As requested -
“Since you love adding features (playful dig intended), perhaps some sort of flag that the readers can check to prod the author to keep going with their story”
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As an author, here’s what I’d love:
- An email saying that someone is cheering me along. (Or whatever terminology you prefer to use.)
- A counter on the story page so I can see the demand when I check the stats.
- Maybe the user who cheers us along can get an email when the next chapter comes out – though I understand that’s stepping on the paid rewards, so maybe it’s a bad idea.
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That’s an interesting idea, but functionally, how would it be different than comments and likes, which motivate people now?
I like these ideas, however, in what way is that different than the “Favorite” button?
Would another button really be more helpful? Maybe just add those features to the “Favorite” button (like notifying the author). And renaming the button?
There is already an option to “subscribe” to a series (and an author), which is pretty much what you’re looking for. Of course, I can count the number of subscribers and display them to you.
The only issue is that this subscribe function is for Sponsors only right now. Which makes it way too limited to have the desired effect for the authors.
That brings up the next question: Should this be made available to everyone? Wouldn’t that diminish the value (and felt appreciation) for Sponsors?
And convoluted the UI even more (seeing that other rather unfortunate discussion in the other thread)?
Because that’s the thing I really get worried about: That the site is starting to become a bit overengineered. I would have agreed with him on that…
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Is anyone sponsoring for the features? I’ve used the ‘promoted story’ feature I guess, but the real reason I subscribe is because I like this site and I can afford a few bucks to help.
Fair. Another question is “how is this different from leaving a comment saying ‘I love this story, please, continue it!’”
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How would I know that? I wanted to give some exclusive features (which haven’t been there before, that would look like I remove free functions to force people to pay for them) to show my gratitude.
But of course, I’m listening. If people think this should be for free…
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Sorry - I guess I meant to ‘ask the room’, as opposed to you in particular. I don’t expect that you’d know that, and I do appreciate the special features you’ve created for sponsors, I’m just curious if others are incentivized to sponsor for the features.
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Martin, when one clicks the “Favorite” button, does the story’s author know about it?
I was definitely not tempted to sponsor for the features. In fact, I’ve been trying to sponsor for quite some time but I could never get sponsus to send me a damn email when I tried to register an account. Then finally this week I tried yet again and it magically worked. Buggy site!
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There is a counter shown on his stories showing the number of likes that story gots. And since about a week, he’ll also get a list of the people who liked the story (at the same spot, if the author clicks on that number).
He won’t get notified by email yet, though. That would be an easy enough change of course.
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Yeah, unfortunately so. Especially their email feature is very unstable. And the site is pretty much dead from my perspective, as the young guy who created it is obviously frustrated and busy with other stuff.
But I hate to have to look for another alternative once again and start from scratch with the integration work.
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As is often the case with tech start-ups that try to compete with a larger, existing company which people are trying to seek an alternative to because they have grown restrictive, what these people find is that the regulatory bodies and especially the banks will try to kill their business.
Bitchute, Odysee, Gab and many others have experienced this. You’d think that in a “free market”, competition would be encouraged or at least permitted. But this is not the case.
I’m immensely unsurprised that Sponsus has encountered hurdles, because the restrictions that Patreon has put in place are desired by banking institutions and did not arise out of nothing.
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I think that 80% ish of the impulse we’re trying to capture here could be filled by:
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altering the popup we have in place for ratings, which instead of / in addition to thanking them for rating, encourages them to leave a comment if they want to see more, and
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a button where the “Next Chapter” button would usually be in a series, which moves the reader down to the comment section.
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That’s genius!
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Definitely on-board with the idea that comments and ratings are a big motivator (comments especially), at least for myself. But the people who like are not the people who rate are not the people who comment…
This might just be my impression, but I think a fair few stories struggle to get enough ratings for them to display even if there are plenty of comments and likes.
This is a super interesting topic to explore!
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As a non-author I first want to express my appreciation to all the authors here. I don’t know how you do it. I wish there was a foolproof way to help motivate. Just wondering - besides comments and ratings, does the site track how many times a story has been ‘read’? Either by users or non-users and/or repeat reads? Would that help motivate?
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At the top of the story, we get a row of icons listing:
- number of likes
- number of comments
- number of page views
- number of page views by logged in users
Note that for the last two, every last view or refresh counts, including when you yourself come to the story to check comments or refresh is to see updated stats, so the numbers both climb quite quickly.
Below that, we get a small table listing all the various rating stats and a rank compared to others for the month/year/overall.
Using my latest chapter (Cop A Feel 3) as an example, I have:
- 19 likes
- 14 comments
- 2547 views
- 826 views by site readers
These numbers fluctuate wildly from one story/chapter to the next, depending on time of day I release it, how much competition I have at that time of day and so forth. I’ve had cases where one chapter gets three times more views than a previous chapter, probably mostly because I don’t track when the best time to release is.
Okay. I guess all those stats are only seen by authors. I only see the number of comments. Sorry. I still truly appreciate the hard work of all you guys and was looking for ways to encourage and inspire.
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Don’t apologize. You asked a question, I gave you an answer…and then some. 
I’m always happy to answer questions or give help when I can.
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