Thank you for your support! This is an early brainstorming phase. But I fully agree with you. In the end, the question would be how the fork should take place. Unfortunately I don't know. I only see camgirl banners that lead to a whitelabel camsite. Probably affiliate compensation. That would be an alternative, yes. I actually left it out because I didn't want to go the "Patreon route" a second time and tie us to a platform that might block us.
QUESTION: What do you think about accepting cryptocurrencies directly on CHYOA? Is that something you would do? Is it too complicated? Have you ever bought cryptocurrencies and paid with them?
I've never tried, but on my Paypal, they allow me to buy and then send to a wallet. It doesn't seem too complicated. I'd be more open to try, but as I understand, it wouldn't be recurring. I'd have to remember to send to the CHYOA wallet.
As a former Patron, I cannot see myself using Crypto. Way too scammy and too much of a hassle to use unfortunately. Perhaps SubscribeStar is the best option? Maybe add additional tiers with more rewards?
Friedman: I hate all the instability and volatility of dealing with payment processors. Also Friedman: Let's do crypto! In seriousness, if you were able to find a stable coin that you liked, then you could probably set up a reasonable facsimile of the Patreon setup - but I doubt you'd get enough donors to make it worth the effort. I'm a backer because I support what you're doing, but it's already hard as hell to get people to pay for something you're giving them for free. And the more difficult you make it, that pool is going to shrink even further.
Paywells are objectively a bad idea. On average, less than 1% of a user base on any given site will actually donate, and paywells don't convince more people to spend more money, just deter a wider audience from taking any interest when they can go where things are free. You can observe the utter incompetence of Musk's handling of Twitter as an example, when he aimed to do exactly what MySpace by making the free user experience either so unbearable or non existent because he felt this would attract more people into buying into Twitter to listen to him talk about bullshit. It's estimated over 50% of his millions of followers are actual bots and spam accounts (The things he claims to hate) to pad out how well he's doing. The whole reason he took it off the stock market for public trade was so he wouldn't have to present quarterly reports to show how incompetent he actually is and is hanging on by conning even older and stupider men who believe he must have any idea what he's doing. While I can rip into him, the ultimate line is that while a subscription service seems good on paper, I feel doing one would be a poor decision. It requires either incentives to make people subscribe while keeping access to content for free, which is difficult to do on a chyoa format, especially when authors have no obligation to cater to annoying readers and their demands no should they be required to. It would require completely cutting access to content which defeats the purpose of wanting to hold the site public, or making the overall user experience so unlikable that more people will just relocate elsewhere than pay into it, and while yes, there would still be at least some users who would pay into it, it's most likely not going to be nearly enough to cover the whole operational expenses for what it's really worth and it comes at the price of finding a small but loyal audience(which chyoa already has), and isolating a much potential larger market by making payment a necessity. A paywall is only profitable in theory from elderly businessmen who don't understand how anything works. In a base of say even 100,000 viewers, it's not 100,000 potential subscribers who will pay for content. It's closer to 1,000. The most I can think of is adopting more ad space, but the more spammy the main site gets, the more unattractive it becomes for users as well, so there is some very tough questions. Whatever you do, don't do a paywall. That would kill Chyoa.
Thanks for the feedback! I've already thought that it's not the best solution. The Mastercard/Visa rules could have been ignored by accepting crypto. I contacted SubscribeStar. As soon as I know more, I'll let you know. Yes, I agree with you. My thought was to do it like PornHub. So a crypto payment provider, like BitPay, which converts the Bitcoin into dollars when the Bitcoin is transferred, so I actually have nothing to do with crypto at all. It would only be a means to circumvent the Mastercard/Visa rules. Thanks for your input! Unfortunately, I still need a payment processor. WooCommerce is just a shop software. I will not introduce paywalls! As I have always promised, CHYOA will remain free.
Wait, was a paywall being considered as an option? No, a paywall only works if you're paying the people making the content. You can't pay wall stuff that people donate, it doesn't work for anyone. The writers lose readers, the readers see fewer good stories, and the site can't control the pace of when things are released.
Don't worry! It wasn't an option. CHYOA will remain free. No content will be deleted or censored either.
This would be nice if you could cross-post or transfer stories, like Almax suggested. Otherwise, users might not see the point in publishing to the new site. However: This list is a bit ridiculous. I imagine most payment services would not be so inflexible as to ban use of the word "animal" anywhere on the entire website. As such, I think it would be better to look elsewhere. The benefit here would be that you wouldn't even need a service that allows porn. Considering established plans, I think this is the best path forward. https://onlyfans.com/terms followed by things like "intoxication" and "weapons" which are probably too restrictive. Whether OnlyFans is viable therefore depends on whether they care about content that isn't posted on OnlyFans but is part of the website, especially since that's the main thing being advertised. OnlyFans might also be less convenient because subscribers would probably need to create an OnlyFans account (a bigger ask than a Patreon account), and the fact that the website itself isn't publishing much content might make the platform unsuitable. It would be an awkward fix, basically, but perhaps not an infeasible one. Rocketgate and Segpay process all transactions for Kink.com. I cannot for the life of me find anything resembling a ToS associate with Rocketgate. The Terms & Conditions for Segpay do not seem to care about content, and in fact they have a clause about their mailing list that gives them the right to send adult content to their subscribers. The developers would have to be quite incompetent to not consider such workarounds. Regex is sufficient (albeit tedious) to deal with this strategy; I've written censorship software this way before. In practice, they would maintain lists of character substitutions. Their prohibited content is indeed quite restrictive if you read it as applying to fiction. However, the way it is written seems to imply it only refers to actual instances of the act (e.g. non-con) and does not extend to fictional stories about it. Simply mentioning "files sharing and storage" or "charities", for example, would surely not result in a ban. Also, the reference to "Filthy, or disgusting words or pictures" makes me wonder how thoroughly the policy is actually enforced. I don't see any risk associated with this method, as long as currency conversion is automated and only stablecoins are used. It's not much more complicated than something like PayPal. If you're just using crypto to send a payment, you can't really be scammed. It's the same as sending money over the Internet any other way, except that there's no central governing body, so it's easier for the recipient of your money to not hold up their end of the deal. However, the end of the deal in question is a little banner under your profile picture, so your concern is that Friedman won't do this for some reason. That said, the intense negative media around crypto and the risk associated with investing in it may render it unsuitable for CHYOA purely due to user apprehension.
Crypto is inherently a scam, including "stablecoins." The way I read OnlyFans rules, the main issue is content like "incest" "lack of consent" and such which are outright banned. BUT this is in context of uploading it on OF. And since: a) CHYOA is all fictional and therefore I don't know if the ban was for real stuff like that only, or if roleplaying such things is still acceptable (I haven't used OF so I don't know if "actors pretending to be family" porn material for example exists there) b) You wouldn't be necessarily posting the material onto OF, you would just get the page support with subscriptions. It might not apply here. I'm sure if you can contact them, they'll have a straight answer to it though.
I have some experience with SubscribeStar, as I use them alongside Patreon. The downside is they don't deal with PayPal. The upside is they don't deal with PayPal. When it comes to limiting incest, non-consent or anything else, they don't care... at all. Don't get them in a lawsuit and they'll happily take your money. In the past three years I've used them, they haven't changed that policy once. Patreon has a constant pressure hanging over adult creator's heads of, "I hope they don't investigate my content, because they could shut down my account." I've never heard of this with SubscribeStar, even with questionable content. If I remember right, they take a similar cut to Patreon. They also aren't as popular, so people aren't as likely to subscribe. Apparently some people in other countries have issues with payment processing, so they default to PayPal, but I believe most people can still use the site pretty easily. But it's not like Patreon gives you any attention themselves, as they hide all adult content unless it's linked to directly. So every patron you have was directed there by you, which would also apply to SubscribeStar.
Note that that list also includes things like incest, violence, lack of consent, hypnosis, and watersports. It reads to me like it's basically the same list the payment provider supplied to Friedman, and as such, it can't really be sidestepped: when push comes to shove, OnlyFans won't risk their entire business to protect one small customer.
Medium is a blogging platform that can be monetized by becoming a partner (provided you have 100 followers and 3 posts on there). Would it be at all possible to make a Medium page and for us to donate erotica stories to it? As a Medium partner, you get paid for people reading the stories posted, based on reading time. It's a bit like how Kindle Unlimited works. As a Medium partner, you also gain half the monthly $5 fee from every person you refer (they give you a code), and for those $5 a month from people, the subscribers gain access to the entire site, not just the CHYOA blog posts. I know it won't be enough to cover server costs, but it would be a very affordable alternative for people with limited funds, who still want to help. Also, Medium isn't overtly against incest, non-con, mind control, etc.
I've just started a Subscribestar. I spoke with them beforehand and they assured me that all of my content was perfectly welcome there. What I've ended up doing is running Patreon exclusively for my non-taboo stuff and Subscribestar for my taboo stuff. It's early days for SS though so we'll see how it goes. It's tough out there though. I have zero faith that the rules won't change at a moment's notice. Good luck Friedman, I hope you can get something good and reliable figured out for Chyoa.
