Hi there guys,
I’ve been a casual user of blender for a while now but this is my first post in any of the forums (usually I find that my question/topic has already been covered).
I don’t know if this is really being posted in the correct place.
I was thinking about what a great piece of software blender is considering that it’s free. I’d love to make regular donations or something – but am really not in the position to be able to do that. Then it crossed my mind how heavily ad supported things seem to be these days and I thought – if there were an option where I get an advert (still, not video) every time I opened blender, I would gladly do that knowing that the ad revenue is going towards the support of blender.
I have absolutely no idea how to put this idea out there, hence why I’m posting it here.
To avoid people throwing their toys out the pram if adverts are ‘forced’ on them, it could even be optional. Maybe there could be separate versions of the program when downloading. The ad supported and the ad free versions. So people who want to support blender can see relevant ads and then know that they’ve just put a little bit into the blender piggy bank.
Most of us are using computers which are constantly online, so the ads could be updated and the view count could be accurately kept. And when it comes down to it I don’t mind seeing ads if they’re for relevant things. Ads from companies like Adobe, Wacom, Lynda, or even things like camera adverts from Canon or Nikon.
It was just an idea and I’m curious about how others feel about this.
Would you mind seeing a relevant advert upon opening blender if you know that it’s helping support this software given to you for free?
I actually quite like this idea, but I’m afraid that most people will not. How about if it was more community driven. For example, people from the blender community could buy a small unobtrusive ad space about their blender related projects. A blender youtube channel, a download for a game made in the BGE, a link to their product on the blender market, etc. The ad could shown in a small box on the splash screen and of course be disabled. If they make pricing very reasonable, I’m sure it could be popular.
This would put Blender in relatively uncharted territory as far as real productivity applications go (you don’t see Krita, LMMS, GIMP, and others having ads inside of the workspace).
Another thing is that if you really want ads in Blender, they should be done in a way where it doesn’t track your online history and is not something that pops up in cases where you, say, start a render or pops up where it blocks the view of what you’re working on (otherwise you will watch the community go into meltdown mode).
Please no terrible idea. Ads are not a solution to everything you see in this world, dont let google / youtube spoil your brain.
If you want to help support, but dont have the coins, helpout in the forums help other people with Blender.
implementing Ads is a very bad idea. Helping Blender is pretty simple join Blender Development Fund (minimum sponsorship is 5 Euros/month - very affordable).
You don’t need to manage ads or anything, its definitely more secure and the money goes directly to the Blender Foundation.
I don’t why i feel like the first post come from some kind corporations.
Yii7’s post got my +1
implementing Ads is a very bad idea. Helping Blender is pretty simple join Blender Development Fund (minimum sponsorship is 5 Euros/month - very affordable).
You don’t need to manage ads or anything, its definitely more secure and the money goes directly to the Blender Foundation.
No, not a corporation or anything, just a guy who appreciates this software.
I’m going to be doing a vlog fairly soon and it seems like so many podcasts and things are always plugging products all the time.
Would it be a positive thing if I gave blender a little plug? I’ve used it for bits and pieces like a little intro various little animations.
… maybe one of the earlier comments about YouTube and google ruining my brain with adverts was accurate :spin:
Though I have to say some podcasts are far worse. Yabbering on about squarespace for a solid 5 minutes or something.
I don’t think anyone is suggesting any king of in your faces advertising while using blender.
Stick an advert on the splash screen would not impact you working since you can turn off the splash screen anyway. I don’t think this would happen as the benefits would be pretty small and there is no inclination from the developers to do any such thing. Better to support blender directly with donations or indirectly as indicated by others, promote or help other people in using the software.
While it might be nice for you to think about ways to support programs, it clearly has its downfalls.
If you want to see what happens with diminishing userbases due to included advertisements,
take a close look at the webbrowser called Opera.
Almost no one uses Opera anymore because it was infested with ads and people started to avoid it.
Ads are the reason that spyware is spreading and malicious stuff is happening.
Sane people nowadays try to avoid ads and advertisements as good as possible - not only on the internet but also in real life.
There is a reason that Adblocking tools/apps/programs were developed one of the reasons is, to prevent the berserk
going advertisement industry from further harming the people which they tried to pester with their unwanted stuff and java scripts and flash overlays and so on which all had spyware worms and viruses included.
Additionally every product which has advertisements in it are seen as devalued cheap and probably crappy products those are no values which you would want to assign to a program/thing item which you would like to support… right?
Lastly there are nowadays security measures like the load trusted python scripts inside of Blender because of valid concerns of malicious practises… it would be useless to then include such a huge security hole into Blender or do you think otherwise?
Making them separate programs isn’t going to happen,
Nobody is going to waste screen space on that
You wanna help the blender foundation?
Donate,
Or if you can’t,
Advertise blender(without sounding like a dick… seriously… I’ve seen so many “blender users” attack non blender users)
Nobody is going to willingly download the AD version of blender OR if they are going to download it, they will go back to the standard build 2 days later.
And the income made from those ads are so minuscule that it’s not really worth the inconvenience,
even if the “inconvenience” is so minor…
There’s so little money in advertising, the amount of money generated (especially when making the feature optional) would likely be vastly outweighed by the cost of implementing and maintaining it.
A more considerable amount of money can be made if you can get your users to install a toolbar, or a “free” virus scanner or similar atrocities, or if you can get them to fill out surveys. Not a nice option, either.
If you can’t afford to support Blender, the best course of action is to get into a position where you can. You even can try becoming a professional Blender user, making business contacts, endorsing the benefits of free software to clients, etc.
If Blender had an Add-on that enables ads to support Blender, I would definitely activate it on a regular basis, but would deactivate it from time to time as well. Having a separate Blender version would most likely not work, though I am not sure whether it could be done with an Add-on.
Someone would have to maintain it and make sure that it doesn’t have a noticeable impact on the performance. Whether it would pay off financially at the end is another question. As it is very much against the philosophy of the Blender Foundation/Institute, I don’t think it will be introduced at all.
Ads wont pay and will quickly create negative bloatware stigma.
Donations imho is quite hidden/not in spotlight. I only recently noticed it’s on splashscreen (totally blends in). I also donated many times with goosberry and thought I subscribed however I have no idea how to verify that so i resubscribed on the blender.org just now… - confusing
All in all i think Donations should be more visible and perhaps communicate to user a bit better. If everyone thinks that truckloads of money is given by other users then they ignore it. Reality might be starkly different. Perhaps make a monthly GOAL/TARGET and list current progress like wikipedia did.
I would personally love some sort of ecosystems such as:
a) Crowdfunded feature requests inspired by AREA users requests. Developers would still prioritize their resources however if enough funds become available for secondary features, they can take them on.
b) marketplace(like turbosquid) where users can earn and Blender gets % (anything compared to turbosquids massive 40%* is victory)
c) Perhaps even blender job postings (like freelance sites) where % goes to FOSS dev of your choosing/charity, whatever else that could create incentive to use this site vs others.
a) Crowdfunded feature requests.
Discussed many times, nothing stopping you setting something up but no guarantee it will get added to blender trunk
b) marketplace(like turbosquid) where users can earn and Blender gets % (anything compared to turbosquids massive 50% is victory) Blendermarket
c) Perhaps even blender job postings (like freelance sites) where % goes to FOSS dev of your choosing/charity, whatever else that could create incentive to use this site vs others.
Use blendernetwork to support blender users / developers etc
No. No no no. No no. NO. NO NO NO. NO. Ads are an ineffective pestilence. The pittance of ad revenue would be far outweighed by the damage to Blender’s reputation.
And seriously: don’t feel guilty about not being able to financially support Blender yourself - other people who can afford to already do.
I’ve seen on a few game making chats this expression pop up once I mention I am a blender user
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And lets be real, As a community we did kind of earn it. Our drama happens not just here. But in any of the forums and projects blender users attach themselves to. And that can not be helping blender in the slightest.
I think what blender needs as much as the occasional donation, Is people to have an awareness that their actions have an impact on everyone that uses the software.
Right now is the time when blender users need to be diplomats, There is how many game engines out there with a free to use version of their software marked to indie devs? I can think of 3 of them right off of the top of my head.
This is the time when blender artists should be thriving and promoting more interest in blender by being a foundation in those indie games that captures the attention of those company who have budgets to promote Research and Development.
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Well, can’t deny that we did earn this(I know your second paragraph said this as well but eh yeah)
“F*** C4D” - somewhere in the Cosmos laundromat pilot comment section, upvoted about 3 times
Here is the link,
CTRL + F then type in C4D
Every community has vocal village idiots
but
The blender community’s village idiots are so loud that I’m pretty sure that their sound waves could crack walls.
