Subscribers, yeah, very likely, but my Youtube channel has still not made me a single cent after 4 years. Having 2.4K subscribers, 172K in views and 4.8K hours in watch time, isn’t as much as you may think it is.
In fact, I’ve never made a single cent from Blender or any 3D/artistic work.
I have posted a lot of tutorial/information videos on my channel tho and helped/answered a lot of questions, etc here on BA.
Do you think all that unpaid contribution is worth more then $2.50 a month?
Sometimes people just enjoy doing stuff, and that enjoyment has value, even if it doesn’t have a return on investment.
I likewise have never made a cent on youtube, but I spend a lot of time on it and pay for premium because it’s worth it to me.
I never made a cent by watching movies, or plays or TV, but I enjoy all of those and pay for that enjoyment.
I’ve always somewhat enjoyed ‘teaching’, never done it as an actual job tho and while building the channel was fun, it was chewing up a lot of time. Time I could have otherwise spent on actually working on my own stuff that I really want to do.
Hence why I now post less on Youtube, compared to the once a month I was doing at the start.
There’s only so much one can do without unlimited time and resources.
Well… that’s maybe “the problem” with youtube… you only make some money with it if you do produce a lot of content… sometimes it seems the less quality the more “income”… IDK…
It also seems some good quality “content provider” seems to “emigrate” (or publish on both) to some other platforms where you indeed have to supscribe.
“We” also know that there are some users which seems to have grown up in some unsocial environment even if they are called “social networks”… 
So maybe even some community like BlenderArtist will be swallowed by some AI… just yesterday i stumbled about this:
“All of a sudden, we’ve lost a lot of control,’ he said. 'We can’t turn off our internet; we can’t turn off our smartphones; we can’t turn off our computers. You used to ask a smart person a question. Now, who do you ask? It starts with g-o, and it’s not God.” ~ Steve Wozniak
I do not know if this is “correct”/legit (really from him)… but you may insert any AI now and it seems to be worse…
And i’m actually an optimist. 
…so maybe not so much from the 118k Basic users but maybe if from the 8.6k Members only 1% would think: i will support this monthly… then this will be ~200$/€ a month… and maybe if 0.1% of the Basic just donate 10$/€ per year then this would be 100 $/€ a month… so even if only half of both then this would be 150$/€ a month.
And to only run a server, internetdomain, possible discourse service (but BA seems to be self hosted) is… so it’s a lot of work … and also doing all the moderation…
So looking at the “landscape” of possible communities in 3D… this here is almost a miracle.
To me, it absolutely is - BA would be nothing without our community contributing interesting content. I read Joseph’s point more as ‘if you find that BA is bringing you value or joy, please return the favor’ - you’ll never be forced to pay for access here.
I like the overall design, and it fits into the Blenderartists theme and provides relevant adverts that people might be interested in. Just one minor gripe I have is that it’s too distracting / close to the replies.
You could try putting more vertical padding around it, to separate it more from the text around it. It needs a lot more breathing room.
Yeah, but it could maybe sound a bit like having a go at Youtube creators, in saying that ‘you have made money (subscribers) via free marketing on BA, so why not give a little back in return’.
I doubt Joseph meant it like that, but I sure think it could be read that way.
I like it, but atm it kinda looks like it’s part of the post still. I think a small tweak to padding, but also adding the line break above, will make it more separated from the content
I enjoy teaching quite a bit as well, at one point I ran a blog about Blender, technology, and anything else I found interesting that was somewhat related. However, I found it taking up more and more time and in the end had too much pressure to put posts out every week, so ended up stopping it.
I still enjoy posting on Blender Artists helping people, and I really enjoy writing documentation for my home lab that nobody reads (including myself when I actually need it 
)
Yes, I have also noticed that, I watch the channels Neo and Fern a lot, and to access some of the content on Neo you need to subscribe to Nebula. Since either the content would get demonetised on YouTube, or it’s too long and wouldn’t make money.
I like how Mentour Pilot and Tom Scott do it, where all the videos are available for free on YouTube, you just get early access on Pateron / Nebula. I also like how on the Mentour Pilot Pateron, you get access to regular Zoom hangouts where you can talk to other members and ask questions about aviation, and the latest videos.
I also agree with this, I think it would help to separate it more
I don’t think that much padding is needed, I think that would just get in the way.
Too much is better than not enough. 
To be entirely candid, it annoys me the lengths the users here will go, writing out multiple many-paragraph replies about why they shouldn’t cough up $2.50 a month to help support a site they spend hundreds of hours a month on.
You’ve written 600 words explaining why you won’t give back- assuming an average typing speed and not adding in time to thought formulation, that’s a minimum of 6 minutes. Let’s say your time is worth $30 an hour. That means that 6 minutes is worth $3. Supporting us in our efforts to keep this site running costs 8 cents a day. You would have saved $2.92 already today by supporting BA instead of writing up reasons not to.
You can do whatever you want, like Bart said, we’re not going to force you. But it’s disingenuous to spend so much time and effort explaining your choice when it would be cheaper to support BA
Sadly you can’t logic people into spending money.
I know, and I’m going to give it a rest now. It just bothers me, that’s all, I wanted to get it off my chest. And for what it’s worth, I’ve been supporting BA for years and giving hundreds of hours of unpaid time to moderate the site, so I think I’ve wanted the right to express this 
I like the ads, they show interesting addons I might not see otherwise, maybe you could ask people to pay to see them rather than to remove them.
Only half joking, I think people generally prefer to pay for added value rather than to remove annoyances.
There’s definitely added value at stake- we need to do a server migration, once that’s done, the site will be faster, all the plugins will work again, we might even be able to increase the 5mb upload limit if enough people chip in
Well there you go, pay $3 a month to get a higher upload limit. And an orange checkmark?
