#MONETIZATION

[wip]

Hello! Can you add in ways for us to monetize our posts with affiliate links and sponsor banners? For example, adding a horizontal banner under some of my viral original work? This may be easier with a brand facing UI. Also, I honestly believe you should straight up just make a better version of Facebook, but a Tumblr version. Gen Z would love that. If no one else does it, I will.

Answer: Hey there, @2am-poetry.

Good news for you—it is already possible to add ads to your blogs and put affiliate links within your posts, and we would encourage you to read all about it at the Help Center. But note that you are limited to in-post affiliate links and/or linked image block banners in the blog network and the dashboard.

There’s more. With Blaze, you can send a post (whether yours or someone else’s) across Tumblr, which is shown as a Tumblr-sponsored post to an audience of your choosing. You can also select the location, language, and size of the audience—and target your post to relevant communities on Tumblr. 

We hope this helps. Thanks for your question, and keep them coming!

[avicinda]

If you are a non spending player (f2p) in Infinity Nikki, here is why you should care that the 5 star is 11 pieces and leading to a boycott:

Spending players, especially whales, are how YOU get to be f2p.

Because if a gacha game alienates their whales, it proceeds extremely quickly to "f2p can barely do anything at all" as the game slides faster and faster to pay to win to make up for losing their whales. Then f2p players leave. Then the game hits End of Service because no one is playing and paying for it anyway. No more Infinity Nikki for anyone. Infinity Nikki is not "too big to fail," it's big enough to withstand losing a lot of people, but the lower the revenue falls, the faster shit hits the fan for f2p.

You know why the game has been so generous with free outfits and pieces every month so far? Because that was the honeymoon period. They were trying to hook us in, and more importantly, they want happy whales who feel like they're getting their money's worth so they will keep spending.

We are now in the "fuck around and find out" phase of a gacha's lifetime, much earlier than I'd hoped. This is the part of the gacha timeframe where the devs increase monetization and things like the spending meter that I call Gacha Bullshit. This is when they test the waters and see how far they can get away with things.

11 pieces is an increase of pity by 20 pulls. No sane gacha game would do this unless they were testing the players' reaction. If you play any other gachas with a set pity, think very hard about how increasing those pities by 20 pulls would feel.

Mira Crown is a decent chunk of free pulls and diamonds for all players every month. Changing from every 14 days to once a month was the test. Conceding and changing it to twice a month is "we hear you, but we don't really want to listen, so shut up already."

If whales don't push back NOW against the increasing Gacha Bullshit, the devs start to add more, and, slowly, choke out the parts of the game that are f2p. This has happened before. This is why there's a "stupid" boycott! It's not "just" discourse.

You want your game to stay playable and fun for f2p? Then stop sneering at the very people who pay so you can play it f2p in the first place.

(This is not a defense of spending practices in predatory games, but it's the reality we live in that whales exist who want to spend money on things that make them happy.)

[incognitopolls]

This is not a market research poll; anon is not designing a game with shitty monetization strategies. They're just curious about which shitty monetization strategy people hate the most.

–

We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

[somesecretpie]

Fans and Creators of Webtoons!

I want to talk about Line Webtoon’s new “Super Like” program and why it sucks for literally everyone.

What is a “Super Like?”

According to their website, super likes are a new way for webtoon creators to monetize their work. Readers can pay real money to buy a super like for their favorite webtoon, and the creator gets a fraction of that money.

Wait, a fraction? Not all of it?

Yep! Webtoon skims quite a chunk off the top.

30% goes to Webtoon, and then another 30% of that amount goes to the payment processor.

So what do creators get? 49 cents for every dollar their fans try to give them. Literally half.

That’s pretty ludicrous, right?

Interestingly enough, they announced that they had a “tipping system” in the works in the same email they ended the CANVAS creator rewards program (and many comic creators livelihoods)

They said tipping system in their social media posts too

Obviously this tipping system is referring to super likes right? They say they’re going to do a tipping system, and then this rolls out.

But “tips” are not something that buisinesses can just take a cut of, at least not in the United States. According to the Department of Labor, it is illegal for any amount of tips from customers to go to an employer.

Webtoon is trying to walk back this language, of course. You won’t find the word “tip” anywhere on their website page explaining how it works. But those old social media posts are still up.

This is all pretty scummy

But wait, it gets worse!

They removed the Patreon button at the end of episodes and replaced it with this:

Yep! That’s right. Webtoon really said “what if we replace the tipping system that already existed with a shittier one where you only get half of it 🥺”

Unsurprisingly, they faced a ton of backlash.

Webtoon was quick to point out that the Patreon button was only removed from the end of episodes and there was still a button on the creator’s homepage. But of course, the end of episodes is where that button matters the most.

Creators know this. Webtoon knows this.

Eventually, after days of continued complaints from creators on social media, Webtoon went on damage control mode and announced that they would be putting the Patreon button back at the end of episodes—

As of right now (May 11th, 2024) the Patreon button is still not back.

***

So…Super likes are “super totally not a tip.”

But if they aren’t tips…what are they?

Well there’s a bit more to the story of what a super like actually is. After announceing the program, the app updated to reveal a new ranking category on the front page

When you click on this ranking tab, you can see that there is now both a daily and weekly ranking

If you’re a CANVAS creator, you know how difficult and seemingly random it can be to get your comic on the front page of the app—so my immediate worry was that comic creators were going to buy superlikes on their own series to get in this ranking and…

Yep, that’s already happening.

But why would webtoon even allow creators to buy superlikes for themselves? How does that make sense?

Surely goading desperate creators into buying superlikes can’t be that lucrative, can it?

No. I think there’s another, possibly even worse reason.

Fandom wars

If you’re into music, you probably are aware of how common it is for super fans to make concerted efforts to get their favorite musician to the top of the billboard charts. They coordinate over social media, stream music on loop as soon as an album drops to inflate the numbers, buy albums in bulk to increase sales, all so that they can say their fav is number one. It’s especially common among K-pop fans and swifties

This phenomena is well documented

Fans of Webtoons can be just as ravenous as K-pop, so I think Webtoon is trying to capitalize on this. They want to encourage fandom war and make money. That’s why they have this ranking. Not only can super fans brag about their favorite series topping the charts but they can wear their super like proudly on their reader profile that webtoon will be rolling out soon.

They’re just testing this super like stuff out on CANVAS right now, but once this starts up with originals? Oh. It will be a very profitable, very terrible mess.

(Oh and I mean profitable for webtoon, not creators, in case that wasn’t clear.)

***

Anyway, if you’re a creator, do yourself a favor and don’t enable super likes.

If you’re a fan of a webcomic, just donate to that creators patreon or Ko-Fi to show your support. Don’t give a red cent to webtoon because they did not do any of the work to make the series you love, alright?

Also check out my webtoon haha.

[catandgirlcomic]

Tools of capitalism.

[exactlyclevercollector]

Am i the only one annoyed by people paywalling fanfics now?

I understand making money to get by and all that and its important but.. why fanfiction?

Idk the whole process but Why not make original stories and publish those? I literally scrolled on tumblr and saw someone paywalling dbd fanfics and charging almost 15$ or more membership on their patreon.

Isn't that illegal? I was curious and looked more and saw other ppl post writing fanfics on harry styles, supernatural, jjk, etc and paywalling them too.

Almost nobody is really talking about this and im concerned. Isnt paywalling stuff like this breaching copyright of some kind or?

It feels like the sims 4 modding community at this point, i just don't get it tbh.

[vintage-tigre]

[sag-dab-sar]

Monetizing Accessibility

I wrote a review awhile ago for an app that I heavily relied on due to my dyslexia and TBI— Speechify. Its a text-to-speech reader that I can take photos of text books or signs and have them read to me. I used it plenty. You can take as many photos as you want, upload them, and have it read to you. Well..... thats what you used to be able to do. Then I updated the app and tah dah the main feature is behind a paywall!!! I can upload 3 files (photo/photoset) only! And if I want more I have to pay THIS fucking much:

So I updated my app review from 5 stars to 1

Then a long time later I got this email:

"One time discount" on something that was fucking free. Its the most basic feature. There were plenty of additional features to pay for and ads prior. Now the ENTIER goddamn app, including the absolute most basic function, above 3 files is behind a $140 paywall. I don't want 90% of the features just keeping files like I could before. Its not even a one time fee; its a subscription. As if my TBI and dyslexia only lasts a year. Not to mention I already deleted my entire library.

I fucking hate how goddamn expensive being disabled it is. The email is an insult.

[fansplaining]

Today we're thrilled to publish our latest article—a piece on U.S copyright law and fandom by @earlgreytea68!

Fan creators don’t speak with one voice any more than any creative community speaks with one voice. I am well aware that I am one of you, but I am definitely not all of you. But most fan creators don’t consider themselves to be lazy or thieves—including me. In fact, all the fan creators that I know work very hard on our creations. We don’t consider ourselves to be stealing anything, because what we “steal”—some characters, some settings—is part of our cultural heritage, part of the world around us, part of the raw material we’ve been given to examine and make sense of our world, the way creators have for millennia.

She'll also discuss the topic on this week's episode, out today for Patrons and tomorrow for everyone else!

[pahlawangitarsibocchi]

It's hard to monetize

[avicinda]

I have seen a few "but I want to support the devs!" about the boycott and I think we need to have some perspective here.

Paper Games is not a small indie company where your money goes directly to the devs. This is a company that not only also runs Love Nikki and Shining Nikki, but also Love and Deepspace.

And in 2024.... (archive link of Forbes article "AI Boyfriends Make Chinese Gaming Entrepreneur Yao Runhao A Billionaire")

Established in 2013, Paper Games clocked sales of around $850 million worldwide, according to data providers.

The privately held studio, of which Yao is chairman and CEO, is valued at over $2 billion, according to Forbes’ estimates, based on discussions with analysts and information from four data providers.

Paper Games is a company with 2000 employees and a billionaire CEO.

The conversation around Infinity Nikki's monetization is not about "punishing devs", it's about pushing back against a company that has cornered the market of female gacha players and are now up to their old tactics of testing those players to see how much money they can milk out of them.

They're not just some devs throwing things at the wall to see what works so they can keep the lights on, they've probably got an entire team dedicated to figuring out exactly how to get Infinity Nikki to make more money off of us.

[smbhax]

Amazon fails at monetization, doesn't want you making Twitch videos anymore ; P

Also this is funny, the only reason I have that many videos under "Highlights" is because back in the pre-Amazon days, Twitch would delete your VODs unless you converted them to Highlights. ; D

[crossthread]

Anyone else get this simmering sense of horror at the fact that fics are getting spoken of and about on platforms like tiktok?

[bisexualbaker]

Dreamwidth and privacy, Dreamwidth and apps

I got an ask about Dreamwidth that has since completely vanished from my inbox and my activity feed, but it had some important questions that I wanted to answer, so I'm going to try and address them anyway:

"How's Dreamwidth on privacy? Do they data mine?"

They only take as much information as they are legally obligated to and/or is needed to make the site actually function. You are the only one who gets to decide how much of that you share with the public, or how little.

Dreamwidth makes the money it needs to run the site entirely through its userbase. They do not sell our data and do not want to.

"Do they have a mobile app too?"

No, and they probably never will. I know this is a disappointment for a lot of Tumblr users, but it's one of the primary ways that Dreamwidth can ensure that it's free to use for all users, and that we can post as much NSFW stuff there as we want.

That said, the Dreamwidth team has done everything they can to make the site friendly to mobile browsing! IIRC there are even some layouts that are particularly friendly to mobile browsing. Install Firefox/Mozilla on your phone, or a clone of it you particularly like, and log in through that, and you should be able to use the site just as well as you could from a desktop computer.

[phoenixyfriend]

My sister keeps telling me to monetize my tumblr if I regularly have posts with decent numbers of notes and I tried to explain to her that even the biggest names on tumblr (we were talking about vaspider and seananmcguire due to the scooby post getting some traction) don't really make a living off of it, and brand deals aren't a thing on here, and it's not exactly a Thing to transfer followership from this platform to others where it's more expected (insta, tiktok, etc).

And she keeps urging me to do it and I'm just like No, That's Not How Tumblr Works, Nobody Will Trust Me And I'll Lose All My Audience If I Try To Monetize In Any Way Other Than Direct Products Or Begging For Donations, Because Brand Deals And Similar Are Viewed As A Betrayal Of The Tumblr Standard