Paid support

you can count to my support if you can give me a certain number of help requests according to what I can pay…for example…10 U$ at month,3 request ; 20$ 6 request ; and so on. I think that a lot of people need this more than any other feature. because who is helped today with the learning tomorrow can help :stuck_out_tongue:

What do you mean?

yeah. I’m trying to explain what I need…my point of view is that of a self-taught of blender, who tries to learn how to use it without having had specific training like most of you has had. Usually I follow the tutorials that I find on youtube. I get more tutorials from the same topic and I try to understand what they do,doing comparisons and tests. Sometimes I freeze somewhere and then I need help. To get a good help for specific needs is important for me. I understand that I can’t ask everything because the experienced blender users have no time. So,what about if I can make a certain number of request within a certain time for which I pay a fixed price ? For example now I’m working on a traffic simulation and I don’t understand why the cars don’t follow the path…this is one specific help request…and If the price to fix this problem is adequate,I can pay for it. Maybe 3 requests can be available in one month for 20 $ ? let’s talk about it.

That’s an interesting thought, but more a kind of ‘dedicated support’ service, not something I think is suitable for a forum.

Can this be organized on patreon ? Right now some blender advanced users do It,but not as main service. The ma in service is to create tutorials for general interest without to ask what the specific user needs. This behavior has some downsides…

Well, of course it can be organised on Patreon, but not by Blender Artists :slight_smile: Running a community is a very different kind of activity.

what about this ? —> https://blenderartists.org/c/jobs/paid-work

it seems that blenderartists is not only a community of people that talks about blender…it is also a forum where they can earn money. it this is true,and it seems true,it would only be a question of adding a new section to allow what I have suggested and that you like.

You’re welcome to post a job where you’re willing to pay for a tutor. Other people have done that there.

I think the idea of a patronage system (like Patreon) where you get dedicated, guaranteed feedback is interesting, but it’s a bit out of the scope with respect to running the forum. The forum is for facilitating those kinds of interactions between users… so it’s a slightly different beast.

Off-topic: Support as a business

However, as a business concept it’s not a bad one. I know that folks have spoken on and off about starting a business to provide quality support for Blender. Most attempts, I think, have been targeted at larger studio environments, but it’s possible that it could scale under a patronage/subscription model for smaller organizations and individuals. The biggest challenge would be finding a core group of Blender experts willing to give that kind of dedicated consultation… and figuring out what rate to pay those people. It’s a doable thing, but it’ll take someone with the right headspace and enough connections within the Blender community to make it happen.

Is the logic behind that changes. One thing is to help one person with a medium / big project,another thing is to help more users for specific problems. In the first case you can earn money from fewer people,on the second case it works like the micro credit theory,you earn a lower amount of money from the single person,but you can help more persons and at the end,you will earn more money. The android app market works like this. To be able to help more people will increase the blender knowledge to a lot of users. Even because occasional users do not always have a lot of money to spend. But the occasional users are important. They could become loyal users if at the beginning they can get help without spending too much money. It is also a form of collaboration,because who asks a specific help usually knows blender a little bit. This also helps the users with an intermediate knowledge of blender.

I don’t see how your request is about how the website support should work. What you want is for the money to circulate between users, right? So this is a feature request of its own. Not much to do with BA’s Patreon.

yeah I think that it could be better implemented in the right section of the forum,maybe as sub section of the paid-work section.

Ok but I think your request belongs in a topic of its own within the #site-feedback category.

this is what Bartv said :slight_smile:

so,it seems that the right place is not even the forum…so,what do you want to do ? put the idea inside a cellar ?

I think it does belong in the forum in order for the discussion to lead somewhere, even if the solution is not going to be made in Blenderartists but on another website.