dfox please put in a "support us" feature of some sort that lets us watch ads of our own free will. I hate using your resources while not working for it at all.

Just a donation thing would be fine, no need for ads.

@nblackburn Less people would donate than watch ads, because watching ads is free.

No ads please. If you want to donate just buy Swags.(I will do too)

I wouldn't mind ad's, as long as you can opt in/out for free. (Going to do that myself. :3)

@AlgoRythm I disagree, nobody likes ads and it's no different than buying swag.

@Cyanite Defeats the point if nobody uses it (which i cant imagine many doing)

Thanks for the suggestion and we appreciate the willingness to help support us.

We've been talking a lot about ways to allow the community help pay the bills (which right now aren't close to being paid for) and we've had some similar ideas. One would be the introduction of relevant adds, maybe in the feed, with the option to remove them for a small purchase, though there aren't any plans to do that right now.

We really want to try to keep it not as a straight donation but more like Reddit gold where you're actually getting some features/benefit for your money. At the very least you would get a supporter badge.

@dzil123 is correct about margins. Unfortunately the swag we currently sell (aside from stress balls and stickers) has really bad margins because we don't buy enough of them to get discounts. In app purchases are much higher margins for us and a lot less work.

More feedback is welcome though, as nothing has been decided yet.

To add one more thing, we also have the idea of making some little dev tools in the devRant app that are freemium, ex. a dev task list/estimation tool and we'd be curious on some feedback about that kind of stuff.

@dfox Perhaps something like 100 free upvotes a day (Since upvotes ultimately cost you money in free swag) and then either watch an ad for another 100 upvotes or become a supporter for unlimited upvotes. The number of free upvotes needs testing and adjusting obviously but it is only an idea. Also, limit the amount of rants per day, since they cost you in database storage. Keep the hour per rant limit to avoid spam but also have unpaying members only rant three times a day or so, and an ad per rant after that.

They're not great ideas but I am sure everyone here would love to support the platform, and we all know that devs gotta eat too.

Keep up the incredible work, and don't be shy about implementing features to keep the app, and yourselves, afloat. We are devs too, we understand more than any other user base that running an app isn't free.

@dzil123 Yea I agree about the upvotes thing. Scrolling past ads is definitely the way to implement them but make sure they have a different background color than rants!

@AlgoRythm thanks, glad you're enjoying that app!

Like @dzil123 points out, we wouldn't want to charge for upvotes because we want those to be given out freely. We've actually thought about rewarding users for giving upvotes. The ability to pay for rants over x per day is a possibility though since we do want to encourage quality content and I personally think a tighter limit could help with that.

@dzil123 I pretty much agree with everything you said and I think that could be a good implementation. Possibly even just like a sponsored rant but the idea would be to not make them obtrusive or annoying.

And like you say, it is a free app and you would be able to remove them if you disliked them that much. And I definitely like the idea of doing like Reddit does with the ability to gift.

@dfox Love the Reddit Gold idea, i suggested a supporter badge type system a while back and stand by that idea.

You also could perhaps do something along the lines of Medium by having premium content that you subscribe to.

One app I used had a "support development" option that turns on ads. I found myself turning it on, because the app is very well done. It's weird, when I have ads I don't want them, but when I have the option to turn them on I do.

@featurenotbug Thats a fantastic idea, exaclty what I had in mind, but put into good form!

@dfox if users want to give you money, take it - they won't always be willing to do so as their own financial situations change or the market changes. I can understand wanting users to have an roi on their investments, but donations aren't investments.

I can also understand wanting to implement a more complex point / badge system that involves money, as there's more opportunity to increase revenue over time with tweaks and an increased user base.

There's nothing wrong with doing both.

Imo, ads aren't the way to go, especially after the innovative avatar builder you implemented. Ads feel cheap and are annoying. I'd prefer you make all of the avatar items paid before implementing ads. I'd literally rather not have an avatar then have to see ads in the feed.

Making the API paid is also another idea to throw into the mix.

I also am of the idea to not have ads in an app that i love, but instead have a donation system in it. I suggest that before trying to add ads, you give the donation idea a go, since it's more elegant, and easier to implement!

And if you decided on the donation thing, add a bitcoin address too (Because that's the only way that i - and I'm sure some others - are able to help).

What about including a bitcoin & paypal donage option or maybe something like https://flattr.com (never used it my self, so can't tell you, if it is worth it)

I like the idea proposed by @featurenotbug
I am not paranoid about ads as most people especially if its not obtrusive.

Also the idea of accepting Cryptos for donation should be considered.

I noticed that there are maybe 20 rants in my feed per time. Putting one ad in this 20 isn't exactly a bad idea. The ad could be like a rant as someone suggested, but have a different background color.

Dev's here are ranting, sometimes about work, so maybe yoj could show job ads specially for devs. (If I remember right you use PHP for the backend, right? If so you could simply use GeoIP, to determin what job ad to show, unless it's worldwide and/or offers relocation)

How much is the bill / month?

I like the idea of optional ads, Reddit gold, and the "support us" button.

@dfox tools probably not too good use of time? I mean there are a lot of apps already and if I really needed a special one, I'd just make it myself.

@billgates, @oscarascal asked how much you were per month.

@AlgoRythm ??? I think he was asking @dfox what the costs were. If like to know too.

@billgates haha, the joke is that your name's bill :)

@oscarascal oh in that case, everyone needs to pay me $10/month 🤑🤑

Thanks for the additional feedback everyone! We are taking what everyone said into consideration and working on some next steps!

@oscarascal without getting into very detailed amounts right now, our highest expenses are for infrastructure. We have 4 database servers (2 for app serving, 1 for our algo, 1 for hot backups), 2 web servers (1 serves most traffic, 1 for background workers), a Redis server, and an analytics server. This all adds up to quite a bit each month. We also use CloudFront as our CDN and that has been getting more expensive too because some of our images are pretty popular and get hundreds of thousands of views per month.

Ow damn that's a good setup for a free 1-year old app, didn't think it was this serious. Is Patreon possible for things other than YT? The monthly thing would be more stable than punctual donations and store buys. I've been supporting a channel for more than 10 months I think, each time 10€, although I would never have made a 100€ donation at once

@dfox just wondering, how do you commit to all this? Honestly when I played around with websites, I paid for shared hosting, $3 a month and have up after 6 months. That's why now I develop just for myself and don't do personal web projects anymore.

Or maybe is Patreon's term of use incompatible with having an income from store elsewhere?

@oscarascal yeah, it seems like a lot sometimes but we've accumulated a lot of data and we serve a lot of traffic. If we had no redundancy and just ran everything off one db server we could cut costs a nice amount.

We are in the process of developing a devRant supporter program so stay tuned :) It will be a small monthly fee and will give you access to extra features and a supporter badge.

@billgates I think we have fun doing it (we love interacting with all the awesome people here!) and although the costs are high, at least we split them between @trogus and myself so that helps. With just one person it would be too much. Some of it also gets offset a little bit by mostly swag, but hopefully the supporter program will help.

@dfox looking forward to it! Any release date in mind?

@dfox can we get a confirmation on implementation of crypto currency?

@oscarascal we don't have an exact one in mind yet but I'd guess probably about 3 weeks

@SIMMORSAL we're not going to accept bitcoins in the initial version. It would add a lot of complexity and it's not clear whether it would violate iOS/Android store rules or not (since you pretty much have to use in-app purchases). I'm not that familiar with how other apps do it but would be interested to know more.

@dfox i have actually never seen that happening either. and you're right, it brings a lot of complexity. I can just buy gift cards with it though, so it's cool!

@SIMMORSAL ok cool :) Hopefully one day Apple and Google will add crypto currencies to be compatible in in app purchases, that would be the best.

@dfox i honestly dream about it every day! Maybe we should start a petition!?

@dfox @SIMMORSAL As I understand it, they were, but due to the volatility of the value of a Bitcoin, they no longer are persuing the idea. Microsoft even got it all the way done and accepted bitcoin in their store for a short period of time. It makes sense, to want to use currency that's stable in its value, I don't blame Google for their decision.

@AlgoRythm i was about to start the petition! Thanks for saving me the embarrassment!

And kudos to steam for sticking to it!

@tarstrong good points. At launch, the supporter program and its benefits won't have anything to do with ads and there are still no plans for any kinds of ads.

As for collabs, what will likely happen now, posting collabs will be free for all members of the devRant supporter program.

@jAsE yes I second that. If I can't use my app... Id prolly visit devrant less then I do now.... A lot less

@dfox I also wouldn't want to see ads in the app, but I would gladly join a subscription for a monthly fee for ~5 american pesos/mt ;)