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A solid plan is hatched!
13 years ago
General
So, having read all of your comments so far, I think there is a consensus forming, particularly in regards to journal 2. Watch for bold text, these are things I definitely want your response to.
Here are things that seem to be unanimous:
1. Google adWords are OK. I'll look into 'em right away!
2. Guys, I KNOW the merch won't sell. I was just wondering if there was any interest in these items at all. So I'll toss the idea in terms of Internet availability, but I'll keep it in mind for con loot or something.
3. Subscription accounts seem to be well-received, and I'm relieved at that. More on this momentarily.
Here's the plan on server stuff, before I get into that last bit about accounts.
1. I'll shoot for getting Adobe FMS on the server I own, and to get it back into the colo.
2. Kickstarter is a no-go, simply because this would probably fall under "starting a company," something they don't fund. So I'll have to run the donation drive myself, or find some other Kickstarter-esque thing for Internet entrepeneurs...ideas?
3. The drive goal will be $1200. That'll cover the software license and the first month of bandwidth, which I must pay the colo in advance. Anything you guys throw at PayPal until then will be counted towards the drive until I get it really going.
4. I'm going to get the trial version first and make sure I have the site functional while the drive is underway, so expect major parts of the site to get roped off for a while. Not that you were doing anything with it anyway.
5. I'm glad I'm going with the real deal, as the server-side coding is a lot easier to do, and it's better documented. That said, if funding fails or FMS mysteriously can't be made to work, I'll fall back on trying red5.
NOW, ABOUT THOSE SUBSCRIPTIONS.
First of all, I want a discussion in the comments regarding features that should be "unlocked" or made available to subscription members. I'll list various features below, some new, and some existing. Not all of them are guaranteed to be made available, and not all are going to be subscription-only. This is for you to decide.
-Unlimited viewers per room, or various levels of viewership (such as 20 for members, 50 for subscribers, and infinity for supersubscribers). My reasoning for the second choice is that I still don't want to overload the server when a jillion furries rush Zaush's page or something.
-Banners. This would change banners from being a pay-per-change to a pay-per-month thing. You decide if the old banners should be grandfathered in or not. Site links will still be freely available.
-Private rooms. That is, rooms that don't appear on the main page. A useful feature if you are one of those furs who has enough viewers to otherwise necessitate a viewer cap.
-Embed codes. The ability to stick a video-only version of your room on another site. The feature is in alpha. If this rolls out, I could try talking to Dragoneer about making it possible to embed in journals on FA and stuff.
What features would you make subscription-only? Also, what do you think an appropriate subscription cost would be?
(I'll also look into finding another payment method beyond PayPal. Suggestions welcome.)
Here are things that seem to be unanimous:
1. Google adWords are OK. I'll look into 'em right away!
2. Guys, I KNOW the merch won't sell. I was just wondering if there was any interest in these items at all. So I'll toss the idea in terms of Internet availability, but I'll keep it in mind for con loot or something.
3. Subscription accounts seem to be well-received, and I'm relieved at that. More on this momentarily.
Here's the plan on server stuff, before I get into that last bit about accounts.
1. I'll shoot for getting Adobe FMS on the server I own, and to get it back into the colo.
2. Kickstarter is a no-go, simply because this would probably fall under "starting a company," something they don't fund. So I'll have to run the donation drive myself, or find some other Kickstarter-esque thing for Internet entrepeneurs...ideas?
3. The drive goal will be $1200. That'll cover the software license and the first month of bandwidth, which I must pay the colo in advance. Anything you guys throw at PayPal until then will be counted towards the drive until I get it really going.
4. I'm going to get the trial version first and make sure I have the site functional while the drive is underway, so expect major parts of the site to get roped off for a while. Not that you were doing anything with it anyway.
5. I'm glad I'm going with the real deal, as the server-side coding is a lot easier to do, and it's better documented. That said, if funding fails or FMS mysteriously can't be made to work, I'll fall back on trying red5.
NOW, ABOUT THOSE SUBSCRIPTIONS.
First of all, I want a discussion in the comments regarding features that should be "unlocked" or made available to subscription members. I'll list various features below, some new, and some existing. Not all of them are guaranteed to be made available, and not all are going to be subscription-only. This is for you to decide.
-Unlimited viewers per room, or various levels of viewership (such as 20 for members, 50 for subscribers, and infinity for supersubscribers). My reasoning for the second choice is that I still don't want to overload the server when a jillion furries rush Zaush's page or something.
-Banners. This would change banners from being a pay-per-change to a pay-per-month thing. You decide if the old banners should be grandfathered in or not. Site links will still be freely available.
-Private rooms. That is, rooms that don't appear on the main page. A useful feature if you are one of those furs who has enough viewers to otherwise necessitate a viewer cap.
-Embed codes. The ability to stick a video-only version of your room on another site. The feature is in alpha. If this rolls out, I could try talking to Dragoneer about making it possible to embed in journals on FA and stuff.
What features would you make subscription-only? Also, what do you think an appropriate subscription cost would be?
(I'll also look into finding another payment method beyond PayPal. Suggestions welcome.)
I suggest this.
You should set the subscription price at $8 a month. This is an easily affordable amount that allows your users to use the advanced features readily without having to blow a whole full commission to pay for it.
Along with this i think you should also allow for a yearly rate. Say $80 dollars. This will be attractive to alot of artist because then they will be able to save a little bit off of the monthly charge and not have to deal with the hassle of keeping up with monthly subscriptions. Also, you could give incentives for yearly payers, like a shirt or mousepad or something.
Now for features. The embedding thing should remain a free feature. Otherwise, you risk incurring fees from FA possibly.
Banners should be charged by the month and by the banner for free members. I suggest only charging subscribing members for aditional banners and alloting them 1 free banner with a subscription.
Viewer caps will obviously be necessary. I would set paid subscribers limits at 60. I like the idea of unlimited, but until you can be certain that the site can handle the traffic i would keep it capped.
You might consider allowing paid subscribers the right to change their page backgrounds for an extra $5 a month.
I like the $8 suggestion, since I was ballparking $7.50 just based on anticipated use vs. total bandwidth. The yearly rate is a good idea as well, although that does make things a tad more complicated for coding this into the database. As a result, I might simply have to add the feature of buying more than one month at once. Not sure about the t-shirt thing.
I'm okay with leaving embedding free, since the embed code remains the same whether you're subscribed or not. Not sure how FA could incur fees, since they'd be hotlinking everything from my servers, on my bandwidth. (That's the reason I considered making it subscriber-only in the first place.)
See below comments for my response on banners, etc.
I'm not entirely sure about the banners, I like either of the options, pay per month will grant you more income, which is good. But if the banners are paypermonth like I think one should be able to change their banner mid month and so (as in change it freely inside the paid month), and pay for a longer time at once :3
I think private rooms should be doable for everyone, although they could also be just passworded rooms?
Same with embed codes, especially if they're to be doable inside a FA journals (which is btw and excellent idea as well!)
For them prices in the subcription, 10-20$/month with the viewer limit doesn't sound too bad, probably a bit less with the banner.
I wanted to make sure there was some form of privacy left to unpaid members. It's also a good first line of defense against trolls and other unwelcome guests. The password was intentionally left off the list for this reason.
You're the second person to mention leaving the embed codes free. I'm okay with that, but I'd like to see a more detailed argument both for and against it first. This is bold to invite other people to join the conversation.
Starting with pros:
By charging for embedding rights, you will ensure an income to pay for the major increase in bandwidth. You may also eventually have enough income from this to eventually further the website and the embedding coding.
Cons:
By charging for embedding rights, you have additional work to put into the payment programs and whatnot. Also fewer people will use it, meaning less exposure for the site.
If it is free, you will have far more exposure, because many more people will use this feature.
Also, just from a coding standpoint: I could simplify the embed code a bit to remove a tiny confirmation code, making the BBCode simpler. Without that code, I'd have no way to prevent unsubscribed users from creating an embed, only to receive a "subscribers only" error...that sounds like Watchtail Gold to me. If I left that code in, it would provide that distinction (and also make it such that the broadcaster would have to share the code to let other people embed his/her stream). The problem there is that it wouldn't be possible to enter a code like [wt]UserName[/wt] without remembering some nutty hashcode, like [wt=45a8b]UserName[/wt]. What do you think?
If it is going to be subscriber only though, would the confirmation code reroute the user to a page with subscription options or just be non-functioning for unpaid users?
The same message would appear for non-subscriber accounts and subscribers who turned off embedding. This, of course, assumes that embedding is a subscriber feature.
I am also curious, why would the broadcaster need to share their code? If they embed it into a journal, wouldn't that be all that was needed? If they shared it with others and they too embed it into journals, then the bandwidth requirements are going to go up aren't they? Unless the amount of times that the stream is embedded doesn't affect bandwidth. I could possibly be misconstruing this though.
To save the mess of having multiple comments spread throughout, I will share some of my background ideas as well.
1. Orange with paw print pattern
2. green with the Watchtail symbol as a pattern.
3. A choice of the basic color pallet.
4. A lighter purple or blue, (I know some people prefer brighter colors to the darker tones)
I may not have been clear about the confirmation code - a viewer won't need it to view the stream, assuming the broadcaster has embedded. Savvy viewers could extract that code from the page source if they really wanted to, and embed elsewhere; the only reason why I'm only making it public to the broadcaster is because some broadcasters may not want people embedding their streams - for example, if they are concerned about privacy or copyright. Also, each embedded viewer, despite not accessing the chatroom, still contributes to the viewer count and nearly as much bandwidth usage. Assuming, of course, they click to start watching.
In the event that I remove the confirmation codes, I will add a checkbox for the broadcaster to disallow embedding his/her stream on the options page.
On the background ideas, I'm okay with primary colors (toned down, of course), and of a "light" scheme. I'm a bit hesitant about the pawprint and orange/green stuff, though - did you see Watchtail on April Fool's?
I agree, the banners are a great visual indicator of who has subscribed and who has not.
As to customization of the rest of the page (or just the viewer pane), that's something I need to think really hard about, since I don't want browsing WT to feel like Myspace circa 1996. I'd like to see some suggestions on color schemes. Three colors: text, text background, and primary window color. Hex codes welcome. Or just one color, to replace the #666699 purple default.