Suggestion for increasing donations

Discussion on adblockplus.org website and translations
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Obsidian
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Dec 13, 2015 8:14 am

Suggestion for increasing donations

Post by Obsidian »

I'm sorry if I'm posting in the wrong place. I've searched for a contact link or General discussion board but didn't find anything.

I just wanted to pass along a suggestion that I have for you as someone who just installed your software for the first time.

I love the idea of The Honor System for software, but I think you'd be more successful if you gave another option: namely, rather than saying you will give a refund if donator is unhappy, you could suggest that the donor bookmark the page and try the software out for a while. If they like it, "please come back and donate to the cause. Or, if you don't mind, we'd like to give you a reminder in a few days that will let you assess how much you like the software, and you can donate at that time."

If you have the ability and consent, you could replace an ad spot in 2-3 days with a "reminder" that would continue to appear from time to time unless or until the person tells you to stop (by checking a very visible "Don't Remind me ever again please" box within the ad.

I just know for myself, if I saw that, I would permit you to remind me. Asking me for money as soon as installed, my first reaction was to feel like your intentions are good, but how do I know how much this is really worth. I don't want to give $5 and then feel like I cheaped out because I really love the software, but I know I wouldn't end up going back and giving a second time. I also wouldn't give more than $5 because I have no idea whether it even works. So I gave nothing. I plan to come back and give if I do like it, but I know myself, and I may just keep putting it off until it just never happens.

Anyway, that's just my suggestion. It might not be better than what you're doing now, but since I love the concept so much, I wanted to pass along any advice that might make it even more successful. Perhaps other companies will start doing this too.
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mapx
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Re: Suggestion for increasing donations

Post by mapx »

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lewisje
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Joined: Mon Jun 14, 2010 12:07 pm

Re: Suggestion for increasing donations

Post by lewisje »

Obsidian wrote:replace an ad spot in 2-3 days with a "reminder" that would continue to appear from time to time unless or until the person tells you to stop (by checking a very visible "Don't Remind me ever again please" box within the ad
I just hope such a thing could be pre-emptively turned off in a large-scale deployment.
There's a buzzin' in my brain I really can't explain; I think about it before they make me go to bed.
OlderWiserRetired
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Joined: Fri Feb 26, 2016 9:24 am

Re: Suggestion for increasing donations

Post by OlderWiserRetired »

I like the intention of this poster. I had the same questions and thoughts initially. But upon consideration, the O.P. brings up an interesting moral question: Should a user pay for ABP?

As of now, I am a new, big fan of ABP. After I saw the results, I realized that I am willing to pay for this service. I have paid anywhere from $0.49 to $225.00 for good games and programs. But then I took a few minutes to consider my rather simplistic reaction of gratitude. It occurred to me that ABP is "protecting" us from the harassment of greedy business owners.

In a grossly oversimplified way, ABP is a protection service. That is fine, like paying ADT to monitor my home alarms for burglary. That is fine so long as ADT has no association with burglars. If they did, we would call that a protection racket, which is very bad. If the past is any guide, and it always is, then eventually some browser company, not named "iemicrobrains", will buy the code's copyright ostensibly to improve their own product offerings but they will corrupt the code, we loose our protection service, and we start to see "not iemicrobrains" advertising everywhere. There are many layers of businesses beneath the browser that could also purchase and corrupt the intent of ABP.

So, do the good folks here at ABP have any ties whatsoever to the advertising/web development/software world that we rely on them to block? Will they in the future, and how will we users know? Caveat emptore and all that, so I ask, who owns ABP now, including minor legal interests, and what is the ABP 5 and 10 year business plan? If there is an acceptable answer of strict independence, then I, for my share, might be willing to part with a monthly or annual subscription fee. But I would only pay that fee after I clicked the reminder notice per the O.P.'s suggestion, after I saw the results ABP offered. I believe in try-before-you-buy-and-if-you-like-then-buy, like most people do.
lewisje
Posts: 2743
Joined: Mon Jun 14, 2010 12:07 pm

Re: Suggestion for increasing donations

Post by lewisje »

The company founded around ABP is Eyeo GmbH: https://eyeo.com/

This is the announcement, from about 4 and a third years ago, about 5 years after Wladimir Palant took over the Adblock Plus project (before, there was no corporate structure around ABP): blog/introducing-eyeo-gmbh-the-company- ... block-plus

Contributors to ABP (few of whom work for Eyeo) likely do have connections to the world of Web development, where they learn best practices for Javascript performance and maintainability, and to the wider world of software, having developed a local Web proxy for Android and a BHO for Internet Explorer.

Eyeo also has agreements with those companies whose ads are added to the Acceptable Ads whitelist, which include fees for the larger entities with such agreements, mostly to cover the great expense of maintaining the whitelists and monitoring compliance with the Acceptable Ads criteria: acceptable-ads

Still, Eyeo is not in danger of being bought by a company with an interest in suppressing ad-blocking, and even if it were the victim of a hostile takeover, ABP is available under the GPL, so a fork free of advertiser influence would quickly gain market-share, and there are also two excellent alternatives (albeit for fewer platforms than ABP supports): uBlock Origin (Firefox, Pale Moon, Chrome, Opera, and OS X Safari) and AdBlock for Chrome, Opera, and OS X Safari.
There's a buzzin' in my brain I really can't explain; I think about it before they make me go to bed.
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