

Reddit Gold Now Offers: Choose-your-own ads and Friends with Benefits - cing
http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/three-new-features-for-reddit-gold.html

======
jfager
The bigger story is that they've changed Reddit Gold from a feel-good, pay-
what-you-want model to a standard, fixed-price model. It went from being the
neighborhood self-serve coffee bar to Starbucks. It will be interesting to see
if the Predictably Irrational prediction holds and payments actually end up
dropping off.

~~~
clistctrl
I think they made the right decision. It would not surprise me if people
stopped pitching money into the "jar" after a few months. There are actual
continual expenses required to run a site, and I think a lot of people would
fall into the "I contributed my share already, let someone else add more"
mentality.

~~~
jfager
The first and most major hurdle is to convince people who are used to and
still have the option of pretty much the exact same service for free that they
should pay anything at all, and that needs to be very low. Letting people
choose their price and giving them the little gold badge taps into their
emotional response at a very low cost, so stick with it.

Beyond that, the Gold features that cost money to implement should require a
minimum donation to make them sustainable, and the page that takes the
donations should have a 'make this donation recurring' checkbox.

------
j_baker
"We plan to make this more granular in the future, for those of you who want
to see, say, house ads in the sidebar, but not third-party advertising that
contains autoplaying Flash."

Why on earth would they require users to pay for better targeted ads? If ads
target me better, the net effect is more money for them. It just seems like a
bad business idea to require that customers pay for something that ultimately
makes the company more money.

------
bryanh
There needs to be real tangible benefits to the service. I understand it is
early, but there aren't many benefits here (hide ads? friend notes?). Perhaps
you guys should poll users on pain-points and alleviate them instead of
introducing features. Otherwise I expect that very, very few people will sign
up, and many more will be offended that you even offer it.

~~~
AlekseyKorzun
How about a benefit of Reddit it self as a community? $3 bucks a months
provides way more entertainment to me then I could have gotten elsewhere for
the same amount of money.

Yes, people will be OFFENDED that the web site they spend 1-2 hours a day on
offers an option to subscribe and contribute something back to them for _gasp_
$3/month.

~~~
blhack
It's $4/mo.

That's about half of what I pay per month for netflix. Think about the
infrastructure that goes into netflix. I get DVDs at my door (as many as I
want) and they maintain a server farm full of streaming content for me to
enjoy.

This is all done without ads of any kind.

...I'd say I'm getting quite a bit more utility out of netflix than I am
reddit.

~~~
unexpected
That's fine, but that might not be true for everyone. I think reddit is the
best thing to happen since, well sliced bread. I've gotten 100x more utility
from reddit than I will ever get from Netflix.

------
ilovecomputers
Two hours later:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/croqe/i_gladly_d...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/croqe/i_gladly_donated_to_reddit_but_i_wont_pay_for_it/)

It's interesting seeing which opinions of outrage become popular on reddit.
Before this it was Saydrah and that outrage was on and off before it turned
into a virtual mobbing. I'm curious if a large population of reddit has this
opinion, or if it originally cared for this opinion before the above post. Was
this opinion bubbling within the threads when the donation request was
announced? Of course cultural trends are difficult to measure, so I doubt I'll
ever know.

Personally, raldi announced this subscriber service when he announced the
donation, so I'm those reddit users whose not going against their subscription
model at all (however, I am waiting on them to add Amazon payments). Still,
when I compare their model to Ars Technica's, this comes to mind: Ars has paid
writers while reddit has user contributions, their only service is the forum
they have set up and maintained (duh). Good luck with them and I hope they
have a subscription model that fairly monetizes their user's contributions
without smoking them out.

EDIT: May I also add that there's the extra challenge of being under a larger
company. It played a factor with Saydrah and its currently playing a factor
with above.

------
stuff4ben
It's funny Anandtech forums went through this many years ago facing the same
problems that Reddit is. It was pretty much the same thing, I think $30 made
you a subscriber and you got some benefits that non subscribers didn't. THen
after only a couple years they removed it. Wonder if reddit will do the same?

~~~
daychilde
Always hard to predict the future - but the counter-example is Fark/Totalfark,
which have stood for quite some time now.

------
yep_yeppers
I wish they would give us features that people like me, who don't submit and
comment much, would want and pay for as a reddit gold subscriber. So far I
just click on ads occasionally, and would love to become a subscriber, but
there's just nothing that they offer that would entice someone like me.

~~~
brown9-2
Well, what would entice you?

------
woodall
Wow. All of these features are auctually pretty neat. Now let me "save"
comments and block/hide certain users. Good work, can't wait to see how this
works out.

------
jedberg
You forgot user page sorting. :)

~~~
jasonlotito
You know, maybe I'm a casual Reddit users, but the whole sorting thing never
bothered me. Really, none of these features are compelling. Oh, I'm a
subscriber, and will be for more than long enough to know if I'll remain a
subscriber and pay up again.

What I'd find interesting is knowing if 9000+ 'subscribers' did for the morale
of the people behind reddit. Is it lower then expected? More? Around what you
though? What are the feelings going forward? I don't know why, I just love
reading insider stories.

Ahem. Hint hint. Ahem.

~~~
jedberg
We were overwhelmed by the response. We are excited that we are able to do
things with that money already (more on that later).

But to be honest, the best part has been the postcards. Every day a big stack
arrives, and it is awesome. I can't tell you how good it feels to get a stack
of postcards all telling you how awesome you are and how you're changed
people's lives.

------
s810
Gird your loins, boys, for the influx of disillusioned redditors!

(a good chunk of whom were disillusioned meme-spouting 4channers before they
were disillusioned redditors)

~~~
lionhearted
> Gird your loins, boys, for the influx of disillusioned redditors!

Perhaps this is being downvoted because people don't know what "gird your
loins" means. I didn't know before googling.

[http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061211104553AA...](http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061211104553AAQVGeN)

"What does gird your loins mean?"

"If you say that somebody is GIRDING their LOINS or GIRDING UP their LOINS,
you mean that they are preparing to do something difficult or dangerous.
Example : Both sides in the argument were girding their loins."

Indeed, we should gird up our loins.

~~~
Karzyn
It's quite possible that the downvoting is for the actual content of the
comment too, you know.

~~~
s810
You mean for truth? I lol'd. I'm living proof.

    
    
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