meolox wrote:

not too sure I'd be happy to pay a subscription I'd feel like my knowledge was being held hostage.

Yes, and I think most people would just move to Anki and the usual SRS programs.

I wouldn't mind text ads in the forums. Also, is there such a thing as referral for Amazon?

I'm pretty sure adblock still registers the ad as viewed but just doesn't display it so it doesn't affect site revenue, with the amount of page views this site gets I'm more than sure it would create quite a bit.

edit, typo

Last edited by meolox (2008 May 28, 11:13 pm)

ファブリス wrote:

I'm kind of in a break now and need to look at concrete ways to fund myself for developing Trinity further without sacrificing all my personal time on it.

Hi Fabrice. First of all, there is something that I just must say here...


THANKS!

Your work here has been an invaluable contribution for me and all of us. I don't know what I would have done without Heisig's book, and without this great community and the brilliant SRS system implemented by you. It is not just that I know more kanji than before signing up for this site, but that I like kanji and learning Japanese  more than ever, and that is at least at part thanks to you and all the people here.

Your work here is great, and is apparent that you have put great effort onto it. Nevertheless, there are several ways of getting funds, and I in my humble opinion turning users into clients is not the best at all. One of the reasons why your work is so great is because it is not a product, but a labour of love.

As for donations, I think one of the reasons why you don't receive more of them is because most people might not be even aware that they can give donations to the site. I mean, I only remember having seen a "Support the website" link at the homepage because I checked the homepage after reading this topic. You could change that little link for a bigger one, or an appealing image. Put the link at every page so that it can be noticed by everybody. Set a goal for monthly donations and display the amount of the donations received for each month. Show that information before each reviewing session. Give some prize or reward to people that donate money, like putting their names into a list or giving them special avatars, status, signs, etc.

You could also create some sort of merchandising. Something that would not be directly related to learning, but that would generate an income. For example, I would love to have a ReVT T-shirt!

Transtic wrote:

You could also create some sort of merchandising. Something that would not be directly related to learning, but that would generate an income. For example, I would love to have a ReVT T-shirt!

Interesting idea. Why stop at t-shirts though? What about l'eau de kanji?

shaydwyrm wrote:

But what scent would it be?  Paulownia?  Wisteria?  Camellia?  A blend of all of them?!

On a more serious note, I like the merchandising idea.  Someone in another thread mentioned the idea of an all-the-kanji T-shirt where the kanji all together made the shape of a big kanji - that would be pretty sweet.  Maybe spell out 漢字 or something.

Hehe, that was me ;）　I still think that it would make some good return on investment

as the train strays further away from the topic...

I'll also throw my name out there and say that the fact that the site is free is probably a good thing - though not so great for ファブリス. Merchandising - eh. I'm a bit too style-conscious to throw ?3000 on a kanji t-shirt.

The "donor" badge sounds kinda cool though - maybe a little badge for forum users, and a link to let anyone interested in donating do so immediately. Like instead of "Member", have a "Donating Member" (think something more catchy than that) and a [?] or "what's this" link that opens an ajax'd window that lets anyone directly donate?

Also, distributing some of the work may help as well. I'm no programmer, but I know some of us here are. That said, the man has done quite a fine job on his own.

I think a good amount of us come here, use the site until we are done with RTK1, and never come back. So that might be something to keep in mind.

That said, the idea of a pay-as-you-go joint might not be such a bad idea. I think that if I was allowed to do the first 500 for free (and realized how brilliant of a resource this was), I'd think nothing of a $3 donation to unlock the rest of it (I say $3 just as an idea - anyone can afford it).

Problems with that:
1. plenty of younger kids on here, and they might not have access to paypal/credit card
2. the annoyance of doing the paypal thing might block people from bothering at all.
3. the fact that you're essentially charging for allowing people to check out work that others (not just ファブリス）have done. For example, I spend a lot of time typing in my stories even when I don't need to - I just want to share my ideas with everyone in hopes that they might be helped by them (just as I was helped to a great degree by people who so benevolently typed theirs in). No money, just a feeling of community. Add money into that equation, and that feeling might collapse a bit.

Just saying.

Zarxrax wrote:

If people think that their money will go to a good purpose (the site being improved) I think they will donate.

I'm not regularly making donations to the site, but I have contributed and will contribute again. I don't care whether the site is improved or not - I'm just so grateful for the way that the site works *as is*, and anything above and beyond is just icing on the cake.

I get so much useful advice and information from the knowledge of the other people on this forum, and that's *after* I'm already getting so much mileage out of the flashcard drills. Were it not for RevTK, I never would have heard of the Leitner system (never mind anki /  aozora bunka / ajatt / all the other amazing resources posted here). I find I get more out of this site, this _community_, than I do out of most of my textbooks / DS games / etc. About the only thing that *does* compete with the usefulness of this site is the Japanese conversation club that I go to every so often.

I don't think of donating to the site as something to make it better, I look at it as a way to say "Thank you" for all the selfless work Fabrice has put into it already. I barely have enough time for my own Japanese studies, and yet he _makes_ time for his own studies, as well as maintenance on the site, new improvements, and regularly responding to posts on the forum.

Maybe it's a matter of mindset, or maybe it's a matter of means, but I think that donating and then expecting improvements is a bit on the wrong track.

(Just trying to be honest, not trying to pick a fight here over wording.)

-amt

I'm one of those guys that uses the PayPal recurring donation thingy.  I cannot donate huge sums of money, but I can send a little bit over and over.  Like public television.  $5 isn't much.  But it comes out once a month, so it's $60 a year.  And if the 1100 users did it, then that'd be $66,000.

I'm going to get 6 months off the 9-5 routine, to work on my own projects for a change. Not sure when it begins yet, as my employer needs to replace me.

I'm not exactly in a hurry as I want to be busy and to plan ahead. I have been looking at options with the site the last few weeks.

A few comments :

- I agree with Synewave in principle, but I don't feel comfortable with the basic RtK1 review and/or Study area on a paying plan. I would prefer to add extras on a simple paying plan (like 5-8 $/month) and leave the current functionality for free. For example, ability to review ANY other non RtK kanji, add stories for any other of the ~6000 most common kanji, review subsets of JLPT kanji etc.

- Even so, I disagree with the views that one should never pay for features with shared user-generated content :

First, the content that you share publicly, usually remains your property. This vary depending on the site's Terms that you sign when registering. On the RevTK website, there are no terms and conditions of use. I may have to add some later, but with or without you retain the rights to your stories, of course.

Second, I think this is valid for most commercial sites out there, you pay for a service. If you pay obviously the service is useful to you. Sharing and benefiting from other member's shared content is part of the service. The content itself as I said before is yours. It's true that the shared content adds value, but then the shared content wouldn't be shared at all without the service (or not in an efficient way as the service was meant for..).

That will certainly be an issue with Trinity. The name "Trinity" as such will disappear most likely but I want to pursue the ideas. I may have vocab and sentence review and sharing with a certain limit for free and then lift that limit on a paying plan. Again, you'd pay for the service (it it's worth 5$ a month to you anyway). I'm not selling your content, and the shared content is only a part of the service, I would hope to think that the Trinity alpha even now is quite useful without any shared content.

- Which brings me to a recent reflection about the database storage. You know, at a certain point, users cost me money. Storing thousands of flashcards for thousands of users takes a lot of space. So having a "basic" paying plan to lift a limit makes sense because at least when the database becomes too big, you have the money to upgrade to better servers.

- Donor badges : I really like the idea and try to implement it.

- Forum Ads : I will put ads on the forum, and should have done since long. However Google Ads would be mostly targetted at random visitors coming from search engines, so nin theory showing the adds only to non-registered members might work just as well as showing the ads all the time. This I will need to experiment. I hate ads into the first post or between posts in the main content, so there won't be any of that, just ads on the sides.

- Advertising : the best option for this site I think is advertisers and affiliates who sell products that you guys need to study Japanese. Even better is to find private offers like with Paddy / Kanjiposter, instead of automated systems where the ads are not always relevant. I know you're all very smart users and for the most part I imagine quite computer-savvy, so ads need to be useful. No there won't be any popups, flashing gifs or any of that.

One of the first exciting things I need to work on is to totally remake the homepage. It will be both a very visible change but also challenging because I need a clear idea of where the site is headed. So far the plan is to expand the focus onto kanji study in general. Which should be good news for all of you since I'll be doing less navel-watching and more implementing a bunch of review modes you've asked before!

Ideally, I'd make a good source of income from advertising and sponsors alone but this will be hard. So it will be a mixture of looking for good sponsors and developing a "basic" subscription plan with some cool features

phauna wrote:

Perhaps try ads for an initial trial period, see how much revenue you get and whether this will be enough,

Certainly not. Keep in mind Youtube and the likes are the HOLLYWOOD of the web. GoogleAds makes plenty of money for a few select sites who have TENS OF THOUSANDS of visits per DAY. From little research I did, I expect I'll be seeing maximum 100$ per month with Google Ads on the forum.

wrightak wrote:

The problem is that the burden on Fabrice is too great. I think that the solution is not for Fabrice to try and make a living out of this site, I think that it would be better if he shared the burden.

The problem with that is I want to be self-employed some day and earn a living from creating things like.. this site. So I'll take up the challenge ^_-

FEATURE REQUEST (sorry, not into the conversation)

Don't know if it's feasible, but could the vocabulary portion of Trinity give an option to randomly conjigate verbs (and maybe adjectives)?

Not sure the best way to implement if possible. Would it be each conjugation is it's own card, or a single card is randomly conjugated as it comes up. Still, I think there's benefit to it. Granted, I've heard conjugation is very simple once you get into the swing of it.

Problem for "Reading" cards:
For compounds that are usually written in hiragana, it gives you the hiragana instead of the kanji.  While it's good to have the info that x compound is usually not written in kanji (maybe on the back of the card?), I'm trying to use Trinity to learn kanji readings, so it's really unhelpful to have the hiragana pop up instead when I'm reviewing.  Could this be changed?
The fact that a certain compound will pop up in hiragana is also not available when selecting the compound for vocabulary entry, otherwise I would consider selecting another compound.  But you don't know it til you go to review.  Also, some of the compounds that say "usually" in hiragana, I have actually seen in kanji in the real world...
thanks for a great program though, otherwise i really like it!

edit: typos

Last edited by tuuliRTK2 (2008 October 08, 9:06 am)

Whoa I never seen this before. Looks really cool! Gonna play with it now

I'm working right now on wireframes/mock ups for Trinity. That is, I am changing the screens and flow to something I think will work better, but I am keeping all the functional parts.

Anybody understands what namakemono meant here? (I assume he's not here anymore since he only ever posted once)

namakemono wrote:

For me, the main thing that's missing right now is the ability to drill in directions other than kanji to reading/meaning. For me, the most useful thing is to practice from meaning to reading. In particular, for sentences I want to practice expressing things in Japanese, using the correct particles and conjugations etc.. Going in the other direction is useful, but not sufficient. Maybe you already have this in mind, but this functionality is crucial I think.

Do you think he meant something like fill in the gaps sentences?

I'm not sure how I would implement that since the english description (the meaning) may fit multiple Japanese words.