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Site Update
Good evening everyone! It is with a heavy heart that I come to you now. Unfortunately we have to make several financial changes rather quickly. I want to be completely open about everything, so I am going to try to address all of the points that I feel need to be discussed.
I was discussing finances with Slash recently and he discovered a major source of the financial issues that we have been having are due to the site making 30% less income these past few months than in previous years. This is understandable, as many have noticed the active user count has gone down substantially last year, and many countries are in a pretty bad state economically and people are nervous about spending. There is a lot of concern about the stability of the site with how behind several aspects have become.
We have been working on catching up on these things to try to earn your faith back. We are in the process of more changes to help streamline background productivity (such as getting breeding helpers, the commission panel fees, etc). We know that it won't happen over night, and that many of our changes will also upset the user base. We do not want to disregard your feelings, but please understand that everything we do is to benefit the site in the long run. We have a lot of damage to repair, and it is a very long and tedious process. I personally spend almost every waking moment when I am not at my offline job, investigating options and discussing changes with the staff to keep pushing forward.
That being said, some of the changes we are making are:
- Alidae Egg, Transitional Fossil Egg, and Grand Edit Potion are having their Prediction Payout dropped to $10. When an Egg and a Grand Edit Potion are combined they will pay out $15. Any breedings submitted before Tuesday February 14th at 11:59 pm will not be effected by this pay change.
- Offering different payment options for USD breeding teams.
- Shrinking some of the larger USD breeding teams. (However, if we end up with enough artists taking different payments we won't have to do this!)
- The GCC and MDT teams will be shrunk. If you are on one of these teams and are interested in receiving GP or working out another payment system please pm me, Kaiyo (#489). If there are enough people willing to accept different payments I won't have to shrink them.
- The monthly site contests are going to have the USD pay dropped starting next month. It will still be offered but it will not be the same amount.
I appreciate everyone reading this, and I apologize again for these changes. Many of them will be temporary, such as the artists adjustments. Over time we may be making more adjustments, but we hope that these changes will be enough to cover the expenses, and we may be able to bring on another artist or two with the new payment methods for some of the backed up breeding teams.
If anyone has questions please feel free to ask, send me a PM if you would like, I will try to answer whatever I can. I want to be completely open about this situation, and withholding information does nothing for any of us. However, due to certain restrictions, there is some information that I am not permitted to share.
I do not come to you today with only bad news, however! The Commission Fee Panel is now live! You are now able to pay your own fees, select which ones you pay and when. There is a minimum of $5, so if you don't have that much in owed fees you won't be able to pay it yet!
It will work the same way it currently does in regards to dates, and all fees of the prior month must be paid within one week of the new month. So January must be paid within the first week of February, February within the first week of March, etc. Of course, this month is an exception since the feature is new and did start late, however please make sure January fees are paid quickly!
If you have any questions regarding your fees, please send me a pm! Only ping to the news comments if it is a general question about how something works.
Posted by 🐼Kaiyo🐼
(#489) on Fri Feb 3, 2017 2:19pm
- shy
(#3943)
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Posted on: Sun Feb 5, 2017 6:06am
i know you guys don't like the idea of ads, but if it's adding ads and not losing artists or not adding ads and losing artists, i think it's.... a better option?? that's p much how most websites earn a profit...
- Gone x2
(#550)
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Posted on: Sun Feb 5, 2017 6:17am
pathos? (hiatus) (#3943) Aywas already runs adds. Couldn't hurt to add more though.
- shy
(#3943)
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Posted on: Sun Feb 5, 2017 7:42am
Opaline Dragon (#550) the ads it runs are so limited that they don't earn any revenue :c
- ♥ Mochi ♥
(#70211)
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Posted on: Sun Feb 5, 2017 8:22am
I worry that more ads would just turn users away, or end with more people using adblockers. I know that ads are often either intrusive (such as the recent ones causing Chrome crashes on FR) or don't really earn much money for the site anyway - to the point that some newer sites are skipping the ads altogether.
- Shaenora
(#70050)
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Posted on: Sun Feb 5, 2017 8:29am
Oiseau (#1570) Thanks, I always confuse myself with this sorry. ^^
- Kris
(#15280)
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Posted on: Sun Feb 5, 2017 8:55am
I'm OK with adding more adds they don't bother me. Since everywhere I go online has adds somewhere. I'm non phased by them. If help the site am all for it.
- DeadRed 🎄
(#70790)
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Posted on: Sun Feb 5, 2017 10:24am
What about adding some ads with the option of payING for a monthly "premium" to have them removed. Or even after someone has spent a certain amount on the site then they are eliminated?
- Lothruin
(#2064)
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Posted on: Sun Feb 5, 2017 11:00am
I'm MDT, and would happily take GP or bow out of the team.
Additionally, have you considered mining your Slashbot queue for feature ideas? I know now is not the time to be spending on site events or features, particularly those that have been paid for in the distant past, but you might be able to kill two birds with one stone, if you have users in the slashbot queue who want to spiff up certain parts of the site. (The two birds would be, of course, whatever the spiffing is, and condensing the queue.) As someone who has been sitting on a slashbot use for... I don't even know anymore... I think I had been waiting for close to two years when the new Slashbot account was created, and I haven't been contacted since... I can honestly say that even if someone AFTER me in the queue had their idea implemented before me, frankly anything that condensed, and indicated that there was intention to address, the queue would be A-OK with me. It's always possible that none of the Slashbot queue have intentions that would align with no-cost site updates, but you never know until you ask. I have, to date, never had the opportunity to even really outline my ideas with staff.
And I really didn't mean that to sound like any kind of complaint, it just seems to be a site feature that has been completely abandoned and in the current situation may actually have some benefit to the site.
- Narrev @ 550
(#5049)
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Posted on: Sun Feb 5, 2017 11:37am
I know it's a band-aid idea, but we need things to help encourage site currency spending. What about BP/GP raffles? Give users a chance to get rarer items, encourage spending of site currencies, and of course acts as a sink. And I don't mean the regular site raffles, I mean like, there's ten potential items/things you can win.
And I feel like a long time ago, there was a huge raffle that you can turn in items for tickets. Maybe do something like that for rarer items. The prizes are going to be big of course, but it's just a thought.
Posted on: Sun Feb 5, 2017 2:16am
I concur with Tsuyu and Sia's suggestion, since I am unable to do art work consistently, but have done work that is (I believe) site quality.