Bitcoin support (via coinbase, or just directly) would also be great.
Definitely, we tried with coinbase about 2 years ago and ran into some problems with their recurring system, but weāre going to revisit it now that itās been awhile, hopefully theyāre long since resolved
Iām 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 itās 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 āmonthly goalsā in the same way reddit gold does? If thereās 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.
Theyāre going to be google adsense ads, so theyāre 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 itās not something that would be lucrative enough as a standalone thing to support what we want to do I donāt 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 weāre not going to sacrifice the approachability of the game here in the name of trying to convince people to become supporters. And weād love nothing more than to have enough site supporters to support us such that we didnāt have to have ads
If my memory serves me well, thatās 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 itās not here anymoreā¦
This service is already incredible. I canāt imagine what else youād 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 itās worth having the option of a single annual payment for those that donāt want repeat-billing.
Ninja jokes aside, Iām 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 Iām a beginner and I found my āGo homeā here.
Have you thought having paid lessons available on the sit, or maybe pay for āenhancementsā like PoE
or even Kickstarter? (I guess you have considered all the alternatives, but I had to ask).
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. Iām assuming that the group chats are stored as plaintext which takes up so little space that it wouldnāt be a big deal to add half a dozen lines of text or something for every dollar donated.
Also, itās not something that would scare new players away, since everyone in the group benefits and itās completely optional.
Facilitating teachers meeting with students for paid lessons is certainly something we want to do, but we probably donāt want to take a cut of those lessons. Iād rather see that money go to the teachers to support themselves. (Also, realistically I donāt 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 isnāt a project where you we take a few months to complete it and then weāre done and move on. When weāre 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 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. Weāre not going to hold features hostage for pay⦠we work on OGS because we love it, weāre just trying to figure out if we can make it work so we can work on it even more
So many ideas My mind spins. Iāll just say this: Iām relatively new to Go. A horrible player. Not smart enough. But I do admire, deeply the design of OGS. Iām a duffer and old school. I just use my credit card, and pay $10 a month to help. Not a lot. In my opinion thereās 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. 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.
sorry, I misunderstood⦠So if we support the site with even $1 a month we wonāt get ads?
Correct.
I completely misunderstood the message the moment I read the word āadsā. I have an allergic reaction to them Independent devs need support for their projects and OGS definitely deserves it. I wish you guys a lot of success.
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
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?
It is not open source but thereās an API and there was an initiative to help make it mobile, maybe you want to take a look at this thread
As requested here is your notification, ads are now live
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 youāre doing is awesome.
You made me know Go. If Iām a player now, itās just because I ran into OGS main page some 1 year and a half ago.
So, good luck guys!
Keep on the (very) good job. OGS forevaaa! \o/\o/\o/
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.