It's time to pay: non-standard ways to monetize software and digital content
With the advent of the Internet, the old ways of selling content began to work much worse. Many sales patterns have changed and continue to undergo metamorphosis; no single solution has yet been invented. About the most unusual ways to pay the authors talk today.
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The Flattr micropayments system was invented by one of the members of the sensational administration of The Pirate Bay, Peter Sunde, and Linus Olsson helped him with this. In 2010, after the trial of the tracker case, Sunde presented the Flattr initiative to the general public. At that time, it looked logical at all, because Flattr, too, is to some extent designed to help make the information free, ceasing to “fund” the rights holders parasitizing on the authors.
The essence of the system is extremely simple. Having registered in the system, the user can replenish his account in the Flattr system for any amount (at least two euros) and set the so-called monthly budget for himself - the amount that will be spent on donations to the authors for the month. The service charges 10% of monthly installments from the user’s account in its favor. You can enter and withdraw money through PayPal and Skrill, which, of course, is not very convenient for Russia, but credit cards are also accepted.
In turn, the authors of any content (musicians, writers, creators of software, and so on) are invited to place on my site a special “Flattr” button. Clicking on it, users can donate money to the author. The service supports a huge number of platforms, including free ones, which are very popular: WordPress, Blogger and Joomla.
However, the main thing is that the donation amount is not determined by the user, but by the system. For example, if the user had five euros on the account and in a month he pressed the Flattr-button three times, the system will distribute these five euros in equal proportions between the three authors. If the user clicks the Flattr-button fifteen times, the amount will be divided into fifteen equal shares, and so on.
This feature distinguishes Flattr from other systems; It is unusual and does not even work on the principle of “pay what you want / you can.” However, despite this, the service has not yet been able to conquer the broad masses of the people (indeed, it is often easier for a person to attach PayPal details, account or wallet numbers to the site), although the system is used rather actively, especially in the West. Of course, the main advantage of Flattr over the usual message in the spirit of "You can support me with money, here's your account number" is obvious - this is speed and ease of use. With the help of Flattr you can literally support the author with just one click, the budget "for charity" is set aside in advance, so there is no need to think about how much to pay, do not need to be afraid to exceed the limits and get carried away with donations beyond measure. And of course, no need to log in somewhere, “shine” the number of your bank card and so on. It turns out a kind of analogue likes, only supported financially.
But it is worth considering: that the author really felt the effect of donations through this service, he needs to be a very popular content provider; It is not for nothing that micropayments have the prefix “micro” - even if there are a lot of them, they are usually very small in size. Perhaps, while not too much content has become overgrown with Flattr-buttons precisely because of the fear that this undertaking will not bring a lot of money. Personally, it seems to me very sad, because another equally convenient and simple system, made “for people” and designed to exclude copywriters from the “food chain,” has not yet been invented. The project of Peter Sunde seems to be greatly underestimated.
By the way, the name Flattr is a pun. Here English flatter is combined - praise, flattery and flat rate - equal value.
Perhaps more often than others, the game industry began to experiment with the sale of content. As you can see, this article does not have a separate detailed mention of Kickstarter, but only because we have recently published a large article about it. However, there is something to tell about without Kickstarter. Surely the collections of Humble Bundle games are familiar to everyone who somehow watches CI and plays them. The first collection was released in 2010, and Wolfire Games was responsible for its compilation. Wolfire Games developer Jeff Rosen got the idea to sell sets of games, almost the same as it does on the Steam system. In addition, Rosen liked the idea of ​​paying for games on the principle of "pay what you want," that is, how much you want. Such a model, he spied on the game World of Goo, which was sold at a "free price" in honor of his birthday. Then 57 thousand copies of World of Goo were sold and the developers collected more than 117 thousand dollars.
Having promoted independent developers, among whom Rosen had connections, and combining both ideas, Wolfire Games released the first game collection. The venture was crowned with success - over a week more than a million dollars were collected on recruitment sales, when only 116 thousand were expected. Not surprisingly, already in 2011, Sequoia Capital, a venture capital firm, invested 4.7 million in Rosen’s initiative. Thus was born the company Humble Bundle, Inc., which to this day is engaged in the compilation and implementation of game sets. Humble Indie Bundle games are available for Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux and more recently for Android. In addition, the non-game set Humble eBook Bundle for electronic books was released, which included, as it is easy to understand, books (mostly fiction).
It's funny, but even such a famous studio as THQ tried to enter Rosen’s platform. At the same time, two key rules were violated: the games were sold only for Windows and there was no talk about canceling DRM. However, the sale still managed to gain more than five million dollars. Alas, it did not save THQ from bankruptcy.
The main feature of the Humble Indie Bundle is simplicity. To purchase a collection, there is no need to register anywhere, it is wise to replenish an account, fill out numerous forms or download additional software. You simply choose the amount that you do not mind giving for the collection, distribute the money and voilĂ ! Money is accepted using credit cards, PayPal, Amazon Payments, Google Checkout. It is worth noting that game sets (and single titles that have been sold recently) are on sale for a limited time. Some of the funds collected from sales go to charity (they are transferred to organizations such as the Child's Play or the Electronic Frontier Foundation), part of the amount remains the Humble Indie Bundle company itself, and part is transferred to the authors of the games. Interestingly, the ratio, to whom and how much to pay, is determined by the user himself. You can give everything to charity, you can give everything to developers or distribute money in any other way.
Of course, the problem of piracy is also relevant here. Given that the games are deliberately not protected by DRM, it’s easier to steal them. Nevertheless, Rosen and his colleagues do not despair and look at the problem philosophically. Perhaps the person stealing the new game from the torrents has previously ranked the Humble Indie Bundle a considerable amount, or he simply has no money to pay. Or maybe it’s just easier for him to download this way because the speed is higher (based on this logic, the company added the option to download via BitTorrent). To encourage people to buy Humble Indie Bundle games in different ways, including by transferring funds to organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (these people, among other things, are struggling with DRM). However, absolutely unprincipled pirates, like the people who launched the site wollfire.com, are not encouraged. The mentioned resource was closed by the efforts of the Wolfire Games.
Another good example from the gaming industry is Minecraft. The popularity of this game is just crazy. So, according to mid-April 2013, over 10 million copies of Minecraft were sold for PCs and more than 20 million copies for all platforms in total. The creator of the game - Markus “Notch” Persson literally became a millionaire, earning more than $ 100 million in sales. In fairness, I note that Persson is still in some shock of what is happening and recently admitted to Reddit that he grew up in a poor family, never thought about money, so the current situation still seems to him "fucking weird" (gentle translation: “Damn strange”) and he doesn't know where to spend the money. What is the secret of success for Notch and his brainchild? One of the main factors is called the sales scheme of the game. The fact is that when Minecraft was still in the alpha test stage, the game was already being sold. This practice is called alphafunding, that is, product financing is still at an early stage. Of course, during the testing period, the price was reduced by 25% and amounted to 14.95 euros. When the full version came out, the cost increased to 19.95 euros. This scheme allows people to support the author financially already in the early stages of development, as well as to have access to content, often still raw, but already promising. Unlike the same Kickstarter and other crowdfunding projects, in the case of alphafunding, a person not only invests money in a project so that it is not known when to see a certain finished product, but immediately gets a hands-on game that also works updated on the eyes. Admit it is pretty tempting. Markus Persson, by the way, started selling the game in 2009 from the Indev stage, which later switched to the Infdev stage (with an almost endless map), and only then were Alpha, Beta and release. That is, it turned out that you can start selling even when there is practically nothing to sell.
It is also surprising that during Alpha and Beta testing Minecraft had no advertising. Not at all. Only word of mouth and Notch's desire to make a good game, inspired by Dwart Fortress and Dungeon Keeper. Before Minecraft, there were similar indie projects (Infiniminer, Stranded), which, however, did not have multiplayer and "did not shoot." But Minecraft after a couple of months after the start of sales showed such potential that Notch, who was engaged in the development almost alone, remained on the main job only part-time, and another six months later he decided to devote all his time to the new project. And as it turned out, did not lose. Already in January 2011, less than a month after the release of the final release of Minecraft, more than a million copies of the game were sold. I remind you - without advertising and without a publisher. Only “word of mouth”, and later mention in thematic media (web comics, blogs, Reddit, and so on). As a result, to date, Minecraft is in the top 10 best-selling PC games in history.
Thanks to Minecraft, the alphafunding scheme, which previously occupied a very small niche, got a second wind and gained great popularity.
This is especially true, of course, and convenient for indie developers, who can now begin to form communities around their project, attract users and receive feedback from the very early stages of development. Now there are large stores only for indie games, moreover, with an emphasis on alphafunding (for example, Desura), and a corresponding section has appeared in Steam, which clearly indicates the potential of this sales scheme.
But once the beta versions were free ... :)
All of the above are common cases, in fact, they are whole systems for financing the authors, global and serious. What about special cases? Does history know examples when the author directly sold his creations to the public, bypassing intermediaries, publishers and other copywriters, and remained a winner? I myself answer my own question - such examples are known, and there are not so few of them. Most successful experiments were carried out by people already known (musicians, writers, and so on). Here are some examples.
The emergence of the Internet is not without reason that scared copyright holders and continues to terrify them until now. Back in 1997 (!), The fans of the British group Marillion organized and collected over 60 thousand dollars with the help of a network in order to finance a tour of their pets across the United States. Subsequently, the group collected funds for recording and promoting new albums in a similar way, and also successfully. In 2007, Radiohead group released the album In Rainbows not only on physical media, but also offered everyone to download it from the site, paying on the principle of "how much you want". According to the results of the experiment, the group announced that it earned much more from this than the previous albums, which were released in the traditional way, but no specific figures were given.
Russia, these trends are also not spared. We launched Kroogi.ru site in 2008, where content (music, artwork, books, videos, photographs, animation, etc.) is distributed according to the “pay as you want” scheme. At the beginning of 2009, 600–700 musicians joined the project (including many well-known names: Boris Grebenshchikov, Tequilajazzz) and about 20 thousand users. Then Kroogi received an investment. At the moment, the project is still working and does not change itself (although for the most part it has become a musical platform, rather than a universal one, as was originally supposed). For example, in 2011, the band Zorge - the team of the former leader Tequilajazzz Yevgeny Fedorov - recorded the debut album No Name Album with fans' money, using the Kroogi platform (588 participants of the action collected 10,052 dollars).
Another good example from the field of music, moreover, is more “fresh”: last spring the group “Bi-2” collected 1,250,000 rubles for the release of the album Spirit, using the help of the portal Planeta.ru for this purpose.
No less well-known is the experiment (although it was not successful) of the popular science fiction writer Sergey Lukyanenko. At some point, the writer was tired of arguing in his LiveJournal with supporters of the model “pay the author directly, even after buying and reading the book,” and decided to prove that this scheme would not work. The author asked the many thousands of audience of his blog to transfer at least one ruble to his Yandex.Money wallet. Allegedly, the results of the experiment should have shown whether people are ready to pay at all according to this model. The result was disappointing: the message of Lukyanenko was read by 52,993 people, 2,640 people agreed to pay, and the amount collected was only 6,404 rubles. Of course, the writer concluded that the system was not working, and, having given the collected money to charity, closed the topic. It is a bit strange conclusion, considering that Lukyanenko in LiveJournal is known to be prone to shocking, and the public knew in advance that he was participating in “spirit”, and did not pay the author for the book. In my opinion, it is not surprising that only about 5% of the audience participated in the ruble. In addition, from many readers Lukyanenko received not the requested ruble, but much larger sums: 20–30 euros. However, the author for some reason did not take into account all this.
First published in the Hacker magazine dated 06/2013.
Publication on Issuu.com
Subscribe to "Hacker"
')
Flattr
The Flattr micropayments system was invented by one of the members of the sensational administration of The Pirate Bay, Peter Sunde, and Linus Olsson helped him with this. In 2010, after the trial of the tracker case, Sunde presented the Flattr initiative to the general public. At that time, it looked logical at all, because Flattr, too, is to some extent designed to help make the information free, ceasing to “fund” the rights holders parasitizing on the authors.
The essence of the system is extremely simple. Having registered in the system, the user can replenish his account in the Flattr system for any amount (at least two euros) and set the so-called monthly budget for himself - the amount that will be spent on donations to the authors for the month. The service charges 10% of monthly installments from the user’s account in its favor. You can enter and withdraw money through PayPal and Skrill, which, of course, is not very convenient for Russia, but credit cards are also accepted.
In turn, the authors of any content (musicians, writers, creators of software, and so on) are invited to place on my site a special “Flattr” button. Clicking on it, users can donate money to the author. The service supports a huge number of platforms, including free ones, which are very popular: WordPress, Blogger and Joomla.
However, the main thing is that the donation amount is not determined by the user, but by the system. For example, if the user had five euros on the account and in a month he pressed the Flattr-button three times, the system will distribute these five euros in equal proportions between the three authors. If the user clicks the Flattr-button fifteen times, the amount will be divided into fifteen equal shares, and so on.
This feature distinguishes Flattr from other systems; It is unusual and does not even work on the principle of “pay what you want / you can.” However, despite this, the service has not yet been able to conquer the broad masses of the people (indeed, it is often easier for a person to attach PayPal details, account or wallet numbers to the site), although the system is used rather actively, especially in the West. Of course, the main advantage of Flattr over the usual message in the spirit of "You can support me with money, here's your account number" is obvious - this is speed and ease of use. With the help of Flattr you can literally support the author with just one click, the budget "for charity" is set aside in advance, so there is no need to think about how much to pay, do not need to be afraid to exceed the limits and get carried away with donations beyond measure. And of course, no need to log in somewhere, “shine” the number of your bank card and so on. It turns out a kind of analogue likes, only supported financially.
But it is worth considering: that the author really felt the effect of donations through this service, he needs to be a very popular content provider; It is not for nothing that micropayments have the prefix “micro” - even if there are a lot of them, they are usually very small in size. Perhaps, while not too much content has become overgrown with Flattr-buttons precisely because of the fear that this undertaking will not bring a lot of money. Personally, it seems to me very sad, because another equally convenient and simple system, made “for people” and designed to exclude copywriters from the “food chain,” has not yet been invented. The project of Peter Sunde seems to be greatly underestimated.
By the way, the name Flattr is a pun. Here English flatter is combined - praise, flattery and flat rate - equal value.
Humble bundle
Perhaps more often than others, the game industry began to experiment with the sale of content. As you can see, this article does not have a separate detailed mention of Kickstarter, but only because we have recently published a large article about it. However, there is something to tell about without Kickstarter. Surely the collections of Humble Bundle games are familiar to everyone who somehow watches CI and plays them. The first collection was released in 2010, and Wolfire Games was responsible for its compilation. Wolfire Games developer Jeff Rosen got the idea to sell sets of games, almost the same as it does on the Steam system. In addition, Rosen liked the idea of ​​paying for games on the principle of "pay what you want," that is, how much you want. Such a model, he spied on the game World of Goo, which was sold at a "free price" in honor of his birthday. Then 57 thousand copies of World of Goo were sold and the developers collected more than 117 thousand dollars.
Having promoted independent developers, among whom Rosen had connections, and combining both ideas, Wolfire Games released the first game collection. The venture was crowned with success - over a week more than a million dollars were collected on recruitment sales, when only 116 thousand were expected. Not surprisingly, already in 2011, Sequoia Capital, a venture capital firm, invested 4.7 million in Rosen’s initiative. Thus was born the company Humble Bundle, Inc., which to this day is engaged in the compilation and implementation of game sets. Humble Indie Bundle games are available for Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux and more recently for Android. In addition, the non-game set Humble eBook Bundle for electronic books was released, which included, as it is easy to understand, books (mostly fiction).
It's funny, but even such a famous studio as THQ tried to enter Rosen’s platform. At the same time, two key rules were violated: the games were sold only for Windows and there was no talk about canceling DRM. However, the sale still managed to gain more than five million dollars. Alas, it did not save THQ from bankruptcy.
The main feature of the Humble Indie Bundle is simplicity. To purchase a collection, there is no need to register anywhere, it is wise to replenish an account, fill out numerous forms or download additional software. You simply choose the amount that you do not mind giving for the collection, distribute the money and voilĂ ! Money is accepted using credit cards, PayPal, Amazon Payments, Google Checkout. It is worth noting that game sets (and single titles that have been sold recently) are on sale for a limited time. Some of the funds collected from sales go to charity (they are transferred to organizations such as the Child's Play or the Electronic Frontier Foundation), part of the amount remains the Humble Indie Bundle company itself, and part is transferred to the authors of the games. Interestingly, the ratio, to whom and how much to pay, is determined by the user himself. You can give everything to charity, you can give everything to developers or distribute money in any other way.
Of course, the problem of piracy is also relevant here. Given that the games are deliberately not protected by DRM, it’s easier to steal them. Nevertheless, Rosen and his colleagues do not despair and look at the problem philosophically. Perhaps the person stealing the new game from the torrents has previously ranked the Humble Indie Bundle a considerable amount, or he simply has no money to pay. Or maybe it’s just easier for him to download this way because the speed is higher (based on this logic, the company added the option to download via BitTorrent). To encourage people to buy Humble Indie Bundle games in different ways, including by transferring funds to organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (these people, among other things, are struggling with DRM). However, absolutely unprincipled pirates, like the people who launched the site wollfire.com, are not encouraged. The mentioned resource was closed by the efforts of the Wolfire Games.
The numbers speak for themselves
As of December 2011, six released Humble Bundle compilations generated sales of 1.25 million, 1.8 million, 900 thousand, 2.16 million, 1.1 million and 2.37 million dollars, respectively. As of February 2013, a total of $ 33.2 million was collected and more than twenty sets sold.
Minecraft and alfafunding
Another good example from the gaming industry is Minecraft. The popularity of this game is just crazy. So, according to mid-April 2013, over 10 million copies of Minecraft were sold for PCs and more than 20 million copies for all platforms in total. The creator of the game - Markus “Notch” Persson literally became a millionaire, earning more than $ 100 million in sales. In fairness, I note that Persson is still in some shock of what is happening and recently admitted to Reddit that he grew up in a poor family, never thought about money, so the current situation still seems to him "fucking weird" (gentle translation: “Damn strange”) and he doesn't know where to spend the money. What is the secret of success for Notch and his brainchild? One of the main factors is called the sales scheme of the game. The fact is that when Minecraft was still in the alpha test stage, the game was already being sold. This practice is called alphafunding, that is, product financing is still at an early stage. Of course, during the testing period, the price was reduced by 25% and amounted to 14.95 euros. When the full version came out, the cost increased to 19.95 euros. This scheme allows people to support the author financially already in the early stages of development, as well as to have access to content, often still raw, but already promising. Unlike the same Kickstarter and other crowdfunding projects, in the case of alphafunding, a person not only invests money in a project so that it is not known when to see a certain finished product, but immediately gets a hands-on game that also works updated on the eyes. Admit it is pretty tempting. Markus Persson, by the way, started selling the game in 2009 from the Indev stage, which later switched to the Infdev stage (with an almost endless map), and only then were Alpha, Beta and release. That is, it turned out that you can start selling even when there is practically nothing to sell.
It is also surprising that during Alpha and Beta testing Minecraft had no advertising. Not at all. Only word of mouth and Notch's desire to make a good game, inspired by Dwart Fortress and Dungeon Keeper. Before Minecraft, there were similar indie projects (Infiniminer, Stranded), which, however, did not have multiplayer and "did not shoot." But Minecraft after a couple of months after the start of sales showed such potential that Notch, who was engaged in the development almost alone, remained on the main job only part-time, and another six months later he decided to devote all his time to the new project. And as it turned out, did not lose. Already in January 2011, less than a month after the release of the final release of Minecraft, more than a million copies of the game were sold. I remind you - without advertising and without a publisher. Only “word of mouth”, and later mention in thematic media (web comics, blogs, Reddit, and so on). As a result, to date, Minecraft is in the top 10 best-selling PC games in history.
Thanks to Minecraft, the alphafunding scheme, which previously occupied a very small niche, got a second wind and gained great popularity.
This is especially true, of course, and convenient for indie developers, who can now begin to form communities around their project, attract users and receive feedback from the very early stages of development. Now there are large stores only for indie games, moreover, with an emphasis on alphafunding (for example, Desura), and a corresponding section has appeared in Steam, which clearly indicates the potential of this sales scheme.
But once the beta versions were free ... :)
Separate experiments
All of the above are common cases, in fact, they are whole systems for financing the authors, global and serious. What about special cases? Does history know examples when the author directly sold his creations to the public, bypassing intermediaries, publishers and other copywriters, and remained a winner? I myself answer my own question - such examples are known, and there are not so few of them. Most successful experiments were carried out by people already known (musicians, writers, and so on). Here are some examples.
The emergence of the Internet is not without reason that scared copyright holders and continues to terrify them until now. Back in 1997 (!), The fans of the British group Marillion organized and collected over 60 thousand dollars with the help of a network in order to finance a tour of their pets across the United States. Subsequently, the group collected funds for recording and promoting new albums in a similar way, and also successfully. In 2007, Radiohead group released the album In Rainbows not only on physical media, but also offered everyone to download it from the site, paying on the principle of "how much you want". According to the results of the experiment, the group announced that it earned much more from this than the previous albums, which were released in the traditional way, but no specific figures were given.
Russia, these trends are also not spared. We launched Kroogi.ru site in 2008, where content (music, artwork, books, videos, photographs, animation, etc.) is distributed according to the “pay as you want” scheme. At the beginning of 2009, 600–700 musicians joined the project (including many well-known names: Boris Grebenshchikov, Tequilajazzz) and about 20 thousand users. Then Kroogi received an investment. At the moment, the project is still working and does not change itself (although for the most part it has become a musical platform, rather than a universal one, as was originally supposed). For example, in 2011, the band Zorge - the team of the former leader Tequilajazzz Yevgeny Fedorov - recorded the debut album No Name Album with fans' money, using the Kroogi platform (588 participants of the action collected 10,052 dollars).
Another good example from the field of music, moreover, is more “fresh”: last spring the group “Bi-2” collected 1,250,000 rubles for the release of the album Spirit, using the help of the portal Planeta.ru for this purpose.
No less well-known is the experiment (although it was not successful) of the popular science fiction writer Sergey Lukyanenko. At some point, the writer was tired of arguing in his LiveJournal with supporters of the model “pay the author directly, even after buying and reading the book,” and decided to prove that this scheme would not work. The author asked the many thousands of audience of his blog to transfer at least one ruble to his Yandex.Money wallet. Allegedly, the results of the experiment should have shown whether people are ready to pay at all according to this model. The result was disappointing: the message of Lukyanenko was read by 52,993 people, 2,640 people agreed to pay, and the amount collected was only 6,404 rubles. Of course, the writer concluded that the system was not working, and, having given the collected money to charity, closed the topic. It is a bit strange conclusion, considering that Lukyanenko in LiveJournal is known to be prone to shocking, and the public knew in advance that he was participating in “spirit”, and did not pay the author for the book. In my opinion, it is not surprising that only about 5% of the audience participated in the ruble. In addition, from many readers Lukyanenko received not the requested ruble, but much larger sums: 20–30 euros. However, the author for some reason did not take into account all this.
Rightholders cling to life
Not so long ago, the director of the popular television series "Game of Thrones" thanked those who download the show illegally, using torrent and file sharing. Like, it raises the popularity and ratings of the series, leads new subscribers to HBO and so on. But not everyone in the television and film industry agrees with this logic.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, representatives of NBC Universal told about the work of their content police, where only twenty people work. The fight against pirates is still reminiscent of a war with windmills and looks very sad. Here are just some of the facts cited by NBC Universal employees:
- After just a few minutes after the final credits of the series, the next episode of the series and its copies are already appearing on the Internet.
- An hour later, after the release of a new series of a show, one can already find on the Web about half a thousand links.
- Two hours after the release of the series, there are already translations into other languages.
- After deleting one such link, 50 copies will immediately appear in its place.
- Back in 2009, there were 5.4 billion links to pirated content on the Internet, from movies and TV shows to computer games.
Last year, that number rose to 14 billion. Such data leads the company Irdeto, also engaged in cleaning the Internet from illegal content commissioned by major studios.
First published in the Hacker magazine dated 06/2013.
Publication on Issuu.com
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/200064/
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