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I built Zyke: Discussion Forum, a discussion forum & social news aggregator like Reddit. Loads fast, moderation is transparent, has user mentions (@), hashtags (#), a democratic voting system and a modern rich text editor.

But how do I monetize without running ads? That’s why I’m skeptical about adding Zyke to the fediverse. The community dislikes products with ads, so it feels like a bad idea to me. I don’t even intend to put pop up ads, just clean banner adverts

  • TragicNotCute@lemmy.worldMEnglish
    4·
    10 hours ago

    I’m leaving this up for now because it’s tangentially about the fediverse. I won’t allow any more posts about this specific discussion forum in the future though.

  • wiki_me@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    10 hours ago

    I am highly skeptical this will lead to anything. i will use closed source if it’s better for me and saves me time but this does not seem like a good product (why not just use lemmy/piefed?).

    Just having federation could bring more users to your site, which could lead to more ad revenue. of course some in the open source space really don’t like ads. phoronix allows to pay you to go ad free and seem to be doing ok for the last 20 years. it’s founder seems to be working full time on the site for the last 13 years. And honestly people also just use ad blockers (myself included). If you don’t block ad blocker that could also help.

    It could go a long way if you will invest some of that revenue back into the fediverse and open source. valve isn’t really a open source company and steam is not open source but it seems to be liked due to investing in FOSS.

  • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
    15·
    18 hours ago

    While people will not like you monetizing their posts, it is ultimatly something that only runs on your website. Of course if you federate out the posts people make on your website, then people will be able to access them on other sites without seeing the ads.

    Injecting ads in the posts themselves, and federating them out to other servers however would be a different matter and likely get your server defederated relatively quickly, especially if you try to track impressions through embedding images or so.

  • one_old_coder@piefed.socialEnglish
    18·
    19 hours ago

    It’s weird because no Lemmy instance is monetized. Same for Mastodon. What makes your software different?

    I used wget on Ubuntu to clone pages from piefed to build Zyke

    Ouch.

    • Pika@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      11 hours ago

      To add some more information to this, you can see the context yourself. (so you don’t need to search like I did) they are referencing a post the Op made from five months ago. Admitting that’s how it worked

      I tried to hyperlink it but Anubis gets in the way and throws a not found on the link for some reason, that or the original post was deleted

    • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      17 hours ago

      You’re forgetting Threads and Truth Social. I wish I could forgot them too, so no judgement.

  • MaxMalRichtig@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    10·
    17 hours ago

    Hi there!

    Since you got some negative feedback here, I want to keep it cool:

    • If you only want to show ads on YOUR system/instance, I think you can go on and do that. Your users can decide if they are fine with using a service that is monetizing via ads. Just make it clear to potential users BEFORE they sign up.
    • If you start federating your ads to other instances on the Fediverse, you will be banned pretty quickly, so do NOT do this.
    • Maybe think about a mixed approach of donations and ads, so users could work actively against being flooded with more and more ads.
  • Auster@thebrainbin.org
    9·
    17 hours ago

    If you mean “how do I monetize to keep services afloat”, open donation channels, like Patreon, Ko-fi, direct donations like the American Zelle or the Brazilian Pix, referral links explicitly identified as such, etc., and be transparent about finances and that if someone likes the service, their support helps maintaining it.

  • sit@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    13·
    19 hours ago

    I have not seen ads on the fediverse, yet.

    Any source of ads will get blocked by me as soon as I see it.

    If ads were fixed into the experience of the fediverse I would not use it.

    I would think most other fedi users have a similar view.

    I think most instance hosts do this for ideological reasons.

  • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
    9·
    18 hours ago

    Lol. Just do ads on your website? What’s the issue? The way the Fediverse works is: You federate out the content and I read it from my instance. From my perspective, I don’t even get to see you’re doing ads for your users?!

  • A_norny_mousse@piefed.zipEnglish
    3·
    16 hours ago

    Apart from the fact that ads in the fediverse are just wrong and hopefully still decades away:

    Such a flood of coders who suddenly come up with perfect, prime time ready software. In their opinion. Usually with at least one eye on monetization.

    Before so-called AI it took years and a whole team. And first came the call for testing.

    So yeah, I’m highly skeptical about how usable this would be if I even considered using it.

  • A Sharky Anthro@fedia.io
    5·
    18 hours ago

    You don’t run ads on the fediverse, its donation/digital tip jar. As we’re a community doing this because we love this!

    If you are trying to enshittify on the Fediverse, you’ll probably be added to so many blocklists that nobody would even know your instance exists.

    Just by reading this post, I would probably avoid your community like the plague. As bringing that mentality into the Fediverse is very cursed indeed. You should stay on mainstream and shitty social media in that case, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to make money there.

  • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
    5·
    19 hours ago

    haha boy are you barking up the wrong tree

    Monetization in the verse is largely ‘community supported’… ie donations

    youre out of your element donny

  • Handles@leminal.spaceEnglish
    4·
    18 hours ago

    how do I monetize

    Apparently, just add “AI” 🤷 Venture Capitalists are gonna be knocking down your door, or so the media tells us.

    Now, I wouldn’t, and if you do you’d very likely be the butt of as many jokes as you have been, suggesting ad financing.

    The fediverse doesn’t much like commercialisation, or slop. It’s not a great place for traditional monetization, but terrific if you’re happy making things for people.