I understand your concern, but our paid tier simply boosts visibility, not rankings. It’s not “pay to win.” The underdog feature gives lesser-known projects a fair shot, chosen randomly from those with fewer upvotes. This ensures that every product, regardless of budget, has a chance to shine without favoritism. also, we have a plan to change all voting system for the future too.
Products with higher visibility will automatically get more upvotes, so even if you don't directly pay for upvotes, you indirectly do pay for upvotes.
If you let people pay to be featured, you'll always end up favouring those who pay. And if you didn't favour those who pay, why would people pay in the first place?
This is the big problem with all recommendation sites: The easiest way to monetize them is by charging vendors for visibility; so sooner or later all recommendation sites start recommending the most profitable products. High quality fair priced products don't have a chance, since they will always be outbid by someone who makes a cheaper product or charges more.
I don't disagree with the point that visibility = upvotes = leaderboards. It's possible it biases rankings as you outlined. That said, given the problem: "How do I monetize my rankings/listings website without introducing pay to win or relying on third-party ads?"
I think the author implemented a tasteful and respectful solution. Other sites inject sponsors atop search results, every nth result, block parts of pages, force extra navs to link-spammed pages to get the product site, or sends sponsors to the top of rankings regardless of votes. You never have to glance at that portion if you're not interested, and can find it if you are. It's good design and advertises to the user in a respectful and convenient way imo. This is a small fixture that's static, and not even in the common paths followed by users ("F" eye track)
@Author: Perhaps a voting freeze during the sponsored period or a vote expiration (votes older than a certain amount of time fall off the total or such) would address the visibility = rank boost concern. Two random examples for moderating it with zero future thought there, but I think you get the idea.
Thank you for the thoughtful feedback. I agree that visibility can affect upvotes and rankings. Given the challenge of monetizing without pay-to-win or intrusive ads. Your suggestions—like a voting freeze during sponsorships or vote expiration—are good, interesting ways to further address this concern.
There is no way to square this circle. If you take payments from the vendors you recommend, you will never be fair. Either you take their payments and don't promote them, then they'll stop paying. Or you take their payments and promote them, then you'll end up doing paid promotion.
If you want to make a "fair" recommendation site, you need to find some other way to monetize. One possibility would be to charge potential customers. I believe there are people out there who want fair recommendations, I'm just have no idea how to get them to pay.
