, Feasible Interactives · 03-14-18 8:39am
by ruwth
Re: Re: Sustainable, Feasible Interactives · 03-16-18 5:37pm
by marinus18
Re: Re: Re: Sustainable, Feasible Interactives · 03-16-18 10:06pm
by Peri
Re: Re: Re: Re: Sustainable, Feasible Interactives · 03-16-18 10:16pm
by marinus18
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sustainable, Feasible Interactives · 03-16-18 10:25pm
by Sally
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sustainable, Feasible Interactives · 03-16-18 10:32pm
by marinus18
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sustainable, Feasible Interac... · 03-16-18 10:39pm
by Sally
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sustainable, Feasible Int... · 03-16-18 10:53pm
by marinus18
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sustainable, Feasible Interactives · 03-17-18 11:38am
by Peri
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sustainable, Feasible Interac... · 03-17-18 12:28pm
by Sally
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sustainable, Feasible Int... · 03-18-18 8:09pm
by Peri
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sustainable, Feasible... · 03-18-18 8:37pm
by Peri
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sustainable, Feas... · 03-19-18 12:07am
by Whata SpoonStealer
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sustainable, ... · 03-19-18 10:44am
by Peri
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sustainable, Feas... · 03-19-18 10:39am
by The StoryMaster
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sustainable, Feasible Interac... · 03-18-18 2:13am
by Whata SpoonStealer
Re: Re: Re: Re: Sustainable, Feasible Interactives · 03-16-18 11:26pm
by The StoryMaster
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sustainable, Feasible Interactives · 03-17-18 5:09am
by Satuawany
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sustainable, Feasible Interactives · 03-17-18 5:27am
by Whata SpoonStealer
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sustainable, Feasible Interac... · 03-17-18 6:23am
by Sally
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