• elouboub
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    2410 months ago

    flattr was on the right track, but didn’t know how to do it right. Reddit, discord, and free-to-play games figured it out: let people pay for visuals, status, and exclusivity.

    visuals = skins, themes, sets, icons, merch - make it flashy and people will buy it

    status = “biggest contributor”, “biggest tipper”, “most active poster”, “I paid for this icon saying I’m better than all of you”

    exclusivity = one time access pass to a face to face interview with the devs, limited community access, access to pre-lease of some feature, …

    None of it has to be actually functional. It just has to make people feel better (than others) and you can make bank without ads.

    • Rentlar
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      1710 months ago

      The easy route to Exclusivity is Manufactured FOMO (fear of missing out).

      Visuals that give people a sense of “I’m better than you” are a huge potential moneymaker even if they do nothing functionally. We will see if we need these, but honestly even these changes start to alter the landscape of the community in I view to be negative ways.

      • Liz
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        710 months ago

        Keeping a community as donation supported (with no status given for doing so) goes a long way towards fostering a supportive and intentional ethos, even when it’s a small fraction of the users donating.