Hello CHYOA users, I would love to see a system that allows authors to implement "premium" branching paths that would require a reader to pay to see. Many cyoa sites and apps use this model to generate revenue, mainly an app called Episode. I am surprised it hasn't been suggested/implemented sooner. I also think if this feature were to be implemented that it should be reserved for experienced authors that have posted quality content for the site. Maybe there could even be an application process. Hope to see this as a feature sooner than later, and I think this would be very beneficial to CHYOA as they could take a percentage of earnings.
Not everyone wants to pay to read someone's porn. I think it would actually be kinda off-putting. Deviantart made the same mistake and I'm like "why would I pay to look at your art?", "this isn't an art gallery", "why does Deviantart keep moving away from what made it so great in the first place?" Also new authors probably won't care enough to pay for the content when they can get it free elsewhere.
I don't know if they want to get in bed with a payment processor, because that starts to bring in headaches about content. Dealing with Patreon standards is annoying enough (speaking from experience here). There are some authors who promote their personal sites or Patreons in their chapters or profiles, and I don't know that there's a problem with that provided that they're still actually putting out content here.
I'm all for creators being able to make some money but as a reader I don't see any advantage to locking a big chunk of the site behind a pay wall. Writing.com does that and it's pretty much unusable
As a reader, I'm extremely unlikely to read stories which features (partial) paid content, and merely pretty unlikely to frequent a site that features such content. As a (sometime) writer, I don't want to monetize my own writing in that way. My primary gratification comes from people reading and enjoying my work, and I don't want money to get in the way of that. I would also never publish my work on a site that's partially monetized like that in the first place. I find the idea of being someone else's free sample deeply distasteful.
There isn't really any content on CHYOA worth paying for, though some of it would attract a paying audience regardless. CHYOA currently exists as a fairly open place of expression. Quality is not moderated and users are given freedom to publish their content however they like beyond illegal content. Most of the larger and more popular stories are built on community and collaboration. The rest are labour of love projects that fill certain niches, styles or ideas simply because the author feels like it. CHYOA in its current state is not at all suitable for any sort of paid model, and to modify the site to make it suitable would leave it unrecognisable, probably killing its current userbase. When you purchase a book (physically or otherwise), you are paying for a complete story. Now consider: how many finished CHYOA stories have you ever read?
