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My Proposal:
  • Reduce territory fee to 10k Sats/month
  • Reduce and apply uniform posting cost to 10 Sats/post
  • Reduce and apply uniform comment fees to 1 Sat/comment
  • Reduce Daily Rewards to 10k Sats/day
Why I think it'll spur growth on SN?
  • First, I've been thinking about for a few days now and need it to get off from my chest.
  • A lower fee will bring more people to join and there will be more posts and more comments. Some of you might say, it'll also bring in spam, it's hardly correct as we don't know yet about the implications. Nonetheless, If it brings in some spam along, SN can shard it or just ignore it.
  • A lower fee will also bring SN competitiveness against the media that's free to post. SN will not be free to post but It won't look like it's too big a deal.
  • By reducing the territory fee to 10k Sats SN will award sustainability to most of the owners.
  • By reducing daily rewards SN will overcome the the idea that many stackers are here for rewards.
I hope you understood the proposal.
What do you think about it?
I like it43.8%
I don't like it37.5%
I'll add to it in the comments18.8%
16 votes \ 18h left
52 sats \ 3 replies \ @grayruby 5h
I like the track you are on but I don't think the cost to post or for a territory is not the biggest deterrent to SN growth. It is general awareness and the fact that getting started on SN and the learning curve is more difficult than most things people are used to.
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I didn't say they are the biggest ones, but they are. I think SN can do much better with less costs by bringing in more people of any sorts and then letting them learn. There can be many who might think that X and Reddit are better because they don't charge you to post. On the same time, there can be some who will ignore the fact that it's just a 10 sat to post - not a big deal, same for comments. by reducing the territory fees, I also think that SN will see many territories which otherwise should be here already. andddd A gradual increase in the daily rewards could've been much better than a decrease.
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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @grayruby 5h
Fair. Maybe first 10 items should be free not just the first one. That way people can actually try out the site. Some people might abuse that and make multiple accounts to try to never pay but get sats in return. It's a tough problem.
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I think lowering the cost will do it. SN might award every new stacker 100 (or more) CCs to begin with. that way nothing is free and safe from manipulation but a kick can be given to a normie.
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Having control over those settings is part of the value of buying a territory and it’s unlikely each territory has the same optimal settings.
I think this is a better topic for a Foundry meeting than a SN reform.
I am planning on doing another round of fee lowering in ~Econ, once the comment fee experiment wraps up.
For now, the issue isn’t too few territories, it’s too few users to sustain them.
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Having control over those settings is part of the value of buying a territory
you're right. I gave it a thought too. Maybe an upper cap should be labeled. There are territories which have incredibly high cost of posting.
Yes I agree it's a topic for SN foundry which I flaunt of being the newest (not sure) member of with ~Goods_and_Gadgets.
More territories = more content = more users.
Less posting fees = more sustainability
I'm also thinking about how to make SN within reach of global users, it seems too much USA centerpiece as of now.
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Eventually, we’ll have subterritories, which could have lower fees.
You have to think about what the fees do. Even when they were 100k per month, it wasn’t clear that SN could be supported with that revenue. At 10k, it’s preposterous.
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I get your point. My growth plan is about how to increase User activity on SN, not the revenue for SN. Reddit is still not sure about profit with millions of users. Not comparing but it gives support to my proposal. And it's also true that SN can only be supported if it has more users, more content and more activity. All in all I mean why not just give it a try and see for a few months if that makes some difference.
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Stacker News needs to be able to financially support itself. If they stick to raising revenue solely from territory fees, then they should use parameters that are plausibly going to work and let the rest evolve around that.
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21 sats \ 3 replies \ @gmd 2h
10k/m seems too low. Maybe start with 25k/m
I do wish there was a better way to just see stuff from territories i've "subscribed" to...
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Thanks. 50k/m seems too high, right?
I've just roughly given an idea that Territory fees needs to be lowered and also the posting fees. If we gonna lower it to 25k, posting fee can be 25 which might work similar purpose.
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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @gmd 2h
I've never looked at posting fees tbh, i just post when i feel like posting. The ~$50/m price tag is a bit hard to swallow though
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my POV is that the lower the price is the more content and user activity SN gets, which means it gets more visibility on the internet.
If you haven't seen, there is a territory which has 750 sats for posting!
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14 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby 1h
I think @BlockchainB nailed it in this comment (#1197521): paying to post is actually one of the best parts of SN.
It's great that territory owners can set their own fees -- that way we get a mixture and we can tell where optimal fee levels end up (and also, we maybe find that there are multiple optimal levels).
Paying to post is the one thing that SN has that is not found anywhere else on the internet (that I know of). It's truly unique and useful: it makes people put their money where their mouth is.
I've been attempting some in-person on-boarding lately and I've been discovering that lightning is a major obstacle for many potential new users. It's kind of wild, but there are lots of bitcoiners who don't use lightning or if they do, use something like Strike.
People have to be either 1) very familiar with lightning or 2) highly motivated to join SN in order to overcome the friction of using SN.
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