Starting at the end of last year and particularly at the beginning of 2023, we've been greatly affected by the nature of advertisement income fluctuation. Our income from programmatic advertisements has taken a very sharp downturn, something that is seen across the industry for anyone that relies on external advertisements.
To potentially supplement the current effect, we are trying to experiment with programmatic advertisements to see if we can get better results; this is something you might start seeing over the next few days. It is very important for us that the ads don't negatively impact the reading experience, and we will continue to keep that in mind while we experiment with new placements and ad styles. However, we hope that you will support us by getting a premium subscription, as we are now more reliant on Premium subscriptions and internal adverts than ever before.
New Unlocked Feature:
Regardless of the above situation, we decided to make one of the Author Premium features free for everyone because we think everyone should have access to it.
Authors are now able to add collaborators to their fictions for free without needing to have a subscription to the aforementioned Author Premium. We think that it is a vital feature and that more people should be able to use it. Now every author can add moderators to their fiction page, and everyone can clearly give credit where credit is due.
All you have to do is go to your author dashboard, select [Collaborators] under settings in the side navigation menu, and then click [add]. From there, you will be able to grant any user any of the following permissions:
View Dashboard
View Analytics (Note that premium analytics requires both the author and the collaborator to have Author Premium)
Edit Drafts
Edit Chapters
Publish Chapters
Delete Chapters
Moderate Comments
Edit Fiction Info (title, description, cover)
Change Fiction Tags
Edit Fiction Volumes
You can give access to your editor, moderators, or co-author to your fiction to help edit or manage it. You have granular control over what each collaborator can access. Additionally, you have the option to have the collaborators’ names show up on the fiction page under your own with their designated role - even including users who do not have accounts on the website, such as artists.
Note:
Please keep in mind that currently, you can only add up to 10 collaborators. But, be careful to whom you give these permissions to. We take no responsibility for any misuse by users you gave permission to.
To avoid abuse, invited collaborators have to accept your invitation before they gain access. Please note that we do not send any notifications to invited users to avoid spamming them, so you will need to notify them yourself. You can copy the invitation link from the “Collaborators” page and send it directly to the user in question. Alternatively, they can check this page to see all pending invitations. The invitation is tied to their account, so other users cannot accept it even if they have the link.
Be careful, as we currently do not have a real-time collaboration feature in the editor you need to avoid editing the same document at the same time, as it is entirely possible to overwrite your collaborator's work.
We hope that you will make good use of this feature.
Buller on
cool
Astrowoud on
Nice that everyone is getting acces to the collaberators functions! Sounds like a very smart idea!
Dreaming star on
Cool indeed
Space Pickle on
I don't understand. Will it affect RR authors' ads?
RavensDagger on
From what I understand, it won't impact author ads, more like the exterior ads aren't bringing in as much as they used to?
Laulau20 on
i never knew pragmatic ads. is it that book selling ads that links to kindle or something sometimes seen on RR ads?
RavensDagger on
Pragmatic ads = targetted ads. Stuff like Facebook and Google use. They take what they know of you and then aim ads specifically towards your demographic.
That had nothing to do with author ads, which don't have any demographic input, tags, or anything else. Author ads are literally just... pay for a number of ads to show up on RR, and that's it.
Wing on
What RavensDagger said is correct.
Laulau, are you perhaps using AdBlock? if so, you won't see the Programmatic Ads, which might be the reason behind the confusion. If so, please whitelist the site.
Space Pickle on
Excellent. Thank you both.
Laulau20 on
I think i see them. some rectangle banner sell gold or jewelries it is just that i can't differentiate them with author ads that linked to RR fiction and the one that link to Amazon or Kindle for book selling. please don't mention facebook or google ads lol. i had enough of intrusive pop up ads on my browser.
Thistleman on
All RR ads from authors will have a small "UserAd" label in the bottom right of the ad. If it doesn't have that, it's an external ad.
feha on
Wouldn't whitelisting the site also come with the side-effect that targeted ads can bring along trackers etc., allowing the ad-service to fingerprint you and track you? And then sell this data to ad providers, or use it themselves to serve targeted ads? You know, the entire thing that we get hardened browsers to stop?
Audumn on
Thanks for the free author feature!
i'm thinking of getting premium, sadly it's only available through paypal so i'd have to set that up
OVDC on
You could win a competition. I got premium by winning the writeathon.
Lire on
Compertitions don't happen every month. Also, winning a competition isn't a 100% guarantee. It feels nice to get premium for free like that though.
M.G Driver on
This is great!
Dougulas Kaien on
I thought something changed when I saw double ads while surfing the website. It's totally understandable for RR to seek additional sources of revenues as global recession causes publishers/advertisers to dial back on spending.
re: collaboration. Interesting changes.
AshroBugger on
So not give me power, wing. Or dunno, I like memes.
TofuuKnight on
nice! We finally get collaborator features for free!
argusthecat on
The targeted ads have always confused me, because they only ever try to sell me hateful right wing tee shirts. In the last year or two, they've stopped asking me to take surveys about how much I despise immigrants, which is nice, but like... if those ads are 'targeted', they're done so by someone who's blind and concussed. Any changes that improve the ads would be welcome.
Also, it was mentioned by someone else, but I want to second that the author premium only being purchasable through PayPal is the only reason I haven't given you money for it. I'd like to support this site, and I know a couple other people who would too, but PayPal just isn't pleasant to use and a lot of people avoid it. Expanded merchant services could help with that, though I know it's more work for you.
kanadaj on
We're working on it. In the past we've run into some issues with this due to legal issues which made PayPal our only option. This has changed in recent years, so we're now working on having more integrations, but this requires refactoring our checkout and subscription management process.
Hunter Mythos on
Good luck on getting money with ads.
Ali'Creed on
Hey, that's a cool feature for the authors that don't use premium.
I have a suggestion... not sure if it's any good or if it can't be implemented. But I was thinking wouldn't it be better to have a few more targeting options for the ads. for e.g. if I was writing a horror novel and I only wanted to target people that read horror, or alternativly a way to not show impressions to people that are already following or already seen the ad multiple times? Just my two cents, I would defintly use the ads more often if there were more options like that.
Ali'Creed
Forricide on
This is one of the few websites I don't have adblock enabled on. I really appreciate the fact that the ads here are generally pretty thoughtful and aren't that irritating (outside of maybe draining a bit more battery life, but hey). Thanks for the effort you put into that.
EggTeddy on
I personally don’t mind ads whatsoever especially when they are supporting a site like this
sarvashaktimaan on
I feel like there would be a lot more people paying for Author Premium if it was possible to pay for it through Debit cards or Bank transfer or Google pay or anything along those lines.
I am definitely among those people. The features are cool but I am not going to create a PayPal account and deal with several money transfers just so I can buy them.
Lire on
For real.
Melwas on
So, I'm really not an expert on the subject but shouldn't the blog post say "programmatic advertisement" instead of "pragmatic"? If so, the same mistake was done twice.
Kelpsie Sponge on
I doubt it was a mistake. More a euphemism because the usual phrase, "targeted ads", is too accurate charged these days.
darkocean (J. L. Salmonson) on
An option to send a money order would be nice too, and safe.
kanadaj on
Fixed.
darkocean (J. L. Salmonson) on
I'm sorry your having finatinal issues with the website. :( I'm fine with another banner addon the left or right side, and have always have my Adblocker turned of in here. How about you give members the option to receive a once a week PM with an add in it that you get paid if we open and view the website? Pretty classic way to do it but simple too. And the option to disable it permanently, for 6th months, 3 months, one month and one week.
I would be more inclined to buy premium if it was pay as you go, I don't always have money in my paypal so I know the payment would bounce at some point. That's why I don't subscribe to anything, even if I need/want it. (Like I really want to go premium with writer the internet typewriter website but again what if it bounces? XP
So take everything, let us buy one month at a time. Make it so that a person can load cash on a visa gift card to pay for it (works the same as a credit card online)
How about a RR paypay.me page or something like it?
https://ko-fi.com
https://www.buymeacoffee.com
Put something like the above suggestions were we can always see it but not distracting us from our work. <3 Like some css or java code that fades the image link to transparency.
Do any of those things and I can help out!
Thanks much for the collaborators function! I personally would be too scared to use that, if you anger the other person or they get bored (or whatever reason) the book could go POOF. No thank you. It's nice to have the option though.
Ideas to try and help with the income problem:
Hummm, how about premium members get a full day where they are easily seen before the normal ranking thing kicks in?
A full side text editor thats huge like on: writer.bighugelabs.com - I would only use it and nothing else but it fails on mobile browsers ugg so if you make a distraction free editor make sure it works well on mobile.
Premium means perks, it has to be tempting enough get people to want it... how about an app like thing that takes a writers cover and has options to turn it into a banner for advertising on here and the rest of the web?
Ah! I got it! Make a javascript chat box that only premium members can turn on to chat with other members with.
Another perk: Let premium members upload images to the servers to store in their accounts so it's easy peasy to add in images to their books. :D Put like a limit of 50 images and if they want more room they pay another $2.99 or something. Hea hea hea.
Allow if possible premium members to add in simple codes like cute javascript snow and other useful/fun things.
Let premium members have first crack at the beta RR app that's coming out. :)
I hope this helps!
darkocean (J. L. Salmonson) on
Also, please don't do what wattpad did and put video adds between chapters. I was angary when they did that, it made me feel like a pack mule. Blockingor delaying the content is never a good idea...
Grundy Boys on
Collaboration is cool (says the guy who is currently co-authoring a story). And I'm always down with trying to find better, more efficient ways of generating revenue. I think most people understand the need to keep the money rolling in. It would be terrible if this site (and others like it) had to shut down because they were no longer viable.
Lire on
Would be cool if there was a feature like "Draft Preview". Where they can make comments or view a chapter in your drafts, but can't actually change it.
Unknownsaint171 on
Its usefl and I hope it can it easier
MrAlwaysRight on
Only saw this now, but it looks pretty neat
xxcoder on
Not bad, though I wonder if there could be "less trusted" roles, like if they submit changes author have to review to have changes take effect. Trust level is "i trust that person not to spam me with edit messages"