Moving OGS Forward

Bitcoin support (via coinbase, or just directly) would also be great.

4 Likes

Definitely, we tried with coinbase about 2 years ago and ran into some problems with their recurring system, but weā€™re going to revisit it now that itā€™s been awhile, hopefully theyā€™re long since resolved :slight_smile:

3 Likes

Iā€™m a bit saddened by this, in a general sense. I do understand the need for money and the wish to have someone dedicated for the site, so itā€™s a good thing too. Will these be personally targeted ads, or just go-related ads, or just general ads?

Have you considered something like partnership deals like with Amazon where you get a small portion of the purchases people make?

Also, have you considered after a while moving to more perks for people donating to the site and having ā€œmonthly goalsā€ in the same way reddit gold does? If thereā€™s a certain amount of money in the war chest and so many people being site supporters doing away with ads or doing something special?

Just a few ideas.

Theyā€™re going to be google adsense ads, so theyā€™re based on your interests and such. With that system advertisers (such as Go related services and equipment sellers) can (and we hope do!) target ogs specifically.

Amazon partnership deals might be something to consider for some select things, but itā€™s not something that would be lucrative enough as a standalone thing to support what we want to do I donā€™t think.

Additional supporter perks are always fun, but there are limits to what we want to do with those, our primary goal here at OGS is to encourage new players to join the game, so weā€™re not going to sacrifice the approachability of the game here in the name of trying to convince people to become supporters. And weā€™d love nothing more than to have enough site supporters to support us such that we didnā€™t have to have ads :slight_smile:

2 Likes

If my memory serves me well, thatā€™s pretty much how it was on the old OGS. That worked very well for me, and I was a payed subscriber there quite for a while.
I guess that did not work equally well for the old OGS, though, judging by how itā€™s not here anymoreā€¦ :expressionless:

5 Likes

This service is already incredible. I canā€™t imagine what else youā€™d add to make it better. But certainly you deserve to make a living from it. For that reason I have just signed up as a supporter and I wish you growing success.

In particular I was pleased with the option to select how much I wanted to pay per month. I wonder if itā€™s worth having the option of a single annual payment for those that donā€™t want repeat-billing.

6 Likes

Ninja jokes aside, Iā€™m a fellow developer and I know how hard it is to invest several years of hard work into a project.
Nevertheless it will be a sad moment for me as Iā€™m a beginner and I found my ā€œGo homeā€ here.

Have you thought having paid lessons available on the sit, or maybe pay for ā€œenhancementsā€ like PoE
or even Kickstarter? (I guess you have considered all the alternatives, but I had to ask).

3 Likes

One thing that would have low costs to deliver but could have quite a bit of value from our end would be the option to, when we subscribe, choose an OGS group we are a part of to get some extra lines of archived text in our group chat. It could be scaled according to how much was donated. Also, it would stack if multiple people donated and chose the same group. Iā€™m assuming that the group chats are stored as plaintext which takes up so little space that it wouldnā€™t be a big deal to add half a dozen lines of text or something for every dollar donated.

Also, itā€™s not something that would scare new players away, since everyone in the group benefits and itā€™s completely optional.

3 Likes

Facilitating teachers meeting with students for paid lessons is certainly something we want to do, but we probably donā€™t want to take a cut of those lessons. Iā€™d rather see that money go to the teachers to support themselves. (Also, realistically I donā€™t think there would be enough demand to support us on any sort of reasonable cut, so I think everyone is better off if we figure something else out for ourselves and support the teachers in getting all of the revenue from their lessons)

The kickstarter and enhancements/paid features has come up before, but fundamental problem is OGS isnā€™t a project where you we take a few months to complete it and then weā€™re done and move on. When weā€™re done with a batch of features the very next thing we do is figure out what we need to do next; the project will never be complete :slight_smile: I suppose the paid features model could technically support that, but aside from some systemic issues I could see with that model, it seems fundamentally dirty, at least for a project like this. Weā€™re not going to hold features hostage for payā€¦ we work on OGS because we love it, weā€™re just trying to figure out if we can make it work so we can work on it even more :slight_smile:

6 Likes

So many ideas My mind spins. Iā€™ll just say this: Iā€™m relatively new to Go. A horrible player. Not smart enough. But I do admire, deeply the design of OGS. Iā€™m a duffer and old school. I just use my credit card, and pay $10 a month to help. Not a lot. In my opinion thereā€™s a moral duty (my perspective) to help these fellas for those who use the site regularly. I personally will support whatever the designers decide. I first learned Go in Outer Mongolia (yes) in the 1970s. If there had been a site like this with which I could have improved my game, who knows . . . Maybe advanced to 15K. :slight_smile: But I will continue to support these developers. I hope all of you will too. Clear to me they work for the love of the game. I admire that.

5 Likes

sorry, I misunderstoodā€¦ So if we support the site with even $1 a month we wonā€™t get ads?

6 Likes

Correct. :slight_smile:

4 Likes

:sweat_smile:

3 Likes

I completely misunderstood the message the moment I read the word ā€˜adsā€™. I have an allergic reaction to them :joy: Independent devs need support for their projects and OGS definitely deserves it. I wish you guys a lot of success.

6 Likes

Please consider signing up with Patreon, it would allow those of us contributing to various artists and the like an easy way to add you as well :smile:

2 Likes

This website is really an excellent work. I support ads so long you guys can keep working on that.
Just wondering is this open source? Is there any way other programmers can contribute to this great project?

6 Likes

It is not open source but thereā€™s an API and there was an initiative to help make it mobile, maybe you want to take a look at this thread

3 Likes

As requested here is your notification, ads are now live :slight_smile:

5 Likes

After reading your announcement, I finally decided to go for support.
I know, I should have done way before. And yea, my support is really small.

But still, I hope this may help. I admire you guys, and I think what youā€™re doing is awesome.

You made me know Go. If Iā€™m a player now, itā€™s just because I ran into OGS main page some 1 year and a half ago.

So, good luck guys! :slight_smile:
Keep on the (very) good job. OGS forevaaa! \o/\o/\o/

7 Likes

If OGS can be donated with Alipay, I think there will be more donation from chinese player. Because the Paypal is not so popular in China.

6 Likes